Anti-Glare Computer Screens That Work in Sunlight?

Belfont9 asks: "The company I work for operates in a very sunny climate, and our facilities rely almost completely on natural light. The problem for our coders is that all that light makes reading a computer screen for many hours truly painful - even if we use the standard 'anti-glare' screen covers. Dimming the entire rooms (eg through the use of shades) isn't an option. Could the Slashdot community suggest some good computer screens for use in such conditions?"

Comments

FlatPanels, maybe?

[GreyWolf3000]

I've had the exact same problem, but when I got a laptop, the problem you're describing diminished greatly (although having such a small screen created new problems). Perhaps getting flat-panel LCD monitors would be worth the much higher costs (especially if you go beyond 17"). A large monitor taken down to lower resolutions also sometimes helps. Also, telling browsers, ides, irc clients, etc, to override system colors (mostly for backgrounds) and replacing white darker, vanilla "off-white" colors might help alot (and won't cost money :)

Re:FlatPanels, maybe?

[funky womble]

I agree that changing colours helps a lot. Laptops are good too (but can have other problems - like on mine I can't swap the keycaps to Dvorak layout, which I don't know well enough to not need to look occasionally, but do know well enough to never want to touch qwerty again :-)

I've been using #453dad background and #9191d6 menus, white text, with the monitor brightness turned way down. I find these colours work a bit better than white-on-black (since black monitors also show quite a lot of reflections) and much better than black-on-white... The other day I realised how similar they are to the Commodore 64 standard colours, quite interesting since I think they were likely to have been chosen to work under not-quite-ideal viewing conditions.

Works great on a lot of things, but websites can be difficult - certain colour text .gifs with a transparent background are a particular problem - and I also had trouble with a lot of websites that set bgcolor but not text, link and vlink... Opera is a big help, just modify the user stylesheet and you're only a ^G away from a readable page if something really doesn't work.

White backgrounds are pretty horrible looking if you get used to something else, *and* they waste electricity on CRTs :-) Maybe they wouldn't need so much lead in the tubes to block electrons if standard desktops had darker backgrounds too. Maybe it's all a plot by space aliens to cause us to be exposed to radiation so we mutate quicker... Yeah, space aliens, that must be it.

Monitor Hoods!

[ihtagik]

Yeah that's right, Monitor Hoods! [google.com] I know they lok a little goofy but after having the please of using a LaCie monitor with one of these things a while back during an unexpected outdoor coding session, I swear by them. PS: no affiliation to LaCie or any monitor hood company, honest

Re:Monitor Hoods!

[Garg]

I'll second this. I recently moved into an office where one whole wall is a window (is that an oxymoron?), and I'm in Orlando, Florida. Needless to say, the sun can be pretty intense (except every afternoon when it rains... I'm starting to mold here).

Anyway, one of the first things I asked for was a monitor hood. It's made all the difference in the world. I can still code and keep the shades open, so I can watch the babes, er, scenery every now and then... Whoops, here comes some scenery now. Gotta go...

Garg

Roll your own

[realgone]

Count me as one more vote for monitor hoods; the things are life savers. There was this one agency I used to work for that got unbelievable sunny, starting around noon every day. Made trying to design print pieces near impossible, since the light and glare would tend to wash out all colors on-screen. Those hoods were the only thing that kept me sane.

But here's the best part: forget LaCie, you can make your own hood in a couple of minutes for a only couple of bucks. Heck, we used to do it all the time.

(1) Run down to your local Pearl/Staples/etc and buy a poster-sized piece of black mounting board. (Or any other reasonably thick, dark and matte -- i.e., non-glossy -- material will do.)

(2) Measure the width of the front of your monitor casing and cut a piece of board to slightly more than that width by, let's say, 18 inches deep. That's the top.

(3) Cut two more pieces, half the width of the first but the same depth. Those are the sides.

(4) Now all you need to do is get some strong tape -- again, matte black if you can find it -- and tape the pieces together: side - top - side.

(5) Place atop the monitor, tape side up, and let the side fins flop down. (For another couple of bucks, add some velcro tabs to keep the whole thing firmly in place.) Welcome to the Land that Glare Forgot.

Re:Roll your own

[tenman]

(6) Take wheels off of home.

I want my glare!

[fm6]

I looked at the cost of putting up a building just to block out direct sun from my office. Too expensive. Besides, what about the people who have to work in the new building?

Had a conversation with my optometrist on the whole eyestrain issue. His suggestions:

• Close the blinds. No way, that crow outside the window would be offended.
• Get "computer glasses". These reduce eye strain by being finely tuned to help you focus on your specific monitor setup. I got them, and they work -- but they're not practical for me, since I don't just look at the monitor.
• Lower your monitor so it's at least 10 degrees below eye level. This one suprised me: everybody has tons of computer accessories designed to raise their monitors. I had a machine in an AT-style case -- designed to have the monitor sit on top -- and my monitor came with one of those swivel pedestal that raises it even further. But when I move the monitor off the computer and got rid of the pedestal, it did indeed help. Enough to make other measure unnecessary.

You need shade

[KurdtX]

You should check out lacie monitors. Notice the little screen "hood" they use? Not that I'm suggesting you buy one, but I've worked with guys who did the same thing with some cardboard & scissors or an umbrella. One guy even brought in a kiddie pool (turned upside down) - he won major style points for that one.

Maybe once management sees the proliferation of umbrellas and cardboard they might get the idea that if they don't solve Engineer's problems, they're going to solve it themselves, no matter the cost to the company's "image". Yeah, the execs outlawed umbrellas and cardboard where I used to work, but the Engineers developed the attititude: "What are you going to do, fire me?". Sure you could argue that it would just give them a reason to fire you, but I found it actually only gave them reasons to get rid of the programmers who couldn't cut it anyway, so it worked out for the rest of us. I left 'cause my internship was over and I had to go back to school, but last I heard neither side had budged, and had become a moot argument.