| BUSINESSWEEK ONLINE : APRIL 26, 1999 ISSUE | ||||||||
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| TECHNOLOGY & YOU
Help Desk Q: Reader Gerald Raymond of Kingston, Ont., frequently needs to use a laptop outdoors. What, he asks, can he do to increase the readability of the screen in bright light? A: I've been around long enough to remember when bright light was the only condition under which you could read portables and their dim monochrome displays. Today's laptops work by shining light from fluorescent tubes behind the screen through a liquid crystal matrix. To be seen, the screen must be brighter than the ambient light. That's easy enough to do. But it takes a lot of electricity, and designers throttle the brightness on laptops to conserve battery life. What's an outdoor user to do? Get a laptop with the brightest screen you can find. Avoid passive matrix (also called DSTN or HPA) displays, which tend to be dimmer. And try to find some shade to work in. There's a new type of active matrix display called reflective TFT that Compaq Computer uses in its new Aero 2100 palmtop. Like the early monochrome screens, it gets easier to read as the ambient light gets brighter and works just fine in full sunlight. But so far I've not heard of any plans to use such displays in laptops. _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ BACK TO TOP |
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