Not a full-sad, but bummer enough, to be worthy of this thread:
Not too long since I upgraded my computer, it seems my monitor decided to jump on the bandwagon, and burn out on me (smelled the blue smoke and everything, and the monitor crapped-out midway through Spacechem). Fortunately, a co-worker provided me a monitor they no longer needed a week or so ago, and was in reserve, so at least I was able to recover; but still. What bullcrap. I even had it dusted out recently too. Trying to pry it open now to find the problem, and see if it can even be salvaged.
On the plus side, my monitor resolution has increased (from 1280x1024 to 1600x1200, but still the same 19" display), despite going from an LCD screen to a classic CRT screen (from a flat screen to a block). Not exactly friendly on the desk space, but I can manage. At least I can use sharper graphics settings with the new resolutions. So, it's not all-bad, but still bullcrap, no less.
EDIT:
Funny enough, comparing the quality/smoothness of rendering, it seems the replacement is actually out-performing the old one. Or, at least, it's visibly showing less effort when it comes to keeping up with the framerates. DD's avatar is oddly a good comparison point (flickering isn't even visible anymore). Wasn't moving nearly as smoothly on the old screen.
EDIT EDIT:
Opened it up, and nothing's blown out, no fried capacitors, nothing's melted, and no bad wires. But I did see some burn marks on the inside panel where the heatsinks are, in the shapes of the heatsinks.Besides that, I don't see anything really off about the whole setup. As far as I can figure, the monitor hit it's life expectancy. No real surprise, seeing as the monitor's older than even the older machine I recently replaced (which was already 10 years old). So I thin I had that monitor for about 13-odd years overall. It was due for replacement anyway, but I thought I would have a little more time before it would give up the ghost.