I bought a 15" e-Machines LCD monitor for my pc 2 years ago. Now it's pretty much a paperweight. Everytime I turn it on, it's brightness slowly fades for about 3 or 4 seconds and the screen goes black. I took it to a repair shop and they said LCD monitors have a very short life regardless of brand name. Is this true? If it is, does it help to set the screensaver settings to automatically turn it off the monitor when not in use?

I never leave my monitor working more than 10 minutes when I am not around. It always switches off. When I go to sleep I always hypernate the computer and the monitor switches off with it. So I use my LCD as less as possible. What I would suggest to do is that eMachines monitors are not very bright and they are not very good either, so the best bet will be, for the same price, get MAG INNOVISION. It has better picture quality and brightness. It is very reliable, and I have had mine for 3 month now and never had problems. Very good monitor, and look very cool too. Have fun, Killer Lider

Well, LCDs on laptops last much longer - e-machines is still crap. IMHO. Rule #1: Good Computers don't go down. Rule #2: There is no such thing as a good computer.

I think you'd better find a knowledgeable repair shop. LCD monitors do not have a shorter life than crt, in fact they last a lot longer because there is no weakening of the electron guns that produce the brightness you see on the screen. The light is supplied by a lamp and they don't grow dim, they (the lamp) work or they don't work. Lcd is a panel that acts like millions of shutters that open and close allowing the light to pass thru. They too either work or don't work, no in between. Exception being that some pixels can go bad and cause a spot on the screen. To say that e-machines is junk maybe true, but they did not build the display panel usually some major company (ie: LG, Samsung,Philips,Matsus---a(Panasonic))I have 2 Gateways with lcd 1 made by LG and the other by Samsung and they have run all day long for over 4 years. I know this doesn't solve your problem but was meant as a bit of info. Being in the TV business for 27 years your symptom is like when a crt loses filament voltage the pic fades to black. You could be losing the connection to the lamp. Good luck with your problem. Bluejay

Yeah, it's probably the backlight that needs replacing. Try another repair shop.

Thanks for all the info, appreciate it. I'm going to put aside the emachines monitor for now. I just bought a 17" Phillips LCD monitor which is hooked up now. 1.8 GHz Intel Pentium 4 1.0 Gb RAM, 40 Gb HD Gigabyte mobo, 350 W PSU Windows XP Pro SP2 Radeon 9550 256 mb AGP8x Sound Blaster Live 5.1 HP CD Writer LG DL DVD Writer