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Displays The Almighty Buck

LCD Monitors with Dead Pixels/Columns for Sale? 59

Posted by Cliff from the buying-faulty-equipment-at-a-fair-price dept.
The Other White Meat asks: "I want to put a computer in my kitchen. For space reasons, I want to make it an LCD; a 15" screen would be perfect. This monitor is going to be exposed to harsh conditions (flying food, jumping cats, general mishandling). I don't want to spend so much money on it that if I came home and found it broken that I would be upset by it. I figured there must be plenty of places that will sell LCDs with dead pixels or columns, where I might be able to pick one up in the $50-100 range, but so far I have found nothing. Surely there must be a market for 'Grade B' LCD monitors, for precisely this sort of low life expectancy sort of usage? So fellow readers, can you succeed where Google® has failed, and lead me to the cheapo LCDs?"
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LCD Monitors with Dead Pixels/Columns for Sale? More

LCD Monitors with Dead Pixels/Columns for Sale?

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  • Ebay?? (Score:4, Insightful)

    by BlueLemur ( 668426 ) on Monday May 12, 2003 @03:59PM (#5938830) Homepage
    Seems like the obvious option...

  • Dude, get a... (Score:3, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday May 12, 2003 @04:07PM (#5938921)
    Isn't that how Dell get their LCD's?

  • They won't charge you $100... (Score:3, Interesting)

    by NanoGator ( 522640 ) on Monday May 12, 2003 @04:07PM (#5938930) Homepage Journal
    .. as long as they know you need it.

    Seriously tho, I'm not sure you'll find it. Problems like that show up early on. If somebody buys an LCD and it's got dead pixels, it gets returned. It'll show up again re-conditioned.

    Perhaps you'd be better of spending a little more, then getting a laptop that can be closed?
    • Perhaps you'd be better of spending a little more, then getting a laptop that can be closed?

      And spill orange juice over the keyboard while reading a recipe?

      • "And spill orange juice over the keyboard while reading a recipe?"

        Man! What's with the moderations today? The topic is that somebody wants a cheap defective, yet semi-useful LCD to use in the kitchen. He doesn't want to spend lotsa $$$ for something that will likely be damaged. There's nothing off-topic about the parent post!

        Ricky, you bring up a good point. I'm sorry you were modded down for it. *Hopes people are meta-moderating*

  • Manufacturer? (Score:5, Informative)

    by Spokehedz ( 599285 ) on Monday May 12, 2003 @04:10PM (#5938953)
    Why not contact the manufacturers themselves, and asking for some of their 'grade-b' stuff? I'm sure they'll be happy to either tell you to buzz off, or send you oodles of broken monitors for little more than shipping.

    You also might want to look for places that repair them, and other monitors of that nature. Computer shops, in other words.

    Another place might be your local neighborhood TV repair shop. But this might be stretching it a bit, because I've found that most of the shops these days are filled with idiots that wouldn't know the right end of a monitor to look at, let alone fix the innards of it.

    And if that all fails, then goto the junkyard and look in the newer SUV's and Van's for the LCD screens that come in some of them... and hope that the grizzled old guy behind the counter doesn't realize that is worth 500 bucks... And doesn't want you to pay with ass-dollars...
    • > contact the manufacturers themselves, and asking for
      > some of their 'grade-b' stuff? I'm sure they'll be
      > happy to either tell you to buzz off, or send you
      > oodles of broken monitors

      This sounds like a great idea for other types of hardware (anyone for power supplies that produce 5 and 12 volts AC? heh), but I'd assume that they'd identify flaws in the panels before hooking up the driver electronics, cabling and the outer case etc. And (speculating futher - I don't know that much about the pr
    • I tried this route actually, calling Dell's refurb outlet, as well as their tech support line. They couldn't seem to grasp the idea that I actually wanted one of those dead pixel/ dead column LCDs, and I wouldn't be returning it as defective.

      Of course, when I explained that in return for buying one of their returned monitors, I wanted it cheap ( as in under $100 ), that's when they got hopelessly confused and the conversation went nowhere...

    • I wouldn't mind paying with ass-pennies
  • I suspect, but don't know, that it costs more to make an LCD, put it in a suitable enclosure with a controller card, box it and ship it than your $50 price mark, regardless of the number of bad pixels.

    Since the LCD is the only bad part then it's cheaper to find that it doesn't meet specs right off the line before ever attaching any circuitry. The only thing lost at that point is the time to manufacture, and some small amount of materials.

    Lastly, most of the big display manufacturers probably have the high-volume LCD lines to the point where units thrown away due to minor defect (but still usable, as in your need) are very low, much less than 10%, probably under 5% or even 1%.

    The reason we have specs which include "no dead pixels inside center area, up to eight outside" are not because someone sat down and decided that was the case, or because it was determined that after 8 pixels around the border people started having siezures. It was most likely determined by a bean counter looking at the numbers, and determining that the 95% success rate would include screens which may have up to that many defects in those areas.

    Now that they have a starting point, they've refined the process not to reduce dead pixels, but to reduce dead pixels that fall outside those requirements.

    I imagine that you can special order LCDs from a major manufacturer in quantity and lower your cost by lowering the requirements, but I doubt it could be profitable for more than a year or two until LCDs finally cost around $100 for the 15" versions.

    -Adam

    • The circuitry and casing of a monitor is cheap. It's the glass that's expensive. If your theory was right, a 23" LCD wouldn't cost three grand (even though the high-end model is always disproportionately marked-up, if Apple, Sony and SGI can charge $3k, then Acer would gladly come in at $2k if it could be made that cheaply, then generic company B would come in at $1.8k, and so on).

      If a 15" LCD sells for around $300, then a manufacturer getting $100 for an LCD with, say, 20 bad pixels would find that prefer

    • Back when fully functional, used 90Mhz laptops were going for $500 each, I bought a couple to use as embedded computers for only $40 each. The screens were totally broken. I didn't need any pixels for that project. I bought a spare because they were "as is-no warrantee".

      I got them from Affordable Computers Inc [affordablecomputers.com]. (just a customer)

      Obviously that was a few years ago. I've bought other cheap laptops there, and all the parts that they said would work, have worked. I've never paid the big bucks for a lap

  • IPAQ? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by anthony_dipierro ( 543308 ) on Monday May 12, 2003 @04:15PM (#5939009) Journal
    I'll sell ya my IPAQ IA-1 [amazon.com] running linux for $150 plus shipping.

  • From Froogle.google.com (Score:4, Informative)

    by Enrico Pulatzo ( 536675 ) on Monday May 12, 2003 @04:17PM (#5939019)
    here's an interesting one:
    cheap princeton lcd [neutronexpress.com]
    where I found it [google.com]
    A little above the price range, but a good deal.

  • An alternative (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Malcolm Scott ( 567157 ) on Monday May 12, 2003 @04:25PM (#5939094) Homepage
    Instead of buying a B-grade display and expecting it to break every few months, what about buying a standard cheap-ish 15-inch LCD and investing in a decent enclosure?

    I'm sure you'll be able to buy the sort of monitor housings they use at museums and the like, with a thick layer of perspex or glass between the monitor and the outside world. That way, you'd get a decent display, and it would be less likely to break due to people spilling things on it, leaning on it, drawing on it, etc.

    I wish I could point you in the direction of a useful site... anyone know of anywhere you can buy enclosures like this?
    • If he's mounting it on a cabinet just get some material that matches what those are made of. Build a frame, and make it so a piece of plexiglass can slide into it.

      Shouldn't take more than an hour or two to build and finish with basic hand tools. Depending on the materials used it should cost anywhere from $25-$75
      • Cut a hole in a cabinet door at eye level large enough for the screen. cover the inside of the hole with plexi-glass. build a shelf on the inside of the door to rest the panel and gear on. put hooks above and below the setup for bungi cord ties. mouse and keyboard can be on a sliding shelf under the cabinet.

        4 hooks = $2
        12" x 9" plexi-glass = $10 cut at home depot
        sliding shelf = $15 (not sure about that price for a new one... used office furniture stores have them for very little money.)

    • Re:An alternative (Score:2, Insightful)

      by jdray ( 645332 )
      In a kitchen, there's probably a space consideration. In my kitchen, it would be hard to find a place to mount a 15" (or even 13") CRT, but easy to mount a 15" (or even 17") LCD.
  • Lookie Lookie [screentekinc.com]
    • One small problem. Those fall outside of his price range, and since they are parts meant for repairing a broken display he would probably need to build some sort of enclosure or method for standing the LCD up as well. He'd be better off just going out and buying a decent LCD based on what you've provided.

      Now, he could possibly call these people and see if they have any crappy displays sitting around, but someone has already suggested calling the manufacturers directly or going to repair shops so this would
    • Geez, I paid less for this laptop I'm using than those screens cost. I went to our corporate salvage office (public) and bought a Compaq Armada 3500 (P-II 300, 128 MB, 13.3" Active Matrix, DVD drive, no HD) for $175. I think a comparable machine is probably available on eBay for a like amount (as the first post said).

      What would be the difficulty involved in splitting a laptop into a base and a monitor connected by a VGA cable?
  • search on ebay for old broken laptops. I have seen them as cheap as $50 + shipping.
    It shouldn't be too hard to hack something together if you don't need a high quality monitor.
    • Too bad this won't work. The LCDs on laptops usually use a proprietary digital input. I've looked into this several times, and every site I've seen has said the same thing "don't bother, it doesn't work".

  • Top 5 Reasons to Want Bad Monitors (Score:5, Funny)

    by AtariAmarok ( 451306 ) on Monday May 12, 2003 @04:57PM (#5939462)
    5. The fewer working pixels, the better www.aintitcoolnews.com looks!
    4. With those allergies, you're going to sneeze all over the monitor and not see everything already.
    3. With luck, the dropout area will be in the same place most banner ads are.
    2. You have a nice colorful iMac: you don't care what the machine looks like when turned on, why not save a buck or two?
    1. You want to simulate that wonderful snowy look of Viacom cable service.

  • Anyone remember the I-Opener? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by NoMoreNicksLeft ( 516230 ) <john.oylerNO@SPAMcomcast.net> on Monday May 12, 2003 @05:12PM (#5939608) Journal
    This is what I'm using in my kitchen. Not just the LCD, but an entire computer. Me, I took off their pipe stand, made a simple bracket, and bolted it right to the wall (after giving up on a hinging bracket that folds underneath a cabinet... Home Depot doesn't carry any suitable hinges, and I don't have a machine shop.)

    badflash.com has them for sale for like $50, and I think this includes hard drive.

  • eliminate the harsh conditions instead (Score:5, Funny)

    by kurosawdust ( 654754 ) on Monday May 12, 2003 @05:18PM (#5939667)
    This monitor is going to be exposed to harsh conditions (flying food, jumping cats, general mishandling).

    Kill the cats before you cook them - I suffered a few broken LCDs myself before I figured that one out.

  • http://www.eio.com/ (Score:3, Informative)

    by Mythias ( 27496 ) on Monday May 12, 2003 @05:36PM (#5939843)
    I suggest you check out http://www.eio.com/

    They sell alot of close-out and discontinued LCD products. It looks like most of the ones they sell are meant for TV signals and not RPG computer signals, but if you can get TV Out it might be worth your while.

    For example, on their front page they have a Gateway 2000 Solo LCD 12.1" TFT display. It looks like it was meant to go into a laptop, but if you can get a controller for it, it should take an RGB signal as well.

  • Ia1 (Score:1)

    by Bashman ( 313982 ) *
    Hmm... I'll be a copy cat, will sell you my IA1, makes a nice kitchen computer. Just don't have space for it now.
  • 4" LCD [compgeeks.com]. it comes with some nice mounting hardware, the only catch is no RGB inputs, just RCA. 66$.

    Also, ive basically had *no luck* getting this company to honor warranties or anything, so you're prolly on your own.

  • Surely there must be a market for 'Grade B' LCD monitors, for precisely this sort of low life expectancy sort of usage?

    Yes, that's the market you would normally buy your LCD. Two or three dead pixels is usually considered good enough to sell to us consumers for full price. Trouble is, there is not 'Grade A' market, or at least, it's very expensive...

    Now, unless you really wanna go with a monitor that has at least 3 dead pixels, then...

  • First off, must it be rugged? Are we talking kitchen, or 1940s era machine shop?? My wife and I have been using fairly expensive laptops in the kitchen without any problem. If your wife is not a total slob, then why worry about extreme messes on the computer?

    Furthermore, why invest in an LCD for this?? Do you live in some cheap $400/month apartment that lacks even a small kitchen? I'm sure that there must be room for a cheapo, standard 15" CRT, or if space is a bit of a premium, a 10" POS style CRT. Maybe

    • Actually, I have a fairly large kitchen. The size constraint isn't so much will it fit, but that nobody but me wants a computer in the kitchen. The smaller and less obtrusive I can make it, the better chance I have of getting it past everyone.

      And as for the clutter in the kitchen, its all mine...
  • ... like hardforum.com have a forum dedicated to buying/selling hardware from people who general mistreat thier equip.

  • First off... (Score:4, Informative)

    by cr0sh ( 43134 ) on Tuesday May 13, 2003 @02:44AM (#5942785) Homepage
    Ask yourself why you want a computer in the kitchen, before just putting one in "for the hell of it". Do you want it for recipies? Food inventory management? Something else? The answer to this question should determine what kind of computer you will be putting in, and whether you spend money on a new or a used LCD display.

    If you are planning on using it for recipies and similar "text only" needs, find an old 486 laptop, extend the LCD cable, and mount the LCD underneath the countertop. Cut a hole out for the LCD in the counter, and mount the LCD. Use a router to make a countersink edge for a piece of glass or lexan, set flush with the countertop, and sealed in place with clear aquarium silicone sealant (to keep liquids out). Extend the keyboard to a pullout location (a custom "cutting board" style "drawer" would be perfect). On the laptop, run some simple serial terminal software or lynx, and serve up text only via serial comms or a network card (if you have a pc card/pcmcia slot on the old laptop).

    If you are looking for old LCDs, try to find the closest used computer recycling shop around your area. Look in the largest city near you. You want a place that is typically located in the "dregs" of the city - the industrial quarters, crack alley - if the city is a coastal city, like LA or San Diego, look into the dock/shipyard areas, too. There are plenty of places like this, many of them selling equipment and junk for fractions of a penny on the dollar. Some of them want to get rid of stuff so bad they will GIVE it to you! I know of three really great places like this here in the Phoenix, AZ area. Larger cities will probably have more to choose from.

    These places will generally be scummy - you will get dirty standing still and touching nothing. But this is a *good* thing, because it means you have found a gold mine. Now, you just need to sort through the junk (it is rarely organized well, and even if it is organized, it still needs to be sifted through). Sometimes, you will find a rare gem.

    Pertinant to your question, at one of the places I know of, they had got in a huge cache of SONY LCD monitors. The only problem was that most of them had the logic boards removed. However, I managed to find two that should mate together, once I get around to messing with them. Might be a total bust, though. Anyhow, for $25.00 I got two monitors, one with a busted screen, but the full logic intact, the other with a non-cracked screen, but no logic - mix and match until it works.

    The other thing to consider is dumpster diving - you would be surprised at the amount of shit companies throw away. My job not too long ago threw out a Compaq P150 laptop with CD-ROM and sound. Took it home, powered it up, no screen. Turned out it was a busted backlight - one trip to Fry's Electronics and some soldering got the beast working perfectly. Picked up a cheap SODIMM to get the RAM up to max, dropped in a cheap Ebay laptop drive to bust that up - everything else is a-ok. Currently in the process of setting up Debian on it.

    From trash to treasure - if my company did it, ALL COMPANIES DO IT. You just have to find where and when they do it, and be willing to ask them about their castoffs and junk, or dive in the dumpster. You may or may not find a usable LCD display this way, but I guarantee you will find usable "junk"...

    • What places in Phoenix? I'm always looking for new places to pickup used stuff
      • Hello - see this thread here [slashdot.org] for the places I was talking about. Another place - online only and catalog, I think - that I know of called Electronics Goldmine (located in Scottsdale) - do a google on it to find it. Another place I like is called All Electronics Surplus (I think it is located in the LA area) - they are great to order online and through the catalog. They tend to have interesting parts and such.
    • Yeah, come on, spill it... I live in Phoenix too.

      The ones I know of: Electronics Surplus Exchange, on 7th Ave. and Magnolia (if memory serves)

      ASU surplus on 8th and Price in Tempe

      Apache Reclamation on 2d Ave., but they suck mostly

      Gold Circuit, but haven't been there yet
      • Hey there - long time, no talk! Personally, I don't think Apache Reclamation sucks. If you are looking for computers and related, sure - they suck. But if you need some hydraulics, pneumatics, motors, gears, wire, etc - in other words, hardware parts - I think they are a great source.

        You mention one of the others I was thinking of (though I know it as "Equipment Exchange" - not ESE - got an interesting large LED "bargraph" device from them recently. I think the address is 7th Ave and Grant - but I may be wr

  • Look around e-bay for an I-appliance and mod it. I bought a gateway connected touchpad for $75 and it works great. It runs linux from a compact flash and has a mount for the lcd to hang from a kitchen cabinet. Linux-hacker [linux-hacker.net] is a great place to look for advice on hacking as well as buying/trading i-appliances.
  • Get one of these [ebay.com] and then try not to spill stuff on it. At least you can do quite a bit without a keyboard or mouse, 'cause it's touchscreen. I use mine with a web server containing recipes, home automation scripts, personal contacts [nettebook.org], etc. Just making a bookmark to my.yahoo.com is pretty indispensible too, for checking TV and movie showtimes, weather etc. But, I mounted it on a pull-down shelf that was intended for knife storage; it's perfect - hangs down below the cabinets when I want it, folds back up
  • Goto a thrift store. There's always at least 20 just sitting on the shelf, all for under $20. My other suggestion would go to a university and beg for one. When something breaks, they just sit it on top of a filing cabinet and let it collect dust.
  • Since you're investing in lcds, let me introduce you to The Best Thing You Can Ever Do For Your LCD.

    Leave the protective wrap on.

    I've got about 3 mac powerbooks and the 2 previous ones have their screens scratched to oblivion. My roommate's Dell, has his girlfriend's fingerprints all over it.

    Solution? A thin piece of plastic to go over your screen. As it happens, all Laptops come with a piece of plastic covering the screen with some plastic overlapping the edges. With a straight edge positioned under

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