Do Later LCDs Need Screen Savers?

bwdunn asks: "Do we need to run screen savers again to prevent the burn-in we saw on the very old CRTs? Dell's latest and greatest laptops, the Latitude D800 and Inspiron 8500 both suffer from horrible screen burn-in problems with burn-in visible after as little as 2 hours. Dell claims this is an industry wide problem. The high end displays from Apple also seem to have this problem. I have never seen this problem before 2002. Is this something new due to inferior LCD screen manufacturing compared to screens from just a few years ago?"

Comments

Ick! Screensavers!?

[WWWAvenger]

I don't know about you guys, but I was never a fan of wasting power. All my PCs turn off the monitor when idle!

Do you drive an SUV too?

POWER BUTTON vs Laziness

[Anonymous Coward]

I have two flat-panels on my desk at work, one of which is a Dell that I've had for about a year. I've never had a problem with burn-in on them, but:

(1) I've set up my screensaver to power off the screen after 5 minutes of inactivity.

(2) I press the power button to turn the screen completely *OFF* when stepping away from my desk - even if it's only for an hour at lunch.

These strange manual power-saving methods of pressing a switch.. it's strange, I tells ya.

What they really need are screen protectors

[azav]

What most people ignore are the facts that once you touch an LCD screen is that it really can't get cleaned right. People sneeze on the screen and touch the screen and on laptops, keys will etch into the screen. What we NEED is a clear, thin plastic screen to go over the LCD to prevent things like dumbass girlfriends getting their fingerprints all over my nice 15 inch laptop screen.

Re:Turning monitor off

[mr3038]

Certain items (such as light bulbs, and possibly fluorescent tubes) are actually damaged each time they are turned on, but aren't damaged while they are left on.

Yep, but they are still worn if left on. A standard light bulb has life time of about 6000 hours and say it takes one hour off the life time every time it's turned on. If the light is continuously off for at least 2 hours by average it's more economical to turn off the light - especially if replacing it is expensive. Having special electronics to run the bulb with lower current when the light isn't needed might make some sense as it should worn less as the temperature drops with the current. That is, if the light is needed for short periods of time pretty often. Such electronics would often cost more than changing the bulb, though.