Pueblog USa

Friday, April 01, 2005

Caveat Emptor — ViewSonic

¡Cuidado! Compadres….

Beware, if you are in the market for a projector. I just got ‘stung’ by ViewSonic over one of their projectors.

Seems that their attitude is along the lines of giving you the projector, at $2000, and then selling you the lamps that it goes through like an elephant does peanuts, at $400 each.

We had been looking for a projector for business and pleasure purposes a year or so ago. And we came across the ViewSonic PJ250 which was compact, light weight, powerful, and had very impressive features attached to it. So we bought it.

Now, eighteen months later, after using it less than 50 hours, the lamp blew out.

I talked with their tech support people who said that the lamp was rated for 2000 hours. But they caveated their statement with, “Your experience may vary.” Nice little strategem that. It’s like my gas mileage may vary from their ‘standard’, especially if I actually use the car. If I don’t use the car, the gas will last almost forever, once I fill it up. However, if I use the car and drive it in a manner any reasonably prudent individual would, I would expect to get the sort of mileage the car was rated at. Preferably better. However, if I drive the car, as stated above and instead of getting 28 mpg, I see I’m getting 5 mpg, and the car is acting normally, this is something of a problem.

In the venue of light bulbs, if you buy a light bulb that says it will last for 2000 hours and you only get 50 hours out of it, there is something VERY WRONG here.

It could be a fluke. We’ll give ViewSonic another shot with another lamp. But we’ll be watching this one closely and clocking it’s performance in a log. If IT fails in less than 1600 hours, we’ll tell you ALL about it, so that you and everyone else who pays heed will know that you can’t trust ViewSonic as far as you can throw their owner’s manual.