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Computers, Long Hours and Vision Problems?
msid asks: "I have been computing for almost 10 years, starting back in 1996 when my father bought me my first computer. In the process, I fell in love with computers and got stuck with them. The last year though has been a real challenge for me. I sleep 5 hours, in average, per day and I spend more that 15 hours in front of my laptop's monitor (a 17" TFT Widescreen), either programming or reading. I have never had 'problems' with my vision up until now. Do you have a specific way of using light sources in your workspace? I have heard of special glasses for computer users. Should I use them or not?"
"A week ago, I checked my eyes and I found 0.25 astigmatism in both of them. They told me that this is not necessarily a problem, and it is mainly due to the intensive computer work. The actual symptom is that I lose my concentration more easily now. Also, the lighting of the monitor is killing me, especially when combined with a white background. Since I am willing to continue working in the same pace that I do now, what do you propose? Is there a habit that you follow to relax your eyes? Is there a way of preventing vision problems?"
Get a good laser printer. (As far as I know laser is cheaper than inkjet per page, and you get a better resolution.) Print the pages you want to read. Read them with the monitor turned off.
When I spend a great deal of time looking at a monitor, I can't focus after a while. Either the font size goes up or I turn it off and get some sleep or read a book.
Your body is sending you a signal. Pay attention and heed its warnings or suffer the consequences later in life.
The radical sect of Islam would either see you dead or "reverted" to Islam.
I've been staring into the screen since 82, and I have perfect 20/20 vision.
Someone once told me, that it's because I "work out" my eyes. When I'm not seated in front of the computer, I'm out in the nature, either hiking or sailing. The eyes supposedly likes to look at things far away as well as close up. Being outside in the wide open should be a great contrast.
I have no idea if that's the true reason, but I thought I'd chip in - maybe someone has similar experience?
When I first got AOL ~1994 and sat down for about 1 hour of computing, my eyes were sower and red. my eyes adjusted after a few days, but im not sure if thats for the better.
:P
Liquid Crystal Displays are enormously more gently on my eyes than are CRTs. So much so that at work I use a 14" LCD rather than a 27" monitor due to the strain from the monitor. If you do have CRT ensure the refresh rate is pretty high like 75Hz or up.
Rocking chairs or some chair that moves is also great for increasing your time in front of the screen. If you can slide back and forth or rock, then you don't change seating positions so often.
I put my monitor in front of my window so I can gaze outside at the trees when my eyes do get tired.
You can as well get someone to watch over your shoulder and tell you when you have been spending too much time on the computer and offer to assign other tasks to you for a moderate fee
Aye. I've been doing the backlighting of my HDTV television now for about 4 years. Recently, while reading the AVSForums I came across this special light for the purpose called Ideal-Lume.
http://www.cinemaquestinc.com/ideal_lume.htm
So I bought one, and I do highly recommend it. Now, ideally you could probably get something similar elsewhere, it's just a flourescent tube with a 6500k bulb. I guess what makes it nice versus the ones at Home depot, is the cover over the bulb is clear(rather than white), plus it came with a plastic sleeve with half of it blacked out, that allows you to dim the bulb by turning it.
I started doing something similar with my computer, just pointing a light at the wall behind my computer, which keeps the ambient light high enough that my eyes don't hurt. Honestly, this I think is a good part of the key is making sure there is enough light in the room to work, while at the same time not having any glare on the screen. That means lot's of ambient light.
So very true. Try it - it's amazing. Assuming your monitor isn't shoved all the way against the wall, put some kind of incandescent light behind it that will reflect off the walls around it.
For me, that gives me several extra hours of computing joy before my eyes die.
The other thing is: since I expect you're coding and working with lots of text, ditch your CRTs, use LCDs, make sure they're adjusted properly (if you're using analog inputs), and turn off anti-aliasing for small fonts. The sharpness makes an enormous difference.
And for whoever's sake make sure to turn on the light when it gets dark. The worst headaches I get are when I forget to do that and I'm suddenly sitting in a darkened room staring at 2 big monitors at full brightness.
dual monitors with different sync rates give me headaches
I completely agree but dual monitors with the same sync at different distances from your face is great. It gets your eyes to focus back and forth. I put a monitor at normal distance and a second about twice that, at a lower resolution, and use it for things that don't need fine resolution like email. It pretty much stopped eye strain for me.
That's interesting, because I've had the same theory as you. I'm still not convinced by your post thought. Considering the large number of people with common vision problems (I'm nearsighted), that would mean that before the invention of glasses, the human race consisted partly of half-blind people who were lucky to catch prey once in a while. It seems very weird to me that our eyesight would be, on the average, that bad. Also, though I have no real proof, I'd say that nearsightedness is a lot more common among computer users and book readers; why is that? Reverse causation?
Also, your optometrist has a vested interest in selling you treatment. So do the people who teach them. Not trying to be paranoid here -- as you put it, I'm just the "wannabe" in this, but I thought I'd at least post a sceptical reply. Do you have links to research debunking your previous theory?
As someone with eye troubles since the first grade, and who now can't even read the big E on an eye chart...
Liquid Crystal Displays are enormously more gently on my eyes than are CRTs. So much so that at work I use a 14" LCD rather than a 27" monitor due to the strain from the monitor. If you do have CRT ensure the refresh rate is pretty high like 75Hz or up.
I definitely agree with LCD's help ing eye strain, and also turning the brightness down helps.. but those are personal preferences.
As far as science, my eye doctor told me that looking at close up things (e.g. reading a lot, or working on a computer) can cause two problems depending on a person genetic predisposition. in people like me: 1) astymagtism and near sightedness as the muscles pulling on your eye to focus on close up things cause your eye to deform or in other people 2) far sightedness as the muscles strain causes the muscle to stretch out and they loose their ability to focus close up over time. #2 is far more commone, and happens to most people as they age.
He proposed four things... 1) use large fonts 2) set your monitor about 30 inches away from your face 3) reading glasses that make you a little far sighted to allow your eyes to focus on close up things with less strain. He said that reading glasses don't have to be a prescription for people with normalish eye sight and you can pick them up at drug stores and at walmart and such. 4) always use lots of light in your work area.
There are 10 types of people in this world, those who can count in binary and those who can't.
Do not go anywhere other than an actual optomotrist's office to get glasses. My experience with places like Costco and Shopko is that their optomotrists, while certified, are told to only find problems that they can fix, and if the patients don't have any problem, to give them a mild perscription so they can sell the glasses anyway. Your optomotrist will find EVERYTHING wrong with your eyes, and can usually fix them or refer you to someone who can. Just think, would Costco really send you to eye surgery? Your optomotrist would. Note: Forgive the spelling, I'm tired.
Please put some pants on before you post again.
Actually, there was a scientific paper released recently (which I can't find in Google even after more than 90 seconds of serious searching) which suggested that the reason myopia developed was that those who couldn't hunt stayed home with the women. And while the perfectly-sighted alpha-males were out hunting, the myopic nerds were perpetuating the species.
Who knows? Maybe we will actually know the answer in a few years and such wild pop-optometry won't be necessary any more. (Not! And pigs might fly out of my hairy ass!)