[lug] external monitor question

[Davide Del Vento]

Hi,
I'm trying to connect a Dell 19" monitor (bought in the USA) to an old
Dell inspiron 6400 Laptop (bought in Europe) with a VGA (analog)
cable. This is under Ubuntu 10.04
The laptop correctly sees the monitor and identify 1280x1024 as the
best setting, but on that setting the monitor display the image with
"waves" on the vertical axis. The monitor diagnostic also says that
this mode is a 58Hz or 59Hz signal (it does not always say the same).
The laptop thinks it's 60Hz.

Playing with gtf and xrandr, I can modify the frequency (and maybe
even the intensity) of the waves from "very annoying" to "disturbing"
to "cool" to even "funny". But it never goes away (I haven't tried all
possibilities yet, though). On some modes (e.g. 63Hz) the monitor says
"Cannot display this video mode" which is strange since it can display
the 62 and 64Hz (by the way, the 64Hz are 64Hz for both the laptop and
the monitor).

The question: do you think this is hopeless and I should give up
(given the 60hz vs 50Hz of the power line in Europe vs USA), or do you
think that I should eventually be able to find a non "waving" mode?
Ah, I also tried on laptop battery instead of power brick, FWIW.

Thanks,
Davide