Don, Dr,
I think I now understand a potential reason why we are seeing so many newbies not soldering
their connections to the LCD.
It is the Arduino Tutorial:
Nowhere in there does it ever mention needing to solder the connections
to the LCD module.
It shows them soldered in the photo, but it never says it in the text/instructions.
In fact it doesn't even list solder in the h/w requirements.
Ignoring the obvious typo of "LED" vs "LCD" this is really the only instructions:
To wire your LED screen to your Arduino, connect the following pins
And then a fritzing diagram below.
So the issue is that users can follow the tutorial to the letter and have everything
"wired" correctly and end up with a non working or even semi working LCD because the tutorial fails
to mention the requirement of soldering the connections to the LCD.
Unfortunately trying to get the Arduino team to change anything is worse
than pulling teeth. But clearly this needs to get updated.
I opened issues
http://code.google.com/p/arduino/issues/detail?id=1116
Note: It appears that github is now being used for issues but I wen't ahead
and put it on the google code page as well.
--- bill