A few words about ViewSonic

I have a ViewSonic VP2365wb, and it's just about a year old. I recently had an experience with Viewsonic (the company) and thought I'd share it. This post will also answer a question that kitacanon asked in a previous thread.

First, I love the monitor. My only complaint is that it sits a little high off the desk. Other than that, it's great. Just about every online review rates it at 4-5 stars, and I agree.

But:
One of the features of the monitor is that you can pivot the screen into portrait position, which makes editing portrait-oriented photos much easier. However, when you pivot the monitor, you need software to orient your screen data also so that it's also in portrait orientation; otherwise, everything's sideways on the screen. Viewsonic sells this monitor with software called Perfectsuite plus; this is what pivots the software when you pivot the monitor. Perfectsuite plus does not work with Windows 7. (This I found out when I upgraded to Win 7 from XP.) I contacted the company that makes perfectsuite and was informed that perfectsuite will not be upgraded to work with Win 7.

So I contacted Viewsonic, and what an ordeal! (The support people are definitely not native English speakers.) They tried to get me to download perfectsuite again, which I had already informed them doesn't work, they had me send them more personal info than the IRS requires, and finally, after a few more back-and-forth emails , I was finally advised that they were going to "escalate" my complaint and I would hear back with 48 hours. After a week and no word, I contacted them again, sending copies of our previous emails regarding their VP2365wb monitor, and reminded them that it had been over "48 hours." I received a reply that "our gtablet support is available is during business hours." (Yeah, that "is" word is really in there twice.)

Should I care about their gtablet support when I'm writing them about a monitor? If I wrote to them after hours, shouldn't they just write back during business hours? Well, this was the last I heard from them about that and after so many attempts I just didn't have it in me to try again. I did try writing to their business office, thinking they might care that they're selling their monitor with obsolete software. My mistake.

So, the monitor's great. Support... not so much!

To kitacanon and anyone else who might want to use the pivot feature, Win 7 does have a native pivot feature built in, if you don't mind about 10 mouse clicks to make it work. I do mind, so I found something called irotate, a tiny little free program that seems to work great.

So this is for potential Viewsonic customers. YMMV, but mine sucks.

Thank you for sharing....I'd forgotten all about this issue...my solution:

I don't use the PerfectSuite Plus....

ATI software that comes with the video card, Catalyst Control Center configured for Win7, works just fine for me and should for everybody (that is everybody with CCC )

Go to CCC / Desktop Properties and look for Rotation in the bottom window option....

EDIT:
I just remembered that my other PC attached to this monitor is nVidia driven...once Win XP recognized VP2365wb, nVidia has the rotation option built in the software link pinned to the taskbar icon...

I'm another CCC user and the feature works great and will work on any monitor.

Support for every electronic item and service I own has been a nightmare....the problem being that most techies are not prepared to deal with all the problems and refuse to bump you up to someone who does...it's as if that is a policy and a mark against them, jeopardizing their employ...

HP tech support lost/lied about my initial in-warranty support request when I asked for continued support for an unresolved issue after the warranty period, telling me that I would have to pay for continued service or they wouldn't even talk to me.....issue only resolved by corportate...
and this weekend it took 6 calls/transfers ("...this is Peggy...") to resolve incorrect AT&T billing problems that began back in April...

Well, I should give credit to the two times warranty support was honored without any pain...TigerDirect replaced a shipment-broken PC...and VIEWSONIC did replace this monitor when I sent them a photo of the display with what I though was excessive light leak...they agreed and sent me a new replacement refurb.

I'm glad to know viewsonic support isn't a lost cause, though it certainly was worthless in my case.
I have an nvidia graphics card and it's true that it will rotate the display, but I don't like how long it takes to bring up the nvidia control panel. Add that to the number of clicks, and it's much longer than using irotate. The only time I use the pivot feature is in PS elements, and I like to go back and forth between portrait and landscape, so a little bit of time spent repeatedly adds up.
ALSO... In XP, with perfectsuite plus running in the background, all I had to do was pivot the monitor, and the contents pivoted automatically. No clicks, no waiting. So you see, I got spoiled.:p

What happened to hot keys? nobody has hotkeys for this.

[QUOTE=ncjohn;13202004​]I'm glad to know viewsonic support isn't a lost cause, though it certainly was worthless in my case.
I have an nvidia graphics card and it's true that it will rotate the display, but I don't like how long it takes to bring up the nvidia control panel. Add that to the number of clicks, and it's much longer than using irotate. [QUOTE]

On my xp machine the nVidia icon pinned to the taskbar has a 1-click menu option for 90° (and 0° to get back to landscape)...

yeah, that's the way irotate works; it's real easy. But my invidia control panel doesn't put an icon in the task bar, so it's more click-intensive to use. Sounds like your current CCC doesn't put one there either?