I recently purchased a refurbished Samsung monitor. it came without
a manual, which I in turn downloaded, but read that I also need a CD to
complete installation? I have it up and running on my PC, so do I in
fact need the CD?
This is one of those things that, in all honesty, frustrates me from
time to time. Many hardware vendors have taken to including CDs with
their equipment that is supposedly required prior to attaching the
hardware.
The problem is that sometimes it’s not.
And sometimes it is.
So how’s the average user supposed to know the difference?
]]>
<
The one case I’ve seen for installing software for a monitor fell into your second case, using it in new ways. This monitor could be rotated from the traditional landscape orientation into portrait orientation. The monitor-supplied software received a signal from the monitor indicating the current orientation, and told Windows about the new geometry/orientation.
Some monitor installation disks contain only the user manual in either the pdf or html form. Doesn’t hurt to peek at the disk to see what’s there.
I NEVER (almost) install the cd. If I need the device drivers, I’ll download them. Invariably, the driver version available on-line is a number of revisions later than the one on CD.
Another reason to install is sometimes the monitor has its own color tables or other features (which you mentioned). Thus installing will make it somewhat better than the defaul Windows monitor.
Although I generally agree that monitors don’t require driver installation from CD’s, Samsung (the particular manufacturer mentioned in the article) did send a driver CD with their early flat-screen monitors! While the Samsung would function (and be identified) as a standard plug-and-play monitor by the Windows OS without installing the driver from CD, after CD-based driver installation the monitor would correctly be identified by its model number in Device Manager. I suspect that the CD installation had something to do with resolution modes and color table settings not generally available through Windows. In any case, for the Samsung monitor that I owned, updates to the driver on CD even came through Windows update on occasion!
The CDs that came with my LCD monitors were the Vista drivers only. I don’t use Vista, so I didn’t worry about it. I can see where the older, refurbished LCD monitors may need a CD for the proper drivers. Not much different than using an older graphics card or sound card.
One point to make, in my experience older cards frequently need the ‘older’ drivers to work properly. The newest and latest drivers do not necessarily work on older components. This can really be a problem when trying to ‘repair’ an older PC. Many will say, just get a new PC, but, for those who can’t afford it and their PC just needs to be tweaked or cleaned out with minor corrections, getting the drivers and everything else, up to snuff, is the best way to go.
Regardless which computer hardware I buy. I find CDs that come with the package are useless 99% of the times. I just hope on to the vendor’s website and get the latest version.
It’s not always necessary, but I usually use the CD anyway for newer drivers than XPs, or features supported by the monitor.
I have often faced this issue & it turned out that the VGA display drivers used by the Operating System were the default ones which are not good at all. Well that was the time of Windows 98 & Windows XP before SP2 was introduced. Quite often, the VGA port is part of the motherboard, & the motherboard Drivers CD includes Graphics Drivers.
Ravi.
I just use the CD’s as frisbees, fly pretty far too!
Glad to read these comments; I was worried that after plugging in a new HP monitor, nothing prompted me to install the included CD software. You’re right – it worked fine without.