andy2709,

Dell got rid of paper manuals awhile back. I will send to engineering your thoughts on our current manuals. But, all of our recent monitors use the same format.

Since turning Aero off fixed the issue, this shows that the culprit is either the video card driver or the video card, not the monitor. You should ask about that issue here.

The tag you provided is incorrect. 6s and Gs look similar. I will send you the correct tag in an email. That monitor was originally sold to a buyer in North York, Ontario.

Hi Chris,

Thank you for your reply. My concern is not that the manual is electronic. I'm all for saving trees. The thing is, the manual is supposed to provide information to customers. The manual's explanation that setting helps to adjust the value of the setting is not helpful at all. Any person who ever in his life used any electronics understands that. The question is "how that particular setting does affects my user experience?" Imagine if all your car manual told you about your shifter was that "it shifts transmissions" and nothing more, not a word what's the difference between "P" and "D", not a word about towing your car at “N”, etc. How would you rate that manual? What's the purpose of producing it? Here the thing is even worse. Most people have to learn what the transmission is in the driving school. Nobody learns what the Pixel Clock is before buying the monitor. If it's something that's exposed to customer in the menu, it's worth to explain what it is. Especially in the case, where auto-configuration may (and did) configure the setting incorrectly, which results in a bad picture.

Next onto the service tag. Here's the picture: http://www.flickr.com/photos/38023908@N03/?saved=1

Though font and location picked by Dell certainly help customers (in this particular case, not always) to misread the tag, it looks that there's a big difference between "G" in the service tag and "6" in the SVC code. As it looks to me, somebody at Dell misread the tag somewhere in the process and the wrong tag was printed on the monitor. This happens, but trying to blame the customer in this case is kind of irrational. Please, clarify.

Next onto Ontario. Here's the link that I used to buy the monitor: http://www.amazon.com/Dell-2709W-27-Inch-Widescreen-Monitor/dp/B001TH7FB0/  It was shipped from Kentucky (I know that by tracking number). I can certainly call Amazon to clarify, but it doesn't look like this particular monitor has anything to do with Canada.

Last, but not least, the fact, that when I turned off Aero the issue disappeared, does not necessarily mean that the issue is in the graphics card. Maybe there's a particular color that produces this particular effect when displayed on this particular monitor with my particular monitor's setting. This may have nothing to do with either Aero or a graphics card. By turning Aero off I might have just removed that color from the screen (as there are no more fancy gradients on the screen). I'm not saying that my hypothesis is 100% true, or that your _hypothesis_ is wrong, all I'm saying is that the _reasoning_ you provided is obviously flawed. 

The issue may be caused by something like this: http://www.amazon.com/review/R9V5ZEWQSW3VU/ref=cm_cr_pr_viewpnt#R9V5ZEWQSW3VU

Please, clarify whether 2709W uses "dithering" (FRC) and whether this could be a source of the problem I described.

Well, things just got worse:emotion-6::emotion-6::emotion-6:

On a careful examination, this is unrelated to Aero or windows borders. Aero is turned off and if I get really close to the monitor I can see the same dancing red pixels on the black letters of this message as I'm typing it.

This looks very much like the problem described by a user of a different monitor here: http://www.amazon.com/review/R9V5ZEWQSW3VU/ref=cm_cr_pr_viewpnt#R9V5ZEWQSW3VU

 Dell, 

Please, clarify. Is it the same problem as described in the link above? Is it by design? If not, what are the steps to debug/fix the problem?

Thank you for your reply. My concern is not that the manual is electronic. I'm all for saving trees. The thing is, the manual is supposed to provide information to customers. The manual's explanation that setting helps to adjust the value of the setting is not helpful at all. Any person who ever in his life used any electronics understands that. The question is "how that particular setting does affects my user experience?" Imagine if all your car manual told you about your shifter was that "it shifts transmissions" and nothing more, not a word what's the difference between "P" and "D", not a word about towing your car at “N”, etc. How would you rate that manual? What's the purpose of producing it? Here the thing is even worse. Most people have to learn what the transmission is in the driving school. Nobody learns what the Pixel Clock is before buying the monitor. If it's something that's exposed to customer in the menu, it's worth to explain what it is. Especially in the case, where auto-configuration may (and did) configure the setting incorrectly, which results in a bad picture.
* No comment.

Next onto the service tag. Here's the picture: http://www.flickr.com/photos/38023908@N03/?saved=1 Though font and location picked by Dell certainly help customers (in this particular case, not always) to misread the tag, it looks that there's a big difference between "G" in the service tag and "6" in the SVC code. As it looks to me, somebody at Dell misread the tag somewhere in the process and the wrong tag was printed on the monitor. This happens, but trying to blame the customer in this case is kind of irrational. Please, clarify.
* In my 12 years at Dell Technical Support, 99.99% of the time, the service tag is misread by the customer. 6s and Gs, 8s and 3s, all fuzzy on the tag. In your case, tag GPC8RF1 doesn't exist in any Americas or Euro Dell database. Tag 6PC8RF1 does show in the Americas database as a 2709W monitor. That would be the tag that I would try to match to your account using this link:
http://support.dell.com/support/topics/global.aspx/support/change_order/en/tag_transfer_retail?c=us&l=en&retail=amz&s=gen

Next onto Ontario. Here's the link that I used to buy the monitor: http://www.amazon.com/Dell-2709W-27-Inch-Widescreen-Monitor/dp/B001TH7FB0/  It was shipped from Kentucky (I know that by tracking number). I can certainly call Amazon to clarify, but it doesn't look like this particular monitor has anything to do with Canada.
* All of those resellers buy product from us worldwide and ship it to there other locations. I have seen monitors purchased from Dell UK end up in USA CostCos.

Last, but not least, the fact, that when I turned off Aero the issue disappeared, does not necessarily mean that the issue is in the graphics card. Maybe there's a particular color that produces this particular effect when displayed on this particular monitor with my particular monitor's setting. This may have nothing to do with either Aero or a graphics card. By turning Aero off I might have just removed that color from the screen (as there are no more fancy gradients on the screen). I'm not saying that my hypothesis is 100% true, or that your _hypothesis_ is wrong, all I'm saying is that the _reasoning_ you provided is obviously flawed.
* Fine.

The issue may be caused by something like this: http://www.amazon.com/review/R9V5ZEWQSW3VU/ref=cm_cr_pr_viewpnt#R9V5ZEWQSW3VU
Please, clarify whether 2709W uses "dithering" (FRC) and whether this could be a source of the problem I described.
* It uses 8bit + FRC.
* Doubtful.

Thanks for honest answer. It's a pity to hear that the advertised "TrueColor" of this monitor is only 8bits.

Regarding the service tag: please, see http://www.flickr.com/photos/38023908@N03/?saved=1 Do you read the first letter in the service tag ason that picture as 6?

Regarding the issue: if it uses 8 bit and flickers to emulate 32 bits, then it's not clear to me why you think that it's doubtful that this might be the exact reason of flickering. So far it's the only explanation that we have. If there's other explanation, let me know. I would much rather tweak the settings, than restart my quest for a nice big monitor.

As a side note, I have done two tests to verify the issue:

1) I pulled out my ViewSonic and did a comparison. ViewSonic does not have flickering pixels, in Dell's monitor I can see flickering pixels in the black letters of this message that I type (and in other places as well). 

2) I asked another person to check, she was also able to see the flickering in my Dell 2709.

Get it replaced and see if the replacement has the same issue.

Will ask engineering to run your test.

Two things -

Test with Microsoft ClearType on, then off.

Test on another PC.

The monitor was shipped back yesterday.

By the way, does Dell sell a 27" (+- 3") monitor where the color is "true" 32/64 bit, or are they all 8bit+FRC?

2709W true 10bit 1.07 billion colors. All others 8bit or 6bit + 2bit dithering 16.7 million colors.

Did you test both VGA and DVI? On the replacement, check the following -
VGA with ClearType On
VGA with ClearType Off
DVI with ClearType On
DVI with ClearType Off

True 10 bit in computer science is true 1024, which is somewhat 1 million time less than 1.07 billion. Could you clarify "true 10 bit 1.07 billion colors"? I don't know how this works as the manual and technical specs are non-communicado on this. It would also be helpful to know if _all_ manufacturers use the same "truth scale", of if some are more true than others. Do you have any competitive data and benchmarks?

DVI might be a good test.

As of ClearType, I don't think it would be a useful test. As I mentioned, the flickering was not only in the font, it was also in windows frames, and in many other places. It was pretty much in any place where you had a gradient. For example, scissors icon in the Rich Text Editor of this forum had flickering. The gradients had some colors that the monitor was not capable of displaying correctly.

Thanks, that's insightful.

I've already returned it to Amazon, so there's no way for me to check the series or do the replacement through Technical Support.

As I'm considering purchasing it again (since the issue seems to noticed and fixed), please, also clarify:

You said that 2709W uses FRC, and at the same time you said that it has true 10 bit per color (resulting in 1 billion true colors). Why does it need FRC then? I'm getting confused here. As far as I understand FRC is used by cheap monitors to compensate the fact that they have less colors:

"TN displays suffer from limited viewing angles, especially in the vertical direction. Also, TN panels represent colors using only 6 bits per color, instead of 8, and thus are not able to display the 16.7 million color shades (24-bit truecolor) that are available from modern graphics cards. Instead, these panels display interpolated 24-bit color using a dithering method that combines adjacent pixels to simulate the desired shade. They can also use Frame Rate Control (FRC), which cycles pixels on and off to simulate a given shade. These color simulation methods are noticeable to many people and bothersome to some." (from Wikipedia)

Please, clarify. 

The 2709W A00 had the flickering issue. The 2709W A01 corrected this. Please check your monitors for the revision number. If you have A00, get it replaced through Technical Support. If you have A01, I need the following in a private conversation -

Name:
Email Address:
Shipping address:
Phone number:
Monitor Order number or PC Service Tag number if purchased with a PC:
Monitor 20 digit PPID Serial number found on the back on a label or on the slider card on the left rear:
Reason: 2709W A01 Flicker