Getting to dislike tantalum caps

Chuck Guzis wrote: I've had that with my ca.2007 Viewsonic VX922. It was great "fun" trying to claim on the Viewsonic "guarantee." Quoted because said guarantee isn't worth the paper it's printed on -- the paper slip included with the monitor states that parts and labour are covered, and return shipping. Apparently there's been a "retroactive change in policy" since then and that "no longer applies" -- now customers are expected to pay shipping both ways (to the Netherlands), and the warranty is now two years instead of three. From what I was told, the warranty starts from the date of manufacture, not the date of sale (which I'm pretty sure is illegal under UK law). NEC (aka NEC-Mitsubishi) are scarcely any better. The anti-glare coating started peeling off my old CRT monitor just shy of the guarantee ending. Called them and got the runaround: "Well you must have cleaned it with a chemical solvent." "Only Water and a microfibre cloth, as it says in the instruction book." "Water is a chemical solvent." I ended up being passed back and forth between two different CSRs, then finally to a "customer services supervisor" who stated quite plainly that "any failure of the anti-glare coating would be considered customer misuse and void the guarantee entirely." "So what if, say, the power supply fails?" "Well, you'd have to pay for that because the warranty is voided by the CRT damage." It'll be a cold day in hell before NEC or Viewsonic see any more of my money. Perhaps it's just me, but monitor manufacturers really seem to be the lowest-of-the-low for customer service. The only companies with a worse rating (IME) are computer parts suppliers. As for the Viewsonic, I opened it up, catalogued all the electrolytics, then bought a full set of Panasonic parts from Farnell. Had the monitor working again by 4pm. Eight capacitors, most soldered between power and ground, none of which had any form of thermal relief against the ground plane. The PCBs have BIG ground planes. Soldering them was not fun. And a very useful forum it is, too. -- Phil. classiccmp at philpem.me.uk http://www.philpem.me.uk/