Gateway FPD2185W 21" LCD Monitor

Great Monitor for the Money

Posted Feb 16, 2006 - monitor looks and works great in landscape mode. having probelms with or should i say the lack of drivers. the cd it came with has some issues with my 64 bit processor. once i work out this little kink (cant seem to get it to go into portrait mode when i rotate 90 degrees) sorted out, it is well worth the money. prior to this i was using a 26" which was way too big and a 19 " lcd was too small. i would say that the 21" widescreen is the perfect size lcd.

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FPD2185W 21 - UPDATE

Posted Mar 27, 2008 - Total piece of crap!!! Worked for one year with various problems at the end where you turn it off it won't go off - OR it won't come back on - you have to unplug it first and then one night it just died. I have seen many others with this same monitor and the same problems with the system that mine started out with Purchased 7/15/06 - Died 11/03/07 was totally protected from anything bad but died anyway. Gateway says "TOO BAD - have it repaired at your cost" Best Buy says it is not worth the cost of the repair as the circuit board is fried. I will NEVER waste my money on a Gateway product again. UPDATE!!!!!! I reported them to the BBB earlier this year. Got a phone call from Gateway the very next day and a new monitor with in a few days of that BBB report. It is the same model so I don't expect much from it but at least it is a better than nothing for the money I spent on the original. GATEWAY - Pay $450.00 for a monitor that lasts 15 months I have a whole page of what I went thru with Gateway on my website. witchywoman333.com

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Loud and whiney power supply.

Posted May 23, 2006 - Sadly I cannot recommend anyone getting this monitor because of the eletrical whine. I have a TV, computer and window open in the room with the monitor and I can still hear the whine. It is a beautiful monitor for the hearing impaired.

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I am very happy

Posted Feb 19, 2006 - Got lucky another store had a $50 rebate bestbuy matched it so I got it for $549.99 on the spot. To get the full effect You need a up to date videocard and 2gigs of good memory where you can set the card all on high it looks sweet!!! AMD FX57 nvidia 6800ultra 2gigs xms corsair

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Gateway FPD2185W 21

Posted Feb 15, 2006 - I put a few things down for the “weakness”, but don't be misled by these comments. Great monitor good price!! I am thinking about getting a second monitor and running a dual set-up for games. Yeah, I’m compensating. Running 3800 AMD 64, 1G Ram, GeForce 7800 GT OC, XP MC.

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FPD2185W 21

Posted Feb 15, 2006 - I have only had the monitor for five days.The set up of the monitor connecting power plug and DVI cable and USB cable took about 4 min.Some reviews complain that the connections are hard to get to, but it seemed easy enough. The software for color adjustment and rotation installed very easily . It has a very vivid Picture with sharp color. Its the best looking one that I have seen. I was using a NEC Multisync 1860NX and the Gateway has so much nicer color! The software for when you rotate the monitor is automatic and works great .To use the Picture in picture you have to have a second video input . I use a DVD player. Its a nice feature but one I'll use very little. The USB ports are nice for hooking up a camera or photos. If you find this monitor on sale I don't think you can go wrong. Remember other monitors are cheaper but there not HDCP 480i, 480p , 720p , and 1080i. This means a lot if you have a HD video card. For a little more money it is well worth it!!

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Definitely worth buying for the price!

Posted Feb 12, 2006 - I bought this LCD to replace my Dell 1905FP. This LCD has a large screen with fast response time, which is great for gaming. I am really impressed with the superb image quality. The colors are brilliant, and has the "wow" factor. The only complaint I really have about the LCD is that in the gaming mode, the black part is not really "black." I played with the settings, but the LCD just won't turn in darker than it supposed to be in games. But with the affordable price, I guess I can't complain much. Word of advice, when you're making the purchase, make sure to buy a DVI cable with it. I thought the LCD would come with a DVI cable but it didn't. Overall, this is a great quality LCD w/ an attractive price. I definitely recommend this LCD for others as long as the gamers can get over the only complaint I have about the monitor.

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Gateway FPD2185W 21" LCD Monitor

Posted Feb 9, 2006 - I use it mostly to watch tv or dvd while working on computer application with the picture in picture feature. Text is crisp and vivid. With the 1680 x 1050 pixel display, you get 35% more pixels compared to a 1280 x 1024 display. Display two letter-sized documents side-by-side, expand a large spreadsheet or even watch a movie in widescreen format with the super size screen. You can go from widescreen landscape view to portrait view, with EZtuner software and its autosensing display rotation, the image automatically rotates for you from 21" widescreen to 21" longscreen. Built-in powered four-port USB hub so you can connect your keyboard and mouse in 2 ports and other peripheral devices in the other two.

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VERY nice LCD

Posted Feb 1, 2006 - I upgraded from a dell 17" and the have been greatly pleased by the difference. There are plenty of adjustments on this screen so you can adjust it almost any way you like and view the screen at any angle. The screen isnt too bright and is great for gaming especially for FSP. I do see some backlight bleeding but only during bootup when the windows blue screen appears, but I cant see it at any other time. Overall though this was a great purchase.

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very well built monitor

Posted Nov 2, 2007 - This monitor served me well. Graphic design, video gaming, movie watching - it was all a delight. It has great features, ease of use and i really didn't see anything that would make me want to purchase any other monitor. Sadly after about a year you see the drop in picture quality and start noticing subtle burn ins from the lamp, but nothing lasts forever anyway. It is still great LCD monitor. By the way, keep an eye out for Sony's new OLED screens - an amazing technological advance in science. Its cheap to make / paper thin & bendable / million to one contrast ratio / true to life colors etc... will be available soon :)

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Great product-- horrible support.

Posted May 1, 2007 - I own two of these monitors, and overall, I was extremely pleased with their performance until this evening. Gateway's tecinical support is HORRENDOUS. Both monitors are less than 8 months old, and cost me about $1,200 for the pair. Being relatively new and expensive, I would expect them to be accompanied by technical support befitting their age and price. Not the case. Basically, the left monitor in my dual configuration went dead. And I *knew* it was the DVI connection. I knew this because I troubleshooted every other possible cause-- I reinstalled my video drivers, I went through all the "add hardware" steps, I swapped cables, I ran composite video into the faulty monitor and it worked, I connected it to a VGA cable, and it worked. Everything worked, except the DVI connection. I explained this to the Gateway support people three times on three calls, and they kept insisting it was my computer, and not the monitor. (I have the monitors hooked up to a Dell Precuision 690 workstation.) Finally, I had to have a tech support guy at Dell call Gateway with me on the line, and prove that the issue was with the monitor hardware, and not my videocard, my cables, or my computer. It was asinine. It was bad enough that Gateway tried to immediately dismiss even the possibility of some accountability on their part, but to essentially call me a liar, and force me to call on their competitor to produce evidence of their mistake was just ridiculous. After all that, Gateway agreed to ship me a new monitor this week. But only after several hours, three phonecalls, and finally a little pressure from Dell. (Who, incidentally, has phenomenal support for their workstations.) That being said, I genuinely love the monitors themselves... I was just really disappointed that Gateway was so adamant about pawning off their manufacturing flaw. Given these monitors are mass-produced, I wouldn't have held anything against them for selling me a monitor with a faulty DVI connection-- it's bound to happen in a mass-produced product like that. I just thought it was inexcusably lame for them to shirk their responsibilty to a customer so vehemently. They treated me like a shifty con-artist, rather than a valued customer with a legitimate grevience. And that's a crappy way to run a company. Next time, I'll buy the monitors from Dell too, lower contrast-ratios and all. Because at least I'll know they'll stand by them if something goes wrong.

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pretty good

Posted Aug 15, 2006 - probably the best 21" widescreen monitor out there, but that's not saying much ...since there are only a handful of others. the picture is fine, the features are great, but it's not perfect: if you want to see the best image quality, you have view it at an angle. most people don't even notice this. the power supply is a little noisy. menu navigation is tedious, and the scaling options aren't as good as they could be. despite all of this, the monitor is probably still worth the money.

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Gateway FPD2185W

Posted Feb 8, 2006 - I am a Computer Product Expert at Future Shop and I have had alot of customer success with this monitor. It is a great idea if you want to convert your computer also into a television for a fraction of the cost compared to a home theatre tv. The resolutaion is 1000:1 which is great for gamers or video editing. The monitor also has extra USB 2.0 plug ins as a bonus!

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Best Monitor I've Ever Owned.

Posted Mar 17, 2006 - I'd been looking to get a widescreen monitor that could also function as an HD screen for my XBOX 360 as well, and I found everything I was looking for and then some in this monitor. The FPD2185W is huge at 21" for a PC monitor, and it also's a very respectable screen for console gaming and even HDTV viewing in a bedroom/dorm room. It's a great solution for dorming college students; I have my PC hooked up through DVI, my 360 through the component (which is unfortunately a bit dark), and my PS2 through S-Video (which doesn't look as bad as in comparable high-res monitors with S-Video thanks to the Faroujda DCDi technology in the monitor). You can even run the coaxial cable to a VCR, then run a yellow composite cable from the VCR to the monitor to watch regular cable television on it. To top it all off, this thing has HDCP, future-proofing it for whenever they're going to implement that encryption stuff into Microsoft Windows Vista and other things. There are a few issues. People have reported X-patterned backlight bleeding when viewing a completely black screen in a dark room, which is a minor issue for most, but it's still there if you care about such things. My particular model has almost none of that problem - you really have to know about the issue to see a trace of it. Then there are reports of buzzing noises coming from the back of the monitor from the power supply. I didn't have this issue either, but this apparently is an issue for some. Finally, avoid the included EZTune software like the plague. It does very little and just causes more headaches than it's worth.

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FPD2185W 21" LCD Monitor

Posted Jan 26, 2006 - This monitor was just what I wanted after loads of research before making this purchase. The monitor had no ghosting for games and the details were excellent. However the movies didn't come out as I expected because it was a bit darker than I thought it would be. Maybe after getting a DVI cable this will help improve the quality. Overall this monitor is great for regular use, gaming, and some movie playing. One cool thing about the monitor is the capability to rotate it to portrait mode. For the ppl who are buying LCD monitors for the first time, I would recommend this product for its quality and a great bank for the buck.

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