I have a 19 inch Acer (sm)

• What brand of LCD monitor to buy? sm - tired-eyes MT
  • I have a 19 inch Acer (sm) - Anon
  • I've had a ViewSonic 17" monitor for about three years - Rad MT

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really big, flat doughnut. I have it on a metal filing cabinet on the vertical side - like so I can't accidentally drop a tape on it. I just rub the tape back and forth over that and it's erased.

I'm sure you could buy one somewhere (used to know an MT who used a cow magnet for the same thing) but I got mine from my husband's shop. Have been using it for 12 years.

I have had both types of monitors - now both 17 inches but one is a flat screen and one is not.  They do offer glare screens to put over your monitors to cut down on glare which stress the eyes.  I have no problems and been using a computer monitor doing this MT work since 1990, but been transcribing for much longer than that.

Best of luck! 

I just bought an Acer notebook from Walmart.  Anyone have experience with this they can share?

I know they are not much good for transcribing (too small), but I also go to college and seeing as they only weigh 1 pound, I thought it might be good to have.

Do you think I wasted my money?  Should I have spent the extra $200 and got a real laptop?

A netbook/notebook is made to check email, surf the net, do light transcribing.  It should perform as well as a larger laptop and has a better battery life than a laptop (4-6h compared to 2-2.5h).   You can check Consumer Reports or PC World to find out how well each brand performs.  Acer is a nice unit, plus it has XP.  Buy a full-size laptop and you get Vista.

As far as buying electronics from Wal-Mart, I buy all my PCs, cameras, etc., from there and have never had a problem with any of them.  The PCs are the same as the ones in Staples, BestBuy, etc., just a $100 or more less.  They also offer a service contract like the high-priced stores.  No, I don't work there.

A friend's daughter bought one for college and was never able to connect to the internet.  Unfortunately, she waited past the time to return it before bringing it to me as I would have told her to return it.  We could get her microsoft update to work, but nothing else.  I tried for days to get through to their tech support, which was horrendous. 

First you have to send an email explaining the situation and what you have done to fix it.  They will then email you back with solutions and a number to call if it doesn't work.  You have 7 days from the date of the email to take care of it. I called the number as everything they suggested had either been done or just did not work.  Call was answered by someone in India of course, who could not fix the problem and needed to escalate the service.  You then get transferred.  Once transferred, the system automatically hangs up after 27 minutes.  I was never able to get through to anyone no matter what I did.  I called daily, several different times of the day, explaining that I was being disconnected, etc, to no avail.

She is going to take it to a computer repair shop locally to see if anything can be done, but after paying $500 for a laptop, why should she be paying for service on a new machine? 

My son was just telling me last week that he was thinking of a laptop for college and mentioned the Acer and I told him to stay far away from it explaining what happened to our friend.  I personally have had a Toshiba for almost 8 years (the same one!) and just love it.  I am getting ready to buy a new one and will definitely choose Toshiba again.

It's been well over a year now...  Towers are a different story, but I've had pretty good luck with e-machines from Best Buy.