joe widescreen monitors now are rather cheap... that aside check the capacitors on the boards they fail so frequently in big screen tv's an monitors it might be worth the look might be one has popped an depending on the Uv (microferads) an wattage it could be very cheap to replace

LCD monitors are supposed to last roughly forever. Really, there aren't any regular wear components inside them. Any failure is basically just bad design or manufacturing/design defect.

Or literal bugs in the system. Or people forgetting to dust.

Told you.

Lucky you. Mine blew three capacitors...or at least I think those were capacitors...

The past 10 years have seen a major change in power supply design. Now most everything has a switching regulator, which are very efficient and waste little power. But they also place tremendous loads on the capacitors of the supply, heating them up. Over time, the electrolyte in the caps gets boiled away until the cap shorts, causing the top to burst open. Most electronics you buy today has a lifespan of about 5 years because of this.

While it's possible to build the supplies with more expensive tantalum caps, this raises the price. Thus no manufacturer wants to go out of business because their monitor is 10 bucks more than the garbage ones everyone else builds. And since a dead machine at 5 years makes the customer spend money to buy a new device, nobody in manufacturing has any reason to correct the planned obsolescence problem.

Well, I meant the graphics card, but yeah. Thanks for confirming the fact those were capacitors.

Steer clear of ViewSonic, man. I had a really nice one of theirs that had a 2ms response time (great for gaming) that crapped out on me. Got the newest model of the same type; stuck pixel. RMA'd...got the monitor...sans stand, power supply, and cables, despite them SPECIFICALLY saying to send them all. Lasted JUST outside of warranty. FUCK EM! Got a Samsung, been going strong 2 and a half years now.

I have a Viewsonic that developed problems with the DVI port, too. It has been running fine on the VGA port since then, though.

Joe, you need to know that a five year old monitor may cost MORE to repair it than getting a newer one with better specs. But you knew that, right?

Get a new one, you can snag a decent DVI monitor of 19 or 21 inches for between $100-$150, which is about how much it would cost to fix your current one, if not less.

http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications/SearchTools/item-details.asp?EdpNo=6297350&Sku=A179-2320

23"
Not Viewsonic
1920x1080 for watching HD movies
DVI, HDMI, and VGA inputs
150$

The next step up is 24" but adds 75$ to the pricetag. Most people cannot tell a 23 from a 24 anyways.