Reviews

Samsung SyncMaster T240HD review

Samsung Syn­c­Mas­ter T240HD

A good, usa­ble com­pu­ter dis­play with nice cable con­nec­tivity and a few chinks.

I recently recei­ved my new Samsung Syn­c­Mas­ter T240HD. It repla­ced my old Samsung Syn­c­Mas­ter 206BW as my main moni­tor, dele­ga­ting the other one to the sidelines.

Unpacking the Syn­c­Mas­ter gives the main screen, some cab­ling (D-Sub and HDMI, though no DVI cable was inclu­ded in my set), manu­als, dri­ver CD, remote con­trol (with bat­te­ries), and the moni­tor stand. There, the typi­cal Samsung stand design was evi­dent: a base plate that’ll be atta­ched to the neck of the stand with a hin­ged screw.

Dif­fe­ring from nor­mal stands, though, is that there is no way to com­ple­tely and secu­rely attach the neck to the screen. The screen is just plug­ged on top of the neck and left that way. The instruc­tion book­let even has a nice “don’t put it ups­ide down, or it will fall off” graphic.

From a dis­play view­point, there’s not really much to bicker about it: 1920×1200, 5ms reac­tion time. Works well with ever­y­thing; there’s lots of con­nec­tivity, fac­ing strai­ght back out (instead of down): DVI, D-Sub, Com­po­site, HDMI, SCART, coaxial input, 3.5mm audio input and opti­cal audio out­put. At the side, there’s an addi­tio­nal HDMI in, a Com­mon Inter­face slot, and a head­phone exit.

The MagicB­right set­tings (which allow you to adjust satu­ra­tion, bright­ness, etc.) are all quite intui­tive. The only fea­ture that –by design– just doesn’t really work for me is the Dyna­mic Con­trast set­ting. The only situa­tion where this might work is when purely using Office app­li­ca­ti­ons and brow­sers; if you ever watch a movie or play a game, it gets irri­ta­ting as hell when the screen chan­ges it set­tings as soon as the over­all bright­ness changes.

Also inclu­ded in the screen is a TV tuner; it comes wit­hout an antenna, so you’ll need to eit­her hook up an aerial (via Com­mon Inter­face) or a coaxial cable. After that, the auto­ma­tic chan­nel search works like a charm, and after that, you’ll have an alpha­be­ti­cally sor­ted list of channels.

Of course, the main pro­blem here in Ger­many is that most chan­nels don’t carry HD, so you end up having to sit quite a bit away from the screen as to not make the image look like some­thing from times past.

The other, much big­ger, pro­blem is the dimi­nui­tive and under­si­zed speakers. Fiddling with the equa­li­zer alle­via­tes the pro­blem slightly, but it still sounds rather tinny, espe­cially if you’re used to eit­her a 5.1 sys­tem or just a good tele­vi­sion set.

Ano­ther slight bug with the speaker out­put is that I pro­bably have some cable inter­fe­rence close to it which will make the speaker emit a buz­zing noise. Swit­ching to the exter­nal speakers (or to the TV and back to exter­nal if alre­ady on exter­nal) will cure the pro­blem, but it has to be done every time after the moni­tor was tur­ned off.

From a design view­point, thi moni­tor is quite nice: there’s the lac­que­red appearance with a tint of red, and a trans­pa­rent cover that stands out on the upper and lower edges. The active LED is a little fleck of colour at the bot­tom right hand side, and not as actively annoy­ing as most other sta­tus indi­ca­tors. The con­trol but­tons are pla­ced off the right hand side, which is a bit of a dredge to get used to. I ended up using the remote for everything.

In regard to the moun­ting and foot opti­ons, it’s a bit low on fea­tures. The only thing it allows is to swi­vel the dis­play on the base. There is also no inte­gra­ted VESA wall moun­ting, but there is an adap­ter plate to create VESA compatability.

Over­all, it has a few kinks, but con­side­ring the price, it is a very good set.

My rating:4.0 stars
****

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Wednesday, July 15th, 2009 Reviews No Comments

“Für ein Morgen in Freiheit”

Deutsch

Unter die­sem Motto führ­ten diverse Grup­pie­run­gen am Sams­tag, den 15. März 2008, eine Demons­tra­tion in Köln gegen den zuneh­men­den Über­wa­chungs­wahn in unse­rer Gesell­schaft durch. Der Pro­test rich­tete sich gegen die aus­ufernde Über­wa­chungs­ge­sell­schaft, in die unser Staat zu ver­fal­len scheint: Vor­rats­da­ten­spei­che­rung, Über­wa­chung des öffent­li­chen Rau­mes, der prä­ven­ti­ven Online-Hausdurchsuchung und ähnli­che Kon­zepte, die das Grund­recht der Pri­vat­sphäre, Schutz des eige­nen Hau­ses sowie andere Rechte ein­schrän­ken bis ad absur­dum führen.

Nach einer Anfangs­kund­ge­bung mit tat­kräf­ti­ger Unter­stüt­zung von Klaus dem Gei­ger ging es auf Demons­tra­tion quer durch die Köl­ner Innen­stadt, unter ande­rem vor­bei am Rat­haus, Gür­ze­nich, und Neu­markt und der west­li­chen Innen­stadt, um sich zur Abschluss­kund­ge­bung wie­der auf dem Ron­cal­li­platz ein­zu­fin­den. Die Demons­tra­tion ver­lief trotz Befürch­tun­gen man­cher fried­lich, und es kam mei­nes Wis­sens nicht mal zu einer Verhaftung.

Zu den betei­lig­ten Grup­pen zähl­ten neben Partei(jugenden) von Lin­ken, Grü­nen und Pira­ten­par­tei auch Grup­pen wie der Arbeits­kreis Vor­rats­da­ten­spei­che­rung, dem Foe­BuD, des Chaos Com­pu­ter Club Colo­gne und ande­rer Grup­pie­run­gen. Eine genaue Liste der Betei­lig­ten fin­det sich auf der Web­seite der Demons­tra­tion.

Neben den offi­zi­el­len Betei­lig­ten tauch­ten auch noch Grup­pen mit ver­wand­ten Zie­len auf, die der Demons­tra­tion beiwohnten.

Ich war auch vor Ort und machte flei­ßig Pho­tos.

Die Medi­en­re­ak­tion ist lei­der, trotz star­ker Prä­senz von Fern­seh­ka­me­ras, eher gedämpft.

 

English

“Für ein Mor­gen in Frei­heit” — “for a tomor­row in free­dom” — was the motto of a demons­tra­tion that took place on Satur­day, March 15th 2008, in Colo­gne. This demons­tra­tion was aimed at the new govern­ment policy of endor­sing methods of citi­zen sur­veil­lance like data reten­tion, digi­tal search war­rants and public video sur­veil­lance, which end­an­ger fun­da­men­tal civil rights or even lead them ad absurdum.

After a initial pro­cla­ma­tion on the Ron­cal­li­platz, with the help of renow­ned street musi­cian “Klaus der Gei­ger”, the march through most of Cologne’s city centre star­ted, even­tually pas­sing import­ant pla­ces like city hall, Gür­ze­nich, Neu­markt and most of the shop­ping areas. The pro­ces­sion ended back at the Ron­cal­li­platz with a clo­sing pro­cla­ma­tion, top­ping off an all­to­ge­ther peace­ful demonstration.

Par­ti­ci­pa­ting groups inclu­ded several par­ties (Linke, Grüne, Pira­ten­par­tei) as well as grou­pings like the Arbeits­kreis Vor­rats­da­ten­spei­che­rung, the Foe­BuD and the Chaos Com­pu­ter Club Colo­gne. A full list of par­ti­ci­pants can be found on the demons­tra­tion home­page (sorry, only in Ger­man).

I was also at the demo and busied mys­elf with pho­to­graphs.

Monday, March 17th, 2008 Reviews No Comments
  • Shared 2 photos.
  • Enganliegende weiße Leggings machen eklige Beine nicht schöner, junge Dame. [towo]
  • Das Hintergrundgeräusch der Saison: Schniefende Nasen. Sponsored by elendig länger Winter. [towo]
  • Und kann mir mal wer erklären, was "watercolor pens" bzw "watercolor markers" hierzulande sind? [towo]