Thanks…….for nothing, Dell

In preparation for the arrival of Windows 10 in July, I dropped $1,050 on two touch monitors for my home and office desktop PCs. A comfortable 23” for home and a beautiful 27” for the office, where I spend 9-10 hours a day staring at the screen (and hopefully getting some work done). The first few days I had the monitors, pre-Win10, everything worked nicely. But since the upgrade to Windows 10, both monitors generally will not wake up after going to sleep.

The home monitor, which Dell was nice enough to push out a Windows 10 Driver Update for on 8/27/15, will occasionally wake up in the morning after sleeping overnight. But half the time, the only way to wake the monitor is to unplug and then plug back in. The office monitor, which has not had a driver update since Dec 2013, is a different story. Every morning, I have to crawl under my desk, unplug the power cord and plug back in. Note that when either of the monitors are in this state, the buttons on the side of the monitors, menu, power, etc. don’t do anything. So a plug pull is the only way to get things working again. Also note that Windows 10 is always fully awake and ready to serve when the monitor is revived. So this is a monitor problem. Period.

Several people have chimed in with the same problem in the Dell Forums, so I am not an anecdote. This is real. Forum moderators have replied with lame suggestions like trying to updating a generic Windows video driver, which doesn’t exist on either of my machines. I’m using ASUS desktops with both of these monitors, but other forum members are using multiple different machines, a few using Surface Pro 3s, which I would assume have pretty updated drivers. I should also note that three 11 year old Compaqs here at the office, that I have upgraded to Windows 10, have 9 year old Dell 17” monitors connected to them and they wake up just fine, even after a long weekend. So, this is Dell problem. No excuses.

Realizing that Dell will “never” address this issue, despite my spending more than $1,000 on two otherwise nice monitors, I decided to take matters into my own hands today and installed a wireless remote control switch, so I no longer have to crawl under the desk every morning, often whacking my head on the way back up. A power off/power on does the trick.

Hopefully these monitors will outlast their warranties by a longshot. But when it’s time to replace, I will be looking elsewhere. This was my first Dell product purchase in 24 years. I can assure you, it will be my last. As soon as Microsoft starts selling their own desktops and monitors, I’ll be able to rid myself of these disinterested OEMs. I can’t wait.