Computing Al Fresco?

ear1grey writes "With summer fast approaching in the northern hemisphere, do any readers have experience of taking their 'working from home' one stage further and 'working from the garden'? Any tips for making the screen more visible in the bright sunshine? Any problems with direct sunlight and overheating components? Are there other issues that we should be aware of before we venture, blinking, into the great outdoors?"

Comments

Best practices:

[geohump]

From experience, the following are useful.

#0 - Laptop - easily moved and re-moved

#1 - Go wireless. For both network and power. Don't put any AC current anywhere near the pool!

#2 - Think Dark places -Stay in the shade. Install/build shade if you have no alternative, especially next to the pool. Go for blocking out as much sunlight as possible.

#4 - LTSP.org - Use your laptop as a wireless thin client. It reduces local CPU power consumption, extends the life of your battery, and your server, (any desktop machine), does all the heavy lifting so you can still go fast.

#5 Cheap Sunglasses and a hat. Brim helps block out sunlight, Iris will dilate just "a leetle bit" so you can see the screen easier.

#6 Pump spray bottle of sunblock! SPF 30+

#7 Ice tea. (Or caffinated beverage of choice)

#8 Extra towels

Re:Best practices:

[Fweeky]

Cheap Sunglasses

Eh, you can afford laptops, wireless networks and pools, but you skimp on the sunglasses!? Do you not like your eyes very much or something? :)

Glare Removal

[The Meeper]

In order to reduce glare, you may want to look into glare reducing filters and monitor hoods. The filters are extremely expensive but do the job well enough, and the hoods will work brilliantly if the monitor is positioned correctly.

Sunscreen.

[i.r.id10t]

All references to pasty white skin aside, please do remember your sunscreen...

Big Buck Solution

[pipingguy]

Buy and install one of these on your porch near the garden. I think it tracks light sources and compensates by rotating itself. Apparently it also has built-in AC as well.

Re:TFT

[Anonymous Coward]

You're thinking of reflective displays, but most laptop computer LCD screens are backlit (transflective). The brightness of a normal backlight (100-250 cd/m^2) is nothing compared to direct sunlight (1,500,000,000 cd/m^2). Good luck seeing if the thing is even on. There are reflective displays, but you have to look for them. Transflective is much more common.

TFTs (thin film transistors) drive the LCs (liquid crystals). The LCs rotate the polarization of the light going through them depending on their orientation. The light source can either be external light which is reflected or an internal backlight. This has nothing to do with the display being a TFT and LCDisplay.

Ask David Drake

[R2.0]

Go to david-drake.com. He does ALL of his writing outside, on a computer. As in, if its raining, he doesn't write that day. And he writes a lot.

Don't emulate him too closely - he apparently has a jinx that wipes out machines on a regular basis.

See also http://www.baen.com/library/ for the Baen Free library, previously referenced on /. - he's one of the major authors involved.