Monday, December 19, 2011

Only one casualty

After the storm and power failure, and after the power was restored, we took an inventory of our electronics to be sure everything was working properly. Ken had taken the precaution of unplugging the refrigerator and the chest freezer after the failure, and he had unplugged the modem/router the night before (they can really be sensitive to power failures). All of them came back without a problem once the power was restored.

The oldest monitor that still works. I think I bought it in 1998. It's an antique flat panel.

When I turned on my computer, however, I noticed that the screen didn't come back. No power. We figured out that there must have been a surge when the power failed that managed to blow out the monitor's power supply/transformer. I do remember that when we saw the flash outside and the power went off, it tried to come back on twice in the seconds following. Maybe those surges fried my monitor's power supply.

At any rate, the monitor (which is probably still ok) won't work without a power supply. I went online Sunday morning and found a Dell monitor, state of the art, with better resolution than my more than ten-year-old monitor. It's on sale with free shipping, so I ordered it. Later, Ken found some power supplies online that might work, so he may get one just so we have a backup.

Speaking of backups, I'm using the old ViewSonic monitor (pictured above) that I had in San Francisco for now. It's working fine, even though the resolution leaves a lot to be desired. But I'm glad that we wrapped it up and saved it because it's coming in handy right now.

7 comments:

  1. It's kind of exciting to get a new monitor, I think :))

    I love that little tea light from Mercier, by the way!

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  2. The monitor, what a funny old thing.

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  3. Pauline keeps telling me to get rid of "stuff"... now I know why I'm keeping it!! She might if she reads this comment....

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  4. Monitors have changed a lot. The internet is no good without a screen. Hope you like your new one and it lasts a long while.

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  5. Why isn't my blog pictured on that screen?
    m.

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  6. Mark's comment cracked me up.

    Glad you found a good replacement--for now and later. :)

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  7. judy, yeah, it's cool! Cheryl got it for us while we were in Champagne; she and Ken visited the Mercier winery.

    andrew, right? Way to much plastic-to-pixel ratio!

    tim, it's hard to get rid of something that works just because it's old and out of date. Wait... I just described myself. Except for the working part...

    evelyn, me too! And it's HD, so it should be good for photos, which is a lot of what I do on the computer.

    mark, um... it was. I swear. It was. I dunno what happened...

    ginny, hard to imagine being without! But we also have the laptop as a second backup, so we're lucky.

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