While the world as we know it is probably ending (because we are very likely on the eve of an ‘ELE’ not caused by a comet but by a 12 Monkeys like outbreak of H5N1), all I can obsess about right now, is a dead pixel in my 17″ monitor. Yup, my Acer AL1715 that is about a year old is displaying a dead pixel. You can see it only on a dark background and shows up as red (see exhibit A). First I thought it was a speck of dust and tried to rub it off. Very disturbing even though you almost need a magnifier to see it. I knew when I bought this (relatively) cheap flatpanel it wasn’t the best quality, but is sure as hell was better then the ‘el-cheapo’ 15″ I had before that was only capable of a mere 1024×768 and also had a lot of ‘ghosting’ problems (a problem in LCD screens when tiny pixels creating the image take time to switch on and off and can’t do it fast enough. The problem, widely recognized as the main drawback of LCD screens, is apparent in fast moving objects such as tennis balls, but even slower moving images get fuzzy). The Acer is 2″ bigger and capable of 1280×1024 and also is able to show it’s contents at 12ms. So it was a big improvement. But right now I’m just a bit disapointed. Oh well. Life goes on (at least until we all die of H5N1).