Does Anyone Really Prefer Glossy Screens? 646
An anonymous reader asked a question that I've been wondering about too: "I live in a small southern European country where natural light abounds. This may sound good, but it is a pain when it comes to using laptops that come with a glossy finish, making it impossible to work unless you are doing it in the dark. To make matters worse, since we are a small market, most manufacturers only offer a subset of their product line, and don't allow you to choose any options available in other countries (like matte screens). Buying abroad is not an option since we have our own very specific keyboard layout. Why are manufacturers doing this? Does anyone really prefer using glossy screens for day-to-day activities?"
Yes (Score:3, Interesting)
Re: (Score:2, Redundant)
Re:Yes (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Yes (Score:5, Funny)
But I love being able to see the hot girl at the table behind me without looking like I'm staring!
Re:Yes (Score:4, Funny)
But I love being able to see the hot girl at the table behind me without looking like I'm staring!
The one you will never have the guts to ask out? Yeah... Keep on looking at the reflection. That's the closest you will ever get to first base.
Re:Yes (Score:5, Funny)
The one you will never have the guts to ask out?
My wife wouldn't like that at all.
Re:Yes (Score:5, Funny)
Then have your wife ask her out.
Re:Yes (Score:4, Informative)
We all know that once the ring goes on the finger, our libido stops cold.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
We all know that once the ring goes on the finger, our libido stops cold.
Our libido?! I take it you're female, then.
Re:Yes (Score:4, Funny)
How to stop the Gulf oil leak?
Lower a wedding band onto the pipe... it'll stop putting out immediately! :D
Re:Yes (Score:4, Funny)
We all know that once the ring goes on the finger, our libido stops cold.
I like the way that in recent years the old "I can't get laid because I can't get a girlfriend" cliche has been joined by "I can't get laid because I'm married"- without any indication of anything having happened inbetween.
:-)
Slashdotters are the carbon dioxide of the sex world- they sublimate directly from the "no girlfriend -> no sex" state to the "married -> no sex" state with no sign of the usual transitional phase (and its accompanying shagging).
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Why assume he's single?....
He was posting here...
Re:Yes (Score:4, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
You do know that seeing hot-girls on your screen has been available since before glossy screens right?
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
I got my first generation Aspire One (with SSD) for travelling, and was regularly annoyed by its
screen that showed me my face clearer than the content under most lighting conditions - until I crushed
it in an impressive bicycle accident.
(At least I assume it was impressive, multiple people came immediately running to look if I was OK.)
Replacing the screen cost about 2/3 of what I paid for the entire mach
I work for an LCD manufacturer (Score:5, Informative)
I work for an LCD manufacturer so let me give you some pointers:
First of all neither of them is best overall. It all depends on what you use it for. It is like having to decide on whether a fork, or a spoon is "best". Forks are great until you are served soup...
The original poster asked for a screen that works in sunny conditions. In that case matte screens are best.
Glossy is best in the dark.
Let me try to explain why.
Assume that you have a screen with 400 cd/m2 brightness and a 400:1 contrast ratio. That means that white shines with 400 cd/m2 and that the backlight bleeds through with 1 cd/m2 when showing black.
What manufacturers will not tell you is that you only get a 400:1 contrast ratio in a completely dark room. This is not the intended use case of the display. It is like buying a car that is advertised to make 1000 miles to the gallon... but only in a downhill.
If the room is even the slightest tiny bit dim your *viewing* contrast ratio will be degraded. The existing ambient light will be reflected from the display surface adding, lets say a mere 1 cd/m2 extra to both the white and black graphics. So now your viewing contrast ratio will be degraded to (white + reflected)/(black + reflected) = (400+1)/(1+1) = 200:1 even in a dimly lit room. When the brightness of the ambient reflected light is in the order of the display brightness itself, then your expensive 400:1 display is degraded to a (400+400)/(1+400) = 2:1 contrast ratio.
Yeah, you may say, that is why I spent a boatload of money to get the TV with the advertised 1,000,000:1 contrast ratio so I am safe... But all the manufacturer needs to do, is to lower the blackness of the display from 1 cd/m2 to 0.0004 cd/m2 so he gets 400/0.0004 = 1000000:1 CR.
But still... when the reflected ambient light reaches 400 cd/m2, your expensive 1000000:1 TV degrades to a measly (400+400)(0.0004+400) = 2:1 CR.
There are only 3 ways to solve the problem
1) Use only in a dark room
2) Use a higher brightness backlight
3) Get rid of the reflected light
(or 4, get a transflective display like the pixel-qi, but at the cost of poor color graphics reproduction)
Solution 1 does not apply to the original poster.
Solution 2 works fine for desktop screens and TVs where you have electrical power available. A high luminosity screen on a laptop will drain your batteries like crazy and will need a fan to cool the display.
Now to solution 3. There are actually 2 kinds of reflection: Specular and diffuse.
To reduce the diffuse reflection you use an AR (Anti Reflection) treatment. That is commonly applied to eyeglasses and binoculars.
To reduce the specular reflection you use an AG (Anti Glare) treatment
A really good quality (and expensive) AR/AG will reflect only 0.5% of the ambient light. Plain glass reflects about 30% I think. So AR/AG is about 60 times better than glass.
So comparing a hypothetical display with a plain glass surface, with a good AR/AG display we get the following calculations:
1) Reference glass display with 400:1 CR that under some hypothetical lighting conditions reflects 400 cd/m2:
CR = (400+400)/(1+400) = 2:1
2) AR/AG display that is 60 times better at avoiding reflections:
CR = (400+400/60)/(1+400/60) = 406.6/7.6 = 53:1
The difference can be seen here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Glossy-Matte-394-S1.png
***The conclusion is simple: To get best results in high ambient light conditions you must buy a matte display.***
The reason why laptop manufacturers use glossy screens is the following.
1) Good Anti Glare screens are more expensive to produce.
2) Anti Glare is a thin film applied to the screen. If you pick an anti glare film up and try to look through it, you will notice that it is hazy. This means that applying an AG/AR will lose you some Distinctness Of Image (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Distinctness_of_image)
This is the reason that manufacturers will claim, in order to justify the choice of glossy screen. Sure it *does
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
A couple more things that I forgot to mention:
Regarding loss of distinctness of image.
Back in the day, ordinary scotch tape was transparent and glossy, so using tape to glue something to a paper would immediately show in the light. Now we have scotch tape that is matte. Notice how it appears hazy when you try to look through it, but once you apply it to a paper it becomes transparent, with some slight loss of distinctness of image. So although hazy, nobody would argue that it makes text unreadable... The ha
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
I personally can't stand them. Can't sit in front of a window without the glare. Have to close the shades all the time, and if it's hot in the house the shades block the fan from blowing cool air in from outside. Glossy screens are simply a pain, you should have an option of which you want.
Re: (Score:2, Interesting)
3M (Score:5, Informative)
The sun may be shining, but I think that the ask slashdot folks must live in the dark... :-)
These are obvious. http://www.visioncarefilters.com/products_3M.html [visioncarefilters.com]
There are my favourites; the privacy polarized filter. No glare, and the fellow next to you in 12D quits craning his neck to read your Slashdot postings.
Re:3M (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
This leaves the market for "scr
Re:3M (Score:5, Funny)
Re:3M (Score:5, Funny)
The 2010's called, they said fuck you.
(Man this decade is a real asshole already, and it's not even 7 months old yet!)
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Re:3M (Score:4, Informative)
These are obvious. http://www.visioncarefilters.com/products_3M.html [visioncarefilters.com]
If you decide to go this route, remember Google (or the SE of your choice) is your friend.
Took 3 seconds to find a 3M Model PF 17.0, listed on the site above for $104.05 at B&H [bhphotovideo.com] for 56.50.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
The trick is to angle them so that you're not looking directly at them. Take a mirror and place it in the same place that you use your laptop. At the right angle, you're going to blind yourself with the mirror. Tilt the mirror down and all the back light will hit you in the chest.
Once I realized this I had no problems with my glossy MacBookPro and I can't stand going back to matte as it looks like the whole screen is dirty.
It doesn't take much just a few degrees and it only doesn't affect how the screen loo
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
I can't understand this. Every Desktop LCD I've ever used is matte and it doesn't look dirty. Why should this apply to laptops?
Re:Yes (Score:5, Funny)
I think there's a bit of a disconnect between the first and third words here... ;)
Re:Yes (Score:5, Funny)
> No idea if they did something with them to make them less mirrory,
Yes, they've been exposed to The Steve's Reality Distortion Field[1]. The recent iphone 4s clearly have not been exposed long enough and need "booster shots", or The Steve was having an "off day"...
I appear to be immune, as I have a MacBook on my desk and I don't like the glossy screen and their chiclet keyboard (the ctrl key is in the wrong place!). I mostly ssh to it from a Windows 7 machine (horrors! :) ).
[1] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tn-YesqzvNk [youtube.com]
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
I don't like the glossy screen and their chiclet keyboard
This is a chiclet keyboard. [wikipedia.org] The current Apple keyboards certainly do not qualify for that designation.
Re: (Score:2, Interesting)
Totally agree - After comparing the two, I chose glossy, and have never had a reason to go back. My laptop and my desktop both. Also - now that I think of it - my iPad and iPod Touch, both of which are in constant use.
Getting rid of the matte texture on the screen is like having a cleaner monitor, all the time.
I use my laptop in a jeep-style vehicle, lots of windows, no tinting. My desk space has one tall window behind be about two feet and to my left. No problems with reflections, and in fact, the one
Re:Yes (Score:5, Insightful)
Ah, slashdot, the place where people will jump in and start talking about dark rooms when the parent poster specifically talked about being sat in front of a tall window.
Doctor it hurts when I do this! (Score:3, Insightful)
You're fixing the wrong problem.
Instead of switching to a screen that spreads the glare out over a larger percentage of the screen, why not move the screen to a place that isn't in blinding sunlight?
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I prefer them too. They have better colour reproduction, and better contrast and work better in bright lights.
If you take a matte screened laptop outside, the result is perpetual whiteout, as it reflects the sun diffusely all over. You just can't work like that.
If you take a glossy screened laptop outside, yes it reflects the sun as a specular dot, but you can angle the screen in such a way that it doesn't happen. That's not possible with a matte screen – they white out no matter what.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Glossy is actually less accurate with color than matte. Matte is what people get for accurate colors, glossy is what people get for vivid colors.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
That's nonsense. Accuracy is about the dynamic range and color gamut of the pixels. Spooging a matte surface over the screen reduces both. That's why glossy screens are more vivid -- blacks are darker (no reflected diffusion from the surface) and bright colors are brighter (no diffusion on the way to the eye.)
If you want an accurate and optimally capable monitor, then when dynamic range and color gamut are equal, the glossy display will be superior every time.
Biased accuracy tests (Score:3, Interesting)
An image is not accurate no matter how much you shake your stick when you have reflections super imposed on top of the image. It is a bit like you added a completely unrelated 20% visible layer on top of an image in Photoshop. It's the exact opposite of accuracy.
Now, I recently switched to a Matte screen from Glossy. I see no saturation difference with my present LED screen verses the old glossy. Marketing crap is marketing crap and it has to stop.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
> If you want an accurate and optimally capable monitor, then when dynamic range and color gamut are equal,
> the glossy display will be superior every time.
Unless of course, there's any light in the room - in which case the *matte* display will be superior every time due to it's far superior anti-reflective properties over a glossy display.
Re:Yes (Score:4, Informative)
What, pray tell, makes glossy screens "less accurate"? A matte panel is a LCD with a piece of pitted glass in front. A glossy panel is a LCD with a piece of unpitted glass in front. The pitted glass reduces contrast since it tends to scatter light. Other than that, it's all in the calibration.
I suspect this myth came about because glossy screens are often used on consumer PCs which are coincidentally tuned for vivid, unrealistic color. Heck, I just ran across a HP whose graphics drivers came preset for "digital vibrance" that made the screen look like a Leroy Neiman painting.
But claiming that "glossy is less accurate than matte" is about like saying that a frosted glass filter on your camera gives you more accurate pictures.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
With matte screens you can better distinguish pixels and compare one pixel with another. That's why people like them for graphics work. As for colour accuracy all LCDs are limited and will look totally different from film or print. In light of this, many are happy to trade in a little contrast and saturation for the consistency of the image.
Not to mention (Score:5, Informative)
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Is that what the OP meant when he said this:
This may sound good, but it is a pain when it comes to using laptops that come with a glossy finish, making it impossible to work unless you are doing it in the dark.
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Not to mention that its easier to wipe the spunk off.
I'm not sure what I find more entertaining: This comment, or the fact that it's modded +4 informative
didn't ask the right people (was: Re:Yes) (Score:5, Insightful)
if you ask people whether anyone likes guns at an NRA convention, you'll get one result -- if you ask at a pacifist convention, you're likely to get a strongly diverging result...
Many of the slashdot crowd will be people that work with a lot of text (source-codes, DB dumps, shells, ...) - for many of us, the matte screen is the better choice.
On the other hand - for many people primarily using their laptops to access Facebook, consuming multimedia content, ... the more vivid colours of the glossy screen have a higher appeal...
So - for the slashdot crowd, what split between those groups do you expect to find here?
Now look at the general population? I'll bet you, the split will be the other way around... And - for people not using computers quite as much, how much easier do you think it will be to sell them a computer with a 'vibrant'/'vivid' display?
What's right for most of us, may not be the right thing for most people out there...
What I found a bit surprising, though - for a professional photographer friend of mine, matte is the screen of choice as well - for less glossy, but apparently more accurate colour representation...
Re:didn't ask the right people (was: Re:Yes) (Score:5, Insightful)
I think the matte vs. glossy discussion doesn't have any bearing on the vivid vs. drab comparison. I have a 97% gamut matte screen at home. It's incredible for movies - or anything else. My work laptop is somewhere between 70 and 80% gamut, and also matte. It's just not as vivid. I've also seen a number of glossy screens, but they haven't been as vivid as my home monitor.
I think the conflation is caused because newer screens can have higher color gamut, and can be glossy. But the two have little or no relation from everything I've seen. And given the choice, I'll always go with matte.
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
my matte screen at work makes putty look abysmal
I'm confused by this statement. Are you implying there is a type of screen with which PuTTY doesn't look abysmal? (For the record, I love PuTTY. But let's be honest...)
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Re:didn't ask the right people (was: Re:Yes) (Score:4, Interesting)
This is true. I do not have a good glossy screen.
Because they don't make such a thing.
Agreed. The laptop manufacturing world is slowly understanding something that has been well understood in the fine art world for decades.
1. glossy surfaces are horrible because of reflections, but allow the finest details to be visible of the item behind
2. matte surfaces diffuse the reflections and so eliminate that annoyance, but at the price of ultimate available resolution
3. optical anti-reflective coatings on glossy surfaces fix both problems, but are heinously expensive
If you have the funds, you take option 3; otherwise you try and find a good option 2, and if resolution is hyper important and you can't afford the good glass, then you take option 1 and control the lighting.
With laptops, controlling the lighting is not possible for the general case (or is undesirable, because, frankly, who wants to always sit facing the brightest light source in the room?) so option 1 is a poor choice, and thus mostly option 2 has been used up until recently. I'm wating for option 3 -- glossy screens with multi-coated surfaces. I'd gladly pay extra (I do so on my prescription glasses, even sunglasses). If the laptop maufacturers follow the footsteps of so many fields before them (including the fine art world alluded to above), we should see coated screens in a few years, initially with a premium pricetag.
shiny things (Score:3, Insightful)
I like my glossy screens for coding, even in the sunlight I'll happily code on my macbook or take notes on my ipad.
Of course, if you own an iPad, you like shiny things - that's redundant ;-)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
No. You are wrong.
If you were well informed, we could have a discussion on how there are other factors that make more of a difference than the coating on the screen (Anti-reflective (glossy) vs. Anti-glare (matte)). But to say that there are no advantages, and that "some idiot at Apple thought it looked cool) is blisteringly ignorant.
It's simple physics, and if you thought about what's involved in making a screen's coating anti-glare (matte) you'd realize why it *has* to distort the image.
You can read mor
Yes. (Score:5, Informative)
Yes, some of us do. I'm using a 27" iMac right now with one. My MacBook Pro also has a glossy screen. I probably use the combination of these two devices 10 or 12 hours per day, or more. Most of my time is spent indoors when working but I use it outdoors as well. Not a perfect solution but just get an anti-glare cover for the screen. Use that outside and take it off inside.
Re:Yes. (Score:5, Informative)
I prefer my screen without an anti-glare coating outside. All an anti-glare coating does is turns a specular dot into a diffuse white out, the specular dot can be got rid of by angling the screen, the diffuse white out can't.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Get an anti-glare overlay (Score:5, Informative)
I hate glossy (Score:2, Insightful)
Re: (Score:2)
It's also nice to see what's being displayed, not fingerprints or a reflection of your face.
Re: (Score:2)
easier to scratch a plastic matte. I love my glossy Toshiba wide-screen laptop, I keep it clean and there's no scratches though its four years old. care and carefulness with equipment!
It probably depends on where you use them (Score:5, Informative)
I can't stand them, but I actually take my laptop with me all the time and can't always pick where I'm sitting in order to reduce glare. If you're constantly at a desk, and have control over the lighting and other environmental factors, they might be fine, but they generally look crappy to me even in controlled setttings.
Absolutely (Score:5, Interesting)
I specifically ordered the glossy display on my MacBook Pro; the colors are far more vibrant and the screen brighter. I have not had any issues with glare, though I don't take it outside in the direct sunlight and use it in a room with dim lighting.
I much prefer it to the matte screens, that always seem dull and fuzzy to me; I had a previous laptop with a matte screen and I always thought it seemed like it was out of focus.
Re:Absolutely (Score:4, Insightful)
It really sounds like most of the people posting here are comparing apples to oranges -- i.e. comparing two different panels, one that happens to be glossy and one that happens to be matte. Unless you are comparing two identical panels, one with a glossy coating, the other matte, you can't draw any conclusions about which is 'better'. Personally, I have a laptop with a glossy screen and a desktop with matte screens. The laptop screen has a dull and washed out look to it, while the desktop monitors have a crisp and vibrant look to them, but this has nothing to do with the fact that one is glossy and the other matte -- the laptop panel is just rubbish.
I will say that given the choice, I'd always go with a matte panel -- even if it does reduce vibrancy or brightness (of which I am skeptical), I very much value the ability to work in poor lighting conditions without angling the screen. I presume Apple's screens are among the best glossy panels available (you'd hope so for the price...) but I still hate using my girlfriend's macbook pro in a bright environment....
Glossy looks cool in the display line in the store (Score:5, Insightful)
The ten seconds a prospective customer looks at it before the sale is given million times more weight that the several hundred hours the actual customer spends staring at it after the sale.
Glossy screens with polarized glasses are ideal (Score:3, Informative)
Matte actually has an opaque effect when the reflection is bright enough. Oddly enough, the same lighting is not opaque on a glossy screen surface. What's great about glossy is that if you have polarized glasses the reflection can be cancelled out if you're lucky.
What we really need is a pair of untinted, polarized glasses that allow you to rotate the lenses to cancel out the reflections on that glossy screen, much like a polarized filter on a camera lens can do.
Re:Glossy screens with polarized glasses are ideal (Score:5, Interesting)
With my polarized sunglasses on I have to tilt my head at just the right angle to read my car stereo's display or see the screen on my phone. Are there standards for CE LCD polarization or specially polarized glasses intended for this purpose? If not, I'd think there would be some advantage for LCD manufacturers to come up with a common polarization angle so that glasses would work without going through contortions.
Re:Glossy screens with polarized glasses are ideal (Score:4, Informative)
What we really need is a pair of untinted, polarized glasses that allow you to rotate the lenses to cancel out the reflections on that glossy screen, much like a polarized filter on a camera lens can do.
You do know that LCDs are based on polarization, and using polarized glasses will seriously screw up your view?
Re:Glossy screens with polarized glasses are ideal (Score:5, Interesting)
My mom went to the gas station once back when the digital pay-at-the-pump systems first came out. But ... the thing simply wouldn't work. After pushing every button she could, she went to the attendant for help.
Of course, when they went back, everything was working fine.
It turned out she was wearing polarized sun glasses, which she then took off when she went inside to talk to the clerk.
Re:Glossy screens with polarized glasses are ideal (Score:4, Informative)
You can't make untinted polarized glasses: blocking most of the polarised light from passing through necessarily makes them dark.
Won't work -- LCD's output is polarized already! (Score:5, Informative)
You don't own polarized sunglasses, do you? Nor does anyone who rated you up. LCDs are already polarized light -- that's how they are able to turn pixels on and off. Two polarizations 90 deg out of phase = no light transmission. Put on polarized (sun)glasses and suddenly you have a entirely black LCD from certain angles. Not every angle mind you -- I can see my landscape display just fine, but the portrait one next to it goes jet black with them on.
Now, I'll admit it lets you see dust and dirt on the display very clearly when you can't see the display itself. That's not really a great selling point...
Now on an OLED or plasma display you might have something -- problem is you have to match the polarization orientations. So if you tilt your head, suddenly you can't see your screen.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
"LCDs are already polarized light -- that's how they are able to turn pixels on and off. "
True so far, but...
"Two polarizations 90 deg out of phase = no light transmission."
Not completely true. There are 2 ways light can be polarized: planar or circular. In planar polarized light (which is what you are speaking of) the electric field will move in one fixed plane, and the magnetic field in a plane at 90 degrees. In circular polarized light, the E and H fields corkscrew through space in either a clockwise or
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Work or play? (Score:2, Insightful)
No (Score:2, Interesting)
Classic issue (Score:4, Insightful)
It looks impressive at the store. That's enough to sway the mass market. Long-term usability is the concern of a few nerds, and the manufacturers don't really care as long as stuff sells.
This same issue shows up in software user interfaces. Testing -- and reviews -- are based on quick impressions. "Scientific" usability tests try to get subjects with no biasing prior experience, and then measure task performance with a new and unfamiliar UI.
Unfortunately, interfaces which have a great immediate discoverability are not necessarily the best for long-term use. That's a lot harder to get right -- and if a long-term usability improvement would come at the cost of those at-the-store decision makers, it loses out.
I HATE GLOSSY!!!!! (Score:2, Insightful)
Re: (Score:2)
Depends on the circumstances (Score:3, Insightful)
Laptops are invariably used in areas with bad lighting, glare, etc. Glossy screens are less than ideal in those situations.
My TV or desktop computers, on the other hand, are in controlled environments. I can eliminate glare, so I'll take the better apparent saturation that glossy gives me in those cases. (If I have a choice, that is)
No (Score:2)
I guess the blacks look deeper with a glossy screen or something, but the annoyance of the glare completely removes any value that they have for me. Even in a normally lit room, the glare can be overwhelmingly distracting. I think it has something to do with having an image that you can focus on at a different depth than the text you're trying to read. I got a matte film for my screen and it's wonderful. Bright lights behind you will still make a reflection, but you can't focus on it so it isn't really that
Yes, I do. (Score:2)
Matte finishes are slightly diffuse and that makes the colors a little less intense and reduces sharpness a bit. I love the clarity and color of glossy displays but I generally work away from windows, or when I'm near them, I'm facing them so glare isn't a problem. There has only been a handful of times in the 4 years I've owned my shiny-screen MacBook that I've thought "man, this glare is a pain"--usually it's not a problem at all or a small adjustment in position makes it go away. I'd imagine most people
Glossy is a bad name (Score:5, Interesting)
It's easier to frame it as a "Glossy vs. Matte" debate, but no one goes out to make a glossy screen. Rather, the high amount of reflections is a side effect of the LCD surface treatment that allows for better color, brighter whites, and darker blacks [screentekinc.com].
So really it should be "Good-looking-screen-but-with-reflections vs. Not-as-good-looking-without-as-many-reflections"
Re:Glossy is a bad name (Score:5, Insightful)
So really it should be "Good-looking-screen-but-with-reflections vs. Not-as-good-looking-without-as-many-reflections"
Which can be efficiently summarized as "Glossy vs Matte".
Pros and Cons (Score:3, Insightful)
I remember the first time I saw a glossy screen on a laptop (it was an otherwise completely hideous Sony). Colors looked so vibrant, but you could tell that glare would be a real issue. Absent direct light sources, they really do look better to me.
Glare can be a real issue, though, which is one reason why there's a market for iPad anti-glare sheets. The iPad screen is glass, though, so glossy was the obvious choice. The glossy IPS screen is quite striking next to a TN matte laptop screen.
What really irks me though is the predominance of glossy plastic bezels. Walk into any computer store these days and you're bombarded with shiny black plastic on nearly every laptop, monitor, and TV. Here there is no functional advantage - it simply shows fingerprints more and even can distract from the screen itself. But it's the latest trend in computer/tv "fashion" (remember when silver plastic was in?). I gave in when shopping for an mid-sized TV, as Samsung (my preferred LCD manufacturer) had all glossy bezels. It's fine so long as I don't touch it, but a glossy HP laptop was a magnet for fingerprints.
Don't sit with your back to the window (Score:4, Informative)
Unless you've got a house where three walls are all glass ( in which case stfu and stop moaning already ) just simply turn by 45 degrees, if this doesn't work then turn again. Continue this until you find a place which works.
It's what I did in my office, and now I never get screen glare, as the sun rises and sets to the right of me. (*Can't be bothered to figure out what direction I am facing).
Re:Don't sit with your back to the window (Score:5, Funny)
It's what I did in my office, and now I never get screen glare, as the sun rises and sets to the right of me.
You rotate your desk 180 degrees over the course of the day?
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
if you live above or below the north and south tropics, respectively.
Of course, if you live within the tropics, the sun still only rises and sets directly (i.e. at an angle of 90deg to the horizon) one day per year, so you'd have to rotate your desk over the course of the year and within the day when necessary (which is only extreme at the equator; the limits are the tropics themselves where the sun is directly overhead on the same day it returns back down toward the equator.
I suspect that the solid angle o
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
...the sun rises and sets to the right of me. (*Can't be bothered to figure out what direction I am facing)...
You are facing North in the morning, and South in the evening. Nice.
BUY A REPLACEMENT KEYBOARD (Score:4, Insightful)
Glossy vs. Matte: False Dichotomy (Score:4, Informative)
Neither are optimal, and people should not be so polarized on the issue; there is a better option. It is called an anti reflective film, and you will find one on every piece of quality camera optics or eyeglasses. The goal of this film is to make lenses invisible, in order to transmit as much of the light as possible. (Which is more or less the antithesis of glossy. Matte is also reflective, it merely diffuses the light, though still degrades the image.)
Anyway, the default state of my glossy MacBook was nearly intolerable. Fortunately, I came across an aftermarket AR film, the Nushield DayVue. It is less than ideal and painful to install properly, but it is a clear improvement. (For best results, there must be an AR film stack on each surface, but the interior surfaces are not accessible in this case.)
Agree (Score:5, Interesting)
I agree with the submitter. Not sure what the hell is going on in the monitor market. We had to deal with glares for years on CRTs, and then we finally move to LCD's which eliminates the problem entirely. I figured screen glare was dead for all eternity - and then someone decides "HEY GUYS - we figured out how to make the LCD screens glare too!".
To me it seems as beneficial as introducing a charging cord that you can connect to your wireless mouse at all times so that the battery never dies. It's truly one of those /facepalm things I can't believe someone actually did.
It wouldn't be so bad except that all the budget laptops are doing it. Seems if you want a matte version you're going to have to pay extra. Given how little I use my laptop, I ended up going with the gloss version there (and just suffer with having to turn out ever friggen light in the hotel room while use the computer). On my desktop though I did specifically track down a matte display - I couldn't take the gloss on a daily basis.
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It's personal preference I guess. You could just attach tracing paper to a CRT or glossy LCD.
I personally can't understand why some people like to brag about picture quality and how CRTs do better blacks and buy matte LCDs.
GPS on Motorcycle (Score:3, Informative)
Deal killer (Score:5, Informative)
For me a glossy screen is an absolute deal-killer. I once had a MacBook (the white, plastic one.) There were things about it that took some getting used to--I am accustomed to PC hardware running Linux. I could get used to the one-button mouse, the different keyboard shortcuts, and differences in the software like no X11 (at least, not ordinarily) and the Finder. I rather liked the idea of a PC running Unix without having to futz with installing an OS not supported by the OEM.
But what drove me to sell the thing on eBay was the glossy screen. Gloss makes it absolutely impossible to do any work with any bright light source over my shoulder. I do a lot of work in a terminal, and a black background is just impossible to read. So I switched them to a light background. That actually wasn't easy because the Terminal in OS X at the time (10.4, I think) made it really hard to switch colors--I had to download some sort of plugin to do something that X11 terminals have been capable of for years. Even with a light background, though, it was hard to do work if there was a lamp behind me and impossible to do work if there was a window behind me.
I complained of this, and some people said "well, just close the blinds" or "sit somewhere else." I now laugh when Steve Jobs said that if you phone is dropping calls when you hold it a certain way, don't hold it that way. Seems responses like that are common amongst the Apple set.
This was so bad that I sold the thing and now I won't buy a laptop with a glossy screen. That pretty much limits me to enterprise models as nearly all the consumer models have the glossy screen. I think Apple used to have a very expensive MacBook Pro that gave you a choice between glossy and matte but I don't think they have that choice anymore. No more Apple hardware for me.
Re:Deal killer (Score:4, Informative)
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But what drove me to sell the thing on eBay was the glossy screen. Gloss makes it absolutely impossible to do any work with any bright light source over my shoulder. I do a lot of work in a terminal, and a black background is just impossible to read. So I switched them to a light background. That actually wasn't easy because the Terminal in OS X at the time (10.4, I think) made it really hard to switch colors--I had to download some sort of plugin to do something that X11 terminals have been capable of for years. Even with a light background, though, it was hard to do work if there was a lamp behind me and impossible to do work if there was a window behind me.
I don't get it, I've had my Terminal as black text on white (translucent) background since OSX 10.0, almost a decade ago. What were you trying to do that required a plug-in?
Next generation, please (Score:4, Insightful)
Diminishing refraction requires a smooth surface (i learned something reading that amateur telescope making book)
Glossy surfaces reflect higher intensity light sources more readily.
Polarize or coat the damned things already, so the light inside can come out, but these exterior sources are diffused across the surface.
Matte has drawbacks, but deepness of black and 'poppy' RGB aren't why I bought my computer. Neither is HD video playback, dammit. If I wanted an entertainment device with a keyboard, I would invent one.
I have a 'laptop computer' which I use to 'compute' on my 'lap', and I want about 2 million gloss-free, color-accurate pixels to do it with.
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Where do I sign up for this society of "badass techno-monks"?
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Most laptop's have a fairly easy to remove keyboard.
Why not call the supplier and ask how much a local keyboard retails for? Undo the screws, replace the keyboard and voila, your international laptop has been localised.
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what makes you think they are Hungarian? They could just as easily be Romanian, Czech, Slovakian, Serb, etc.
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