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Does Anyone Really Prefer Glossy Screens?
An anonymous reader asked a question that I've been wondering about too: "I live in a small southern European country where natural light abounds. This may sound good, but it is a pain when it comes to using laptops that come with a glossy finish, making it impossible to work unless you are doing it in the dark. To make matters worse, since we are a small market, most manufacturers only offer a subset of their product line, and don't allow you to choose any options available in other countries (like matte screens). Buying abroad is not an option since we have our own very specific keyboard layout. Why are manufacturers doing this? Does anyone really prefer using glossy screens for day-to-day activities?"
I like them a LOT more than flat screens. I think they are easier to read and more vibrant.
noone
Yes.
Umm, glossy is the only way to go for night-to-night activities.
By using closed source products you are supporting a system that does terrible things like "pay people for their time" and "produce products people want to use". This is orthogonal to the end goal of free software which is to have only creepy beardos be able to use and create technology products like some kind of society of badass techno-monks
Yes, some of us do. I'm using a 27" iMac right now with one. My MacBook Pro also has a glossy screen. I probably use the combination of these two devices 10 or 12 hours per day, or more. Most of my time is spent indoors when working but I use it outdoors as well. Not a perfect solution but just get an anti-glare cover for the screen. Use that outside and take it off inside.
As you hit on at the start of your question - it depends on your environment. I have a glossy 55" television set set up in a very dark room, and the colors are much more vivid than on the equivalent matte screen.
You might be able to find an anti-glare overlay similar to the screen protectors used for handhelds.
All ideas^H^H^H^H^Hprocesses in this post are Patent Pending. (as well as the process of patenting all postings)
we have our own very specific keyboard layout
You can use software to map a key to some character other than what is printed upon it. This isn't quite as nice as having it printed on but if you can remember then it's better than dealing with a glossy screen outdoors. Next problem?
I prefer matte. Glossy is just such a pain with dirt and finger prints and scratches show up easier.
My take on glossy screens is that they look worse than matte in most real world lighting conditions, but noticeably (though not significantly) better in ideal light conditions. I find the the "matte-ness" of a matte screen diffuses the light enough to wash out blacks a tiny bit under ideal light. Matte wins in 95% of situations.
Geeks love anti-glare, but we are out-spent by mom & pop buying the "ooh pretty" screens.
check out the lenovo blog about thinkpads ::
http://lenovoblogs.com/designmatters/?p=71
It's been my experience that in natural light, glossy or matte, doesn't make a whole lot of difference. If you're in direct sunlight, forget both. Glossy usually just involves turning the display angle ever so slightly to avoid annoying reflections. You still need some shade for either to work worth a flip.
I can't stand them, but I actually take my laptop with me all the time and can't always pick where I'm sitting in order to reduce glare. If you're constantly at a desk, and have control over the lighting and other environmental factors, they might be fine, but they generally look crappy to me even in controlled setttings.
I specifically ordered the glossy display on my MacBook Pro; the colors are far more vibrant and the screen brighter. I have not had any issues with glare, though I don't take it outside in the direct sunlight and use it in a room with dim lighting.
I much prefer it to the matte screens, that always seem dull and fuzzy to me; I had a previous laptop with a matte screen and I always thought it seemed like it was out of focus.
The ten seconds a prospective customer looks at it before the sale is given million times more weight that the several hundred hours the actual customer spends staring at it after the sale.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
I hate them for the same reason. Sure the colors may appear brighter, but glare form any other light source is far too annoying to be of any use.
Matte actually has an opaque effect when the reflection is bright enough. Oddly enough, the same lighting is not opaque on a glossy screen surface. What's great about glossy is that if you have polarized glasses the reflection can be cancelled out if you're lucky.
What we really need is a pair of untinted, polarized glasses that allow you to rotate the lenses to cancel out the reflections on that glossy screen, much like a polarized filter on a camera lens can do.
Kriston
For me, it depends on what I'm doing with it. I think it looks fantastic in a dark room when you're playing games. It even gives the monitor a slightly classy, if overdone look. When it comes to getting things done, though, I'll take a matte monitor any day of the week. I'm glad my Latitude has a matte screen because I feel that office lighting would completely ruin the experience with the glare it causes.
I personally detest glossy screens. They're much harder to read, particularly for those of us with a preference for light text on a dark background. But it seems increasingly all screens are going that way, be it monitors, laptops or televisions. The world sucks sometimes :-(
"The invisible and the non-existent look very much alike." -- Delos B. McKown
It looks impressive at the store. That's enough to sway the mass market. Long-term usability is the concern of a few nerds, and the manufacturers don't really care as long as stuff sells.
This same issue shows up in software user interfaces. Testing -- and reviews -- are based on quick impressions. "Scientific" usability tests try to get subjects with no biasing prior experience, and then measure task performance with a new and unfamiliar UI.
Unfortunately, interfaces which have a great immediate discoverability are not necessarily the best for long-term use. That's a lot harder to get right -- and if a long-term usability improvement would come at the cost of those at-the-store decision makers, it loses out.
I recall the original arguments on some of the laptop forums that pushed for the overtake of all high end laptop screens to be glossy. Still makes me sick. The last thing I want to see when computing is my face. It's distracting as all hell. And, sure I'm not that pretty either. I have 20/20 vision, and do NOT get bothered by the matte covering on non-reflective screens. I even try to buy TV's with matte screens. Glossy in a big living room reflects so much stuff you can barely watch the show. Heck! Even movie theater screens are matte!!!! All this B.S. about glossy is so incorrect, it's amazing.
I used to have a laptop with a glossy screen, and used it outside frequently. These screens change the amount of reflection into an all-or-nothing case, rather than mostly washed out, or just slightly washed out of normal LCD's. A few tips to make it slightly less annoying: -Don't sit with anythign brightly colored, reflective and/or sunlit behind you (Bright green grass, bright white sheets, the sun, etc -Tilt it down, It's similar to a one-way-mirror. Reflections will angle down, but the backlight will still pass through normally. Glossy screens aren't really better or worse at managing reflections, they just reflect it all in one direction, rather than diffusing it everywhere. I'm no scientist, so I couldn't tell you the math behind it, but all of the above has worked for me in real-world scenarios.
Sounds like you wouldn't have a problem with a desktop..
Only stupid people THINK they like glossy, because they are too dumb to realize it is crippling their experience.
Anyone with an ounce of brains will ONLY stand for matte.
Period.
It took me a while to accept... but in bright light environments where there are many light sources... glossy screens have far less glare than anti-glare screens.
Take a glossy screen outside alongside an anti-glare screen. The readability difference is obvious. In offices with a lot of lights you can see the same effect.
Anti-glare screens disperse glare... which is fantastic when you only have a little.
For my desktop, I prefer glossy. It provides a more dynamic contrast ratio and makes the colors "pop" with vibrance. Looking at a matte screen reminds me of looking through wax paper in comparison
Only downside to glossy is that you don't want bright light reflecting off of it. So if you have windows in your home/office, you might prefer matte instead.
Life is not for the lazy.
I find glossy display better in direct sunlight than matte displays. A glossy display has a sharp small reflection of the sun that goes away if you turn the screen just a little. A matte display smears the sun's reflection over the entire display and you can't just get rid of it by rotating by a few degrees. Also, I find that glossy displays in direct sunlight behave ever so slightly like transflective displays, which is what I wish they would offer as an option.
Perhaps they don't like to be blamed for Microsoft's coding style, so they prefer to remain anonymous.
what makes you think they are Hungarian? They could just as easily be Romanian, Czech, Slovakian, Serb, etc.
"There is a way that seems right to a man, but its end is the way of death." Proverbs 16:25 (NKJV)
if you lived in a toilet, would you admit it?
Laptops are invariably used in areas with bad lighting, glare, etc. Glossy screens are less than ideal in those situations.
My TV or desktop computers, on the other hand, are in controlled environments. I can eliminate glare, so I'll take the better apparent saturation that glossy gives me in those cases. (If I have a choice, that is)
"People who do stupid things with hazardous materials often die." -- Jim Davidson on alt.folklore.urban
I guess the blacks look deeper with a glossy screen or something, but the annoyance of the glare completely removes any value that they have for me. Even in a normally lit room, the glare can be overwhelmingly distracting. I think it has something to do with having an image that you can focus on at a different depth than the text you're trying to read. I got a matte film for my screen and it's wonderful. Bright lights behind you will still make a reflection, but you can't focus on it so it isn't really that annoying.
If you want a vision of the future, imagine a youtube comments section scrolling - forever.
Matte finishes are slightly diffuse and that makes the colors a little less intense and reduces sharpness a bit. I love the clarity and color of glossy displays but I generally work away from windows, or when I'm near them, I'm facing them so glare isn't a problem. There has only been a handful of times in the 4 years I've owned my shiny-screen MacBook that I've thought "man, this glare is a pain"--usually it's not a problem at all or a small adjustment in position makes it go away. I'd imagine most people agree, or else they just say "ooh, shiny!" and that's what sells, which is of course all that matters. Sorry to hear about your situation but it looks like you'll be stuck dealing with what the rest of the market wants.
Dear Slashdot: next time you want to mess with the site, add a rich-text editor for comments.
Speaking as both a creepy beardo PD software developer, and a commercial software developer. :o)
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
Not to mention that its easier to wipe the spunk off.
They look sexier in the store and most computer buyers are in fact idiots who don't comprehend what they are buying or what impact the different features will really have.
How many times have you heard "Derrr I want the fastest thing they have! Email and Facebook is serious business!" Person spends 3k+ buying a laptop that could easily be replaced with an Atom based system.
In the past, there were problems with matte screens and colors. Today, that's not so much so anymore. I think one of the best examples was the iPhone 3Gs screens. They were anti-reflective and anti-smudge, but they were not matte. We should see more of those types of screens. IMHO, there is no amount of color that's worth all of the reflection on a glossy screen.
It looks like the laptop screens look much better indoors (and if you don't have a direct light source pointing at your screen).
I have noticed how many shops pay attention and try not to place the glossy screens under a direct source of light, giving sometimes the impression that the screen looks much better.
And indeed, when compared "in low light" they look MUCH better. Right now I have an old matte thinkpad next to a new glossy 22'' monitor and the thinkpad screen looks rather pale compared to the glossy screen next to it. But thats only because I'm in a rather dark room right now.
IMHO when speaking of laptops you can NOT assure which one is better (glossy or matte), because it depends on your use case. I understand how glossy screens are better sometimes, but I don't understand how there is NO FRICKIN WAY of getting a matte screen nowadays. Especially for laptops, there should always be both options!
I can't even compare today's matte screens with today's glossy screens, because most matte screens are like 5 or 6 years old.
I am about to get a 13'' MBP and don't know how they would compare, I can't even go to the damn shop and see the difference for myself :(
Manufacturers make glossy screen to cheat with contrast ratio, this why colors seems more vibrant. For television it's great, not if you code all days long.
At my desk I greatly prefer glossy. The blacks look deeper and the whole display seems more vibrant, setting a matte screen next to it looks rather dull by comparison. On something I will actually be using outdoors matte is definitely preferred though. To get the benefits of a glossy screen you need to be in a low-glare environment.
I've reached a quandary. I prefer 4:3, and I also prefer matte. I also prefer Super-IPS panels. I have a Dell 2001FP for my desktop (notably, not a dell) back when they were 20" 1600x1200 IPS panels by LG. My X61t Thinkpad has a 12.1" 4:3 S-IPS 1400x1050 screen...and yet, there is no way I can replace my desktop monitor without buying a professional monitor costing upwards of $900 now (lest I run the gauntlet of the IPS/MVA lottery) and there is literally no laptop offered with the pixel density for the same size as my Thinkpad. What do I do? I want another 20" S-IPS monitor, but I can't find one that is reasonably affordable...and what do I do when I want to replace my laptop? I think 16:9 is horrid for actual computing.
Can I Ask Slashdot why Hungarians always refer to a vague "European Country"
What does this have to do with anything in this topic, since Hungary is central, not southern, and medium sized, not small.
I think the questioner is probably a Cretan.
Yep. I love the glossy screen on my iMac, as opposed to the non-glosy screen on my computer at work. Granted, I watch a lot of DVD and movies on it, so perhaps this makes a difference. While there might be occasional issues with glossy screens in certain circumstances, I really fail to see why some people hate them. It's obviously just a vocal minority,however, given the prevalence of glossy screens being sold.
The sun may be shining, but I think that the ask slashdot folks must live in the dark... :-)
These are obvious. http://www.visioncarefilters.com/products_3M.html
There are my favourites; the privacy polarized filter. No glare, and the fellow next to you in 12D quits craning his neck to read your Slashdot postings.
"Speaking the Truth in times of universal deceit is a revolutionary act." -- George Orwell
I hate glossy screens, too. But I hate 16x9 computer displays even more.
Why would a corporate notebook PC or desktop LCD/LED monitor need to be 16x9 instead of 16x10?
Does everyone just watch movies all day, every day?
Good luck,
Scott
It's easier to frame it as a "Glossy vs. Matte" debate, but no one goes out to make a glossy screen. Rather, the high amount of reflections is a side effect of the LCD surface treatment that allows for better color, brighter whites, and darker blacks.
So really it should be "Good-looking-screen-but-with-reflections vs. Not-as-good-looking-without-as-many-reflections"
They make doing makeup so much easier.
Buy a pair of polarized sunglasses. Problem solved.
Or maybe portuguese
How about somebody first tells what the hell a "glossy screen" is?
Property is theft.
I've sometimes heard how matte screens 'spread' the reflectivity over the surface, so instead of a few really potentially bright areas, you get an averaged opaqeness to the screen.
I wonder if it's possible in theory to remove the reflections altogether. Perhaps there's a material that can divert the light out of visual range. Or maybe one where light can travel through one way (towards you), but not the other way (and so disperses as heat).
Why OpalCalc is the best Windows calc
I remember the first time I saw a glossy screen on a laptop (it was an otherwise completely hideous Sony). Colors looked so vibrant, but you could tell that glare would be a real issue. Absent direct light sources, they really do look better to me.
Glare can be a real issue, though, which is one reason why there's a market for iPad anti-glare sheets. The iPad screen is glass, though, so glossy was the obvious choice. The glossy IPS screen is quite striking next to a TN matte laptop screen.
What really irks me though is the predominance of glossy plastic bezels. Walk into any computer store these days and you're bombarded with shiny black plastic on nearly every laptop, monitor, and TV. Here there is no functional advantage - it simply shows fingerprints more and even can distract from the screen itself. But it's the latest trend in computer/tv "fashion" (remember when silver plastic was in?). I gave in when shopping for an mid-sized TV, as Samsung (my preferred LCD manufacturer) had all glossy bezels. It's fine so long as I don't touch it, but a glossy HP laptop was a magnet for fingerprints.
"The universe seems neither benign nor hostile, merely indifferent." --Carl Sagan
if you ask people whether anyone likes guns at an NRA convention, you'll get one result -- if you ask at a pacifist convention, you're likely to get a strongly diverging result...
Many of the slashdot crowd will be people that work with a lot of text (source-codes, DB dumps, shells, ...) - for many of us, the matte screen is the better choice.
On the other hand - for many people primarily using their laptops to access Facebook, consuming multimedia content, ... the more vivid colours of the glossy screen have a higher appeal...
So - for the slashdot crowd, what split between those groups do you expect to find here?
Now look at the general population? I'll bet you, the split will be the other way around... And - for people not using computers quite as much, how much easier do you think it will be to sell them a computer with a 'vibrant'/'vivid' display?
What's right for most of us, may not be the right thing for most people out there...
What I found a bit surprising, though - for a professional photographer friend of mine, matte is the screen of choice as well - for less glossy, but apparently more accurate colour representation...
Truly do not like working with glossy screens. I want to see what is on the screen, not what is reflected behind me.
The only reason I bought my laptop from Lenovo is because they offered matte screens as a choice (hope they still do). I had no choice there but to get windows. I was planning to buy a custom built laptop, lots of good upgrades, pre-installed with Linux, all very nice and a bit expensive. But that company (forget the name) did not offer matte screens, so no sale.
I understand that people have different views, but I wish we had more choice.
My conspiracy theory on the whole matter, is that it makes the product (laptops, TVs, etc.) look more "shiny" in the store. My TV even has a black glossy reflective border going around the outside of screen. There is no benefit to me to be distracted by the reflections in the border while trying to watch what is on the screen. The only purpose I can see, is that it is "shiny" and the marketing must have thought it would sell more. Note, the reason I bought this particular TV (a Sony), is that it had the least reflective screen.
Unless you've got a house where three walls are all glass ( in which case stfu and stop moaning already ) just simply turn by 45 degrees, if this doesn't work then turn again. Continue this until you find a place which works.
It's what I did in my office, and now I never get screen glare, as the sun rises and sets to the right of me. (*Can't be bothered to figure out what direction I am facing).
- http://www.milkme.co.uk
Slashdot had an article on the availability of DIY Pixel Qi kits. Sounds like Pixel Qi would be ideal for your situation.
http://hardware.slashdot.org/story/10/07/01/125240/DIY-Pixel-Qi-Screens-Available?from=rss
Wear a black shirt and tilt your screen down.
There are two reasons firms do this:
1. The devices look prettier. This is the triumph of "industrial design" over function, similar to the way (it seems) Apple's industrial designers over-ruled the antenna / RF designers on the iPhone4. Same consequence: it's less easily usable, you have to learn to use the screen despite its failings.
2. Specsmanship. Glossy screens (called in the industry "glare screens", which really summarizes the issue) have higher contrast ratios - if the contrast ratio is measured in a perfectly dark room. Colors look nicely saturated. That way the vendors get to put very high contrast ratios on their specs and it's an arms race. Gottaproblemwiththat? Sit in a dark room, silly.
Of course, the only screens designed for reading (e-Ink, Pixel Qi, Sipix) do NOT use glare / glossy screens.
Import one. Then buy a replacement keyboard, they're usually 0-screw 1-plug replacements.
Quartz Extreme and Core Image. Are there any other real reasons to spend all that money on generic hardware?
Yeah, you mean 4:3 (which is 16:12). I love these screens for the extra vertical space that you need when reading webpages or documents. The whole industry has moved towards the widescreen. I suspect this has to do with production volumes and economy of scale. I find that widescreens are better for sizes 21" and above, where you can put two applications side by side. For laptops that 12 or 13", going with widescreen makes no sense, in my opinion. Too bad the industry thinks otherwise! I had to buy an out of production Thinkpad X61, because all the new one ultra-compacts are widescreen. Share your pain.
I've always wondered why the market suddenly switched to glossy screens. I know the argument about more vibrant images, but the glare factor more than nullifies this for me.
Little girls, like butterflies, need no excuse. -- L. Long
Personally, I loathe glossy screens.
They used to suck. But then Steve said they were great and started to put them on everything. So now they're great.
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
I also hate glossy screens, for most of the same reasons, and simply won't buy a computer with one. Sometimes you can get a non-glossy display if you select the "non-glare" screen option.
Sometimes, real fast is almost as good as real-time.
Neither are optimal, and people should not be so polarized on the issue; there is a better option. It is called an anti reflective film, and you will find one on every piece of quality camera optics or eyeglasses. The goal of this film is to make lenses invisible, in order to transmit as much of the light as possible. (Which is more or less the antithesis of glossy. Matte is also reflective, it merely diffuses the light, though still degrades the image.)
Anyway, the default state of my glossy MacBook was nearly intolerable. Fortunately, I came across an aftermarket AR film, the Nushield DayVue. It is less than ideal and painful to install properly, but it is a clear improvement. (For best results, there must be an AR film stack on each surface, but the interior surfaces are not accessible in this case.)
If you work in a fixed location and can control the ambient light, then
a glossy screen might work well for you.
If your work involves using a laptop anywhere you can,
you will probably prefer a matte screen because it doesn't
have the problem with reflections that glossy screens do.
That's it. Any more debate is nothing more than mental masturbation.
Of course this IS Slashdot, and we all know what THAT means.
Apparently, so do many of my co-workers whether they know it or not.
I was in a meeting the other day where everyone brought their laptops.
All of us with glossy screens (Macbooks) were crowded to one side of the conference table so the window wouldn't be behind us. Those with matte (ThinkPads) screens were unconcened.
I agree with the submitter. Not sure what the hell is going on in the monitor market. We had to deal with glares for years on CRTs, and then we finally move to LCD's which eliminates the problem entirely. I figured screen glare was dead for all eternity - and then someone decides "HEY GUYS - we figured out how to make the LCD screens glare too!".
To me it seems as beneficial as introducing a charging cord that you can connect to your wireless mouse at all times so that the battery never dies. It's truly one of those /facepalm things I can't believe someone actually did.
It wouldn't be so bad except that all the budget laptops are doing it. Seems if you want a matte version you're going to have to pay extra. Given how little I use my laptop, I ended up going with the gloss version there (and just suffer with having to turn out ever friggen light in the hotel room while use the computer). On my desktop though I did specifically track down a matte display - I couldn't take the gloss on a daily basis.
"People who think they know everything are very annoying to those of us who do."-Mark Twain
Wide screens SUCK!
I don't really care - gloss or flat, but the wide screen conspiracy is driving me nuts. 1080p is not high resolution for computer screens. My 5+ yr old 24" monitor is 1900x1280 and it isn't high resolution either.
SquarePixel is wrong, obviously and blatantly misrepresenting his parent post, and gets modded "informative."
beeelsebob, on the other hand, reads the same post correctly, catches the mistake, and gets modded "redundant."
And people wonder why we laugh at the slashdot moderation system. IT DOESN'T FUCKING WORK.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
Reading through your comments, the apparent answer to your specific question is "yes". Some people really prefer them. I'm shocked too.
My 15" matte screen MacBook Pro is in for AppleCare work right now, so I'm borrowing my wife's glossy-screened 13" MBP. I also happen to be at a client's office today, and mostly what I see on the screen is the outline of my head, surrounded by a giant flourescent array in the celiing behind me. There is no way I can move around at the place they've seated me without the screen being at least 30% covered in glare. My neck is already sore from sitting in weird positions, trying to eliminate the glare.
So yeah, I hate the glossy screen. Hate hate hate.
www.clarke.ca
I think it might be a conspiracy. I freaking hate glossy screens, I hate the glossy screen on my old macbook, and its the reason why I opted for a MacPro instead of an iMac. The glossy screen picks up any stray reflection, is really really distracting. I use the MacPro with a Lenovo L220x 22" PVA screen, and its one of the best screens I've ever seen. I really like how "soothing" matte screens are.
Really sucks when the matte screen on the MacBookPro is freaking $130 more then the lame ass glossy screen.
So, yeh, I think it might be a conspiracy on Apple's part to make their "consumer" line really sucky in some way just to drive people who care up the the "pro" line. I love Macs, but Apple does tend to piss me off these tactics.
Mary Lou Jepsen (sp?) has mad technical skills, and from what I remember reading about her company,
1) They make displays that are designed to be visible in all light, including near-direct sunlight
2) She said in one video that replacing the display is so easy a child can do it.
Sure, your laptop will be a little more expensive than just buying a regular laptop, as you'll have to pay for the first screen and an aftermarket screen, but it should solve your problem nicely.
coding is life
The ten seconds a prospective customer looks at it before the sale is given million times more weight that the several hundred hours the actual customer spends staring at it after the sale.
Just how often do you replace your monitors?
Failure to follow this advice may result in non-deterministic behavior.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
I can't help but think that glossy screens are, for the most part, a marketing ploy to people who see them and think, "oooh, shiny!!" (ie.: most of the general public)
Afterall, wasn't significantly-reduced glare a big selling point for LCDs at one time?
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I had the same issue using a GPS on my bike ... the glossy screen was a pain in outdoor light. Solution: matte-finish film applied to the glass. Cost was under $10, probably a lot more for a 15" (38 cm) laptop display.
Obi-Wan: "I felt a great disturbance in the Force, as if millions of voices suddenly cried out in terror and were sudden
I have used glossy screens for a long time and I like them a lot. Even outside I think they are much better, yes you can get glare but they are alot more vibrant so you can actually see what is on the screen. The matte screen I had before, was unreadable outside. All the light was "cough" in the glass above the LCD and that made it very hard to read.
This is just my very personal opinion on the subject at hand of course.
- To understand recursion, we must first understand recursion -
It is rather trivial to change the keybord of a laptop. You might be able to order one for your brand for quite a small sum. Otherwise go to a local shop and check with them if they can help out. My experience is the smaller ones are willing to order a specific version for you and exchange the keyboard.
Note, local shops often have local keyboards in stock as there are always customers requesting English versions which they replace.
Good luck.
Buying abroad is not an option since we have our own very specific keyboard layout.
You can't just change the mapping in software? If anything, having the wrong label on the keys is a big plus -- it forces the user to learn to touch-type and has the added benefit of preventing unsuitable people from wanting to use your laptop. I would love to get a Das Keyboard (http://www.mygamer.com/news_images/3508SquallSnake7.jpg) but they don't come in the ergonomic split-keyboard variety.
Or did you mean that there's actually a different physical arrangement of key sizes and shapes?
For me a glossy screen is an absolute deal-killer. I once had a MacBook (the white, plastic one.) There were things about it that took some getting used to--I am accustomed to PC hardware running Linux. I could get used to the one-button mouse, the different keyboard shortcuts, and differences in the software like no X11 (at least, not ordinarily) and the Finder. I rather liked the idea of a PC running Unix without having to futz with installing an OS not supported by the OEM.
But what drove me to sell the thing on eBay was the glossy screen. Gloss makes it absolutely impossible to do any work with any bright light source over my shoulder. I do a lot of work in a terminal, and a black background is just impossible to read. So I switched them to a light background. That actually wasn't easy because the Terminal in OS X at the time (10.4, I think) made it really hard to switch colors--I had to download some sort of plugin to do something that X11 terminals have been capable of for years. Even with a light background, though, it was hard to do work if there was a lamp behind me and impossible to do work if there was a window behind me.
I complained of this, and some people said "well, just close the blinds" or "sit somewhere else." I now laugh when Steve Jobs said that if you phone is dropping calls when you hold it a certain way, don't hold it that way. Seems responses like that are common amongst the Apple set.
This was so bad that I sold the thing and now I won't buy a laptop with a glossy screen. That pretty much limits me to enterprise models as nearly all the consumer models have the glossy screen. I think Apple used to have a very expensive MacBook Pro that gave you a choice between glossy and matte but I don't think they have that choice anymore. No more Apple hardware for me.
Penny - plain text accounting
I just ordered a 17" MacBook Pro with the glossy screen. My work was going to get me the matte finnish and I insisted on the glossy one. I have had both types in the past and I was completely blown away by how sharp and crisp the glossy screens look on the MacBook Pros. I didn't have issues with glare as I could adjust things slightly if the reflectivity became an issue. I was at first hesitant when ordering my first glossy display but now I am huge fan.
I detest glossy screens, for text or for graphics, as I rarely ever find a location where glare isn't a problem. I don't mind paying more for a matte screen, but I am livid that Apple has yet to offer the 13" MacBook Pro with a matte screen as an option for any price. I'd have bought one years ago if not for this. The matte screen is an available option on the 15" and 17" models but not the 13"... grrrr.
Obviously the submitter isn't really from a southern European country. In fact, this submitter clearly isn't even European at all since no real European passes up an opportunity to provide unwanted cultural and demographic information about his country.
In addition, you clearly are not really an American. Real Americans wouldn't care about the submitter's country whether he mentions it or not.
So the real question is why would someone impersonate a Euro just to say they don't like glossy screens? In addition why would someone impersonate an American just to complain that the country wasn't mentioned? There can be only one answer, clearly you are both terrorist operatives discussing some bombing plot to take place in Hungary with materials smuggled in with laptop screens.
I've notified the FBI, expect slashdot to be taken down shorly.
I used to be a die-hard Thinkpad fan and especially loved the matte screen that came with most models. Then my previous employer forced a glossy screen Presario on me and I had no choice but to accept the change.
Things were frustrating for a while, but then I realized that the glare was the only drawback and I had subconsciously learned to get rid of it by adjusting the angle of the screen.
Once I was over that hurdle, things were a lot more comfortable. The sharpness, vividness and brightness were much better than any matte screen I could find.
I've got a dell m1710 with a real video card in it, so I play a lot of games (since I don't have desktop right now) on it. I also watch shows, and do all my day to day stuff on it. Couldn't imagine not having it.
Glossy screens look bad only in direct light, and only with the reflections. Matte screens look bad (washed out) in any ambient light.
You don't own polarized sunglasses, do you? Nor does anyone who rated you up. LCDs are already polarized light -- that's how they are able to turn pixels on and off. Two polarizations 90 deg out of phase = no light transmission. Put on polarized (sun)glasses and suddenly you have a entirely black LCD from certain angles. Not every angle mind you -- I can see my landscape display just fine, but the portrait one next to it goes jet black with them on.
Now, I'll admit it lets you see dust and dirt on the display very clearly when you can't see the display itself. That's not really a great selling point...
Now on an OLED or plasma display you might have something -- problem is you have to match the polarization orientations. So if you tilt your head, suddenly you can't see your screen.
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There has to be some kind of matte screen cover you can add to your glossy screen to resolve this. even a privacy filter would probably block out a good amount of ambient light and let you see with more clarity. The whole polarized glasses thing isn't the best idea for lcd screens, and may end up being a strain on the eyes in the end.
I've never been disappointed by a matte screen, and am constantly annoyed by having to readjust the tilt and shuffle myself around when using a glossy screen. Especially neat when it's not really feasible to move your desk somewhere else. I'm also rather glad I have a matte TV as I don't really have any options for moving it away from windows.
To some extent, it's not so bad on larger screens because you can move stuff around more. On the netbook I have it's atrocious. I bought the netbook to be able to use it just about anywhere, which quite often means less than ideal lighting. (airports, outside, in the car) Any glare on the screen usually means that half of the already tiny screen is unusable. I'm definitely thinking that the hassle of an anti-glare film would be worth it.
FECK NO!
My hobby is photography and matte displays have reduced contrast. That's no good.
(I heard that professional photographers prefer a CRT over a LCD, but as I said, it's only a hobby for me.)
Free Manning, jail Obama.
Yeah, you mean 4:3 (which is 16:12).
I think he's lamenting the loss of 1920x1200 screens, not 1600x1200
Considering that all iMacs are glossy (the reason why I won't buy one, went instead with MacPro), and most MacBooks are glossy, I wonder how much glare is going in the shiny new all glass Apple stores???
Why are manufacturers doing this? Does anyone really prefer using glossy screens for day-to-day activities?"
Yes a large number of my executive and marketing clients prefer the glossy over the matte finish screens. Glossy is old , went away and then came back as new. So most executives / marketing people think that new is better than old, just because. They also prefer shiny.
At one time, and maybe still, there was a premium price for glossy screens. So of course if it cost more it must be better and they can only have the best.
Many times they run into problems with glare on airplanes and outdoors, but they never relate this to their choice of screens. I have learned that it is just better to tell them that they should buy an anti-glare screen that they can put over the existing screen. So now they have spent even more money on their screen and have to take their anti-glare screen with them and take it on and off their computer. But this adds to their illusion of being technically savvy, because they have found a solution to a computer problem.
I have had only one client who came to me and asked if there was a better way to solve this issue with the glossy screen and having to use the anti-glare screen. Now he feels technically superior to his colleagues, because I was able to provide him inside information straight from his IT department guru.
I'm surprised no one else asked. What keyboard layout is the OP talking about?
I hate them with the heat of a thousand burning suns.
Ian Ameline
I do not believe that anybody likes screen glare. Some people though are willing to deal with somewhat more glare for the sake of having somewhat more "vibrant" colors. Other people (including you and myself) would rather opt for less glare. Yet another group does not really care too much and makes choices based on other factors. It seems to me that the third group has the majority but is least vocal for understandable reasons. I can assure you though that our group is by far not small (and therefore - doomed;). Look at what happened with unibody MacBook Pro. At its introduction Apple made very big point of glossy screens being superior and therefore - only supported. Later on though market forced the company to silently introduce anti-glare screen options. The true solution to your problem is that as market in your country evolves, you will: 1/ Have access to vendors who provide primarily anti-glare screens - e.g. Lenovo Thinkpad series 2/ You will be able to order configuration per your liking - e.g. MacBook Pro with anti-glare screen.
The benefits of not being able to see polarized screen content, plus the fashion sense of Drew Carey! A guaranteed winner.
You're an idiot. The window is six feet tall and has no shade - I live on the plains, and I get direct sunlight through it all morning. Likewise in the jeep - clear glass, no tinting, Bright as hell all around. Clear enough for you now, dimwit?
You're fixing the wrong problem.
Instead of switching to a screen that spreads the glare out over a larger percentage of the screen, why not move the screen to a place that isn't in blinding sunlight?
Kinda true - the factory defaults are actually designed to hit power targets and are quite dark, but the stores crank up the vividiness to move units...
**Vanuatu or bust**
You live in a Southern European country with abundant sunlight. It full of lovely European girls in bikinis who want you to drink wine with them and enjoy the thrills of a nice F1 race while sitting poolside in the sun.
agreed
this whole trend of pushing 16x9 to the masses sucks hard. Monitors for some reason are evaluated on a diagonal basis and the wider the screen is, you need less pixels to achieve the same effect. Why not megapixels, which would be actually a useful metric here? Similar thing happened with cameras, manufacturers convinced unwashed masses that raw megapixels is everything that matters, while above some rather low level it's meaningless and quality of matrix and optics is what matters most - 20Mpix pic does you no good if it's all grainy and with shitloads of artifacts. Besides, it's too much detail for a human eye already
maybe widescreen at bigger sizes are ok, but what about lowend laptops are terrible with their pathetic 768px vertical? That pinnacle of human technology was available like 15 years ago? Half of the screen is used up by all the toolbars your office apps or browsers have and you do nothing but scroll all day. Add banners and you have to scroll to see the damn first sentence of the web article. I thought we are supposed to go higher with resolution as technology advances but all we get is 1/4 of the screen used to show beautiful white nothing on the sides.
Even 16:10 are on their way out (everything has to be fullhd hdtv now) so i had to buy pretty obsolete by today's standards 1920x1200 monitor to actually get any meaningful vertical upgrade from my previous 1280x1024. And i prefer to scale FF window to 4:3 format, zoom in web page contents hard and lay back. Remaining space is for pidgin conversation windows and such
The glossy screens on my netbook and the newer of my two traditional laptops are generally easier to read outside than the matte screen on the older of my traditional laptops, though the glossy screens are more prone to glare with a bad lighting angle. In general, the glossy screens I've seen have greater maximum brightness then the matte alternatives, which is pretty key to visibility in bright ambient light.
Almost all the TVs and Laptop screens and monitors are all use factory defaults that make it look brighter and more colorful than the monitor sitting next to it in the display line in the stores.
How is that possible? If every monitor is set to look better than the one next to it, then won't they all look the same?
I'm not denying your statement, just pointing the silliness of that strategy.
My 3 year old MacBook Pro has a matte display with a 1440x900 screen. In the current MacBook Pro product lineup, the matte display is only available with the high rez 1650x1080 screen. That's not so great for those of us with aging eyes, which presumably includes Steve Jobs, who is now 55. I tried the screen in an Apple store, and (fortunately) I could still see everything OK. I also tried stepping the resolution down to approximate the current resolution. That gives you 1440x852, which means that the resolution is 5% worse than on the current matte displays. Even the staff at the Apple Store were surprised by that. So I'm hoping that those of us with a strong preference for matte over glossy will be able to prevail on Apple's MacBook product managers to again offer a matte display with a 1440x900 resolution.
For work, coding, I like the mate/anti glare finish. It reduces the glare AND fingerprints from people pointing to things on the screen. For home use I do a lot of digital photography and I find the glossy screen to be crisper and better saturated than the others. Also I find the the color calibration works better as well.
Meddle thou not in the affairs of Dragons, for thou art crunchy and with most anything.
I like my glossy screens for coding, even in the sunlight I'll happily code on my macbook or take notes on my ipad.
Of course, if you own an iPad, you like shiny things - that's redundant ;-)
this way when i'm sitting on the balcony enjoying the view of the city-there is absolutely no chance of work tempting me! also decrease the chance of me going back in to the office before i see my boss pulling up.
"You are still innocent until proven guilty. What's changed is what they do to innocent people." by notnAP (846325)
fingers no; pulling my finger across a glossy glass touchscreen is an exercise in omg-I-need-a-new-matte-protector-thingie-fu.
I initially hated the glossy screen, and still do to some extent but I started doing some digital photography and my Dell U2711 matt finish screen is totally unusable for previewing photos. The Anti-Glare coating on it is awful, every photo looks like it has bad noise. I wouldn't want to use a glossy screen for every day office work however as I don't want to se myself reflected back at me. So I need 2 screens a glossy one that doesn't cause noise problems for previewing photos and a matt one for day to day use, I agree that the main screen on a laptop is simply stupid being glossy as if you ever use it somewhere where you can't control the light it is unusable.
I believe he is from Macedonia.
And that, dear children, is the reason why Capitalism does not find the optimal solution for the consumers of the world. Purchase process != usage process.
Consumerism is tailored for sales; user's needs is just but one factor in the equation (certainly influential but not decisive).
Singularity: a belief in the "God" idea with the "demiurge" relation inverted.
The glossy screens on MacBooks are no problem at all as long as you are wearing a black turtleneck.
Most of the pro-glossy posts I read here claim that glossy screens look clearer and have more vibrant colors than non-glossy screens. But this is an overbroad claim: only in the realm of cheap, color untrue monitors does this distinction make sense.
I own two monitors (one by LaCie, another by Eizo) built for professional photo work. Neither of these have a glossy finish and both off clearer and vastly more vibrant colors than any monitor I've seen with the glossy finish. In fact, I've never seen a professional-grade monitor of this type *with* a glossy finish.
I'd like to hear of a counter example; thusfar it seems to me that there is no quality argument to be made for the glossy screen. Instead, it's just quick fix for a substandard monitor.
P.S. I'm sure an Apple fanboy will reply that Apple's monitors are both glossy and "professional-grade". This is an incredible misconception: no Apple monitor can stand up to its professional competition. While Apple's offerings may be a reasonable upgrade from the standard Dell or Acer monitor (barf!), they are squarely outside the ring when it comes to competition in the photo-ready hardware space.
If I use a glossy screen in an office environment, I get powerful headaches from eye strain. So it's matte all the way.
Related question: Even if you defend glossy screens with a knife between your teeth, how can you justify the bevel around the screen being glossy, too? Such laptops are often marketed as being hip and trendy, but they really should be sledgehammered!
"Love heals scars love left." -- Henry Rollins
It's simple: matte screens look like crap on the showroom floor (ie., Best Buy) when compared next to a shiny glossy screen notebooks. The shiny screens that look just like their HDTV are what consumers are lusting for. Sure the professionals want matte screens but the mass public fills a larger percent of the ledger.
Glossy screen + sandpaper
while (true != false) process_more_stupid_code();
Well, At work I work mostly in command line on varied *nix boxes so a natural is the matte screen. At home, I am more interested in watching videos, gaming, and generally stuff that is graphics/color intensive so I absolutly like the glossy better for that. I think the best solution is to buy a glossy and put an anti glare/privacy screen on it when at work. In my case work supplied me with a laptop so I just keep the screen taped on it and home I use a glossy 17" macbook pro.
"Computers are a lot like Air Conditioners" "They both work great until you start opening Windows"
High-end CRT monitors had it, my glasses have it, my camera lenses have it ... why doesn't any LCD screen seem to have decent anti-reflection coatings? With multiple thin-film layers it should be possible to eliminate reflections nearly entirely while still having a bright and non-matte screen.
The average /.er lives in his mothers basement so screen glare isn't an issue.
Why don't you just make the icons and text bigger? Or is this not something supported on Macs? Reducing the resolution was a reasonable solution 10 years ago on CRT monitors when the OS and software didn't scale, but doing that on an LCD looks horrible!
Ingredients: Turkey, Mechanically Separated Turkey, Water, Salt, Flavour.
SGI's terminal fonts, ohlfs (from Openstep Enterprise), or terminus make PuTTY almost usable.
Matte screens included. Hell, even CRT's..
If glossy screens really bother folks that much (and there's no option available from the manufacturer), matte replacement LCDs are available for most sizes. A quick Google will turn up lots of vendors, and the installation isn't that difficult. You can sell the removed glossy screen on Ebay to recoup part of your cost, too. Not as convenient or as cheap as having it as a default option, but at least it's possible.
I hear PixelQi is coming out with DIY replacement screens as well, although apparently only for the 10.1" netbook size right now.
The answer to your glossy screen issue can be found with Pixel Qi. They have replacement screens for your less than desirable panels that can function in direct sunlight with no backlight. These products are not widely available yet as Pixel Qi is relatively new to the market. They were formed by a couple people form the OLPC project who worked on the screen design. Link to Engadet review: click here
I didn't realize that natural light was more abundant in small European countries than, say, any random spot on the surface of the Earth. Do the rest of us live in caves or something? Or have curtains not made it yet to small European countries?
How did you manage to lure a hot girl into your basement?
I had a matte 15 MBP and couldn't stand how washed out the colors were compared to my wife's laptop. I've went glossy and never looked back. I can use it fine in any environment.
-Code
Different applications, you stupid douche tool.
What about CRTs with infinite viewing angles? They weren't designed specifically to increase viewing angles. And yet these privacy filters work with them, too! What kind of 14-year-old braces-wearing pencilneck with modpoints would mod you up...oh wait, answered my own question.
Diminishing refraction requires a smooth surface (i learned something reading that amateur telescope making book)
Glossy surfaces reflect higher intensity light sources more readily.
Polarize or coat the damned things already, so the light inside can come out, but these exterior sources are diffused across the surface.
Matte has drawbacks, but deepness of black and 'poppy' RGB aren't why I bought my computer. Neither is HD video playback, dammit. If I wanted an entertainment device with a keyboard, I would invent one.
I have a 'laptop computer' which I use to 'compute' on my 'lap', and I want about 2 million gloss-free, color-accurate pixels to do it with.
Try taking your computer upstairs for a while. It's awful.
Glossy screens look pretty in shops, that's why they make them.
They might be Ok for games but they're useless for doing any work.
No sig today...
Maybe thats why Jobs wears black turtlenecks all the time, it minimises reflections on his iPad screen.
You write well in English, try typing louder to see if your people understand you!
A few things make glossy better:
1. First you at least have the option of angling your screen away from the source of glare, whereas a matte screen will always glare ALL light from a 180 degree hemisphere.
2. Because the light from a glossy screen isn't diffused, it is brighter and has better contrast allowing you to see in bright sun.
Some people don't do real work, they just play games and use Facebook. I guess glossy is ok for them.
No sig today...
Diminishing refraction requires a smooth surface (i learned something reading that amateur telescope making book)
Glossy surfaces reflect higher intensity light sources more readily.
Polarize or coat the damned things already, so the light inside can come out, but these exterior sources are diffused across the surface.
Matte has drawbacks, but deepness of black and 'poppy' RGB aren't why I bought my computer. Neither is HD video playback, dammit. If I wanted an entertainment device with a keyboard, I would buy one. I have a 'laptop computer' which I use to 'compute' on my 'lap', and I want about 2 million gloss-free pixels to do it with.
Keyboards can be changed (usually quite easily).
No sig today...
I'm not denying your statement, just pointing the silliness of that strategy.
I am not denying the silliness of the strategy. But nevertheless, they do these things. That is how they race to the bottom leading to this silliness.
One marketing dept of one hard disk manufacturer gets a little creative and defines 1000bytes as 1 kB. If the other disk makers do not follow suit they lose. And in Baghdad every store hires criers to shout, call, please and beg the passers by to come into the store. It is ridiculous, it is silly. But the businesses do it. As long as one is doing it, others must follow suit or lose marketshare.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
Easy solution. This place http://www.nushield.com/ has matte plastic for computer screens. It tucks in behind the bezel. Just remember to take off all the blue protective plastic. I thought the thing was too dark until it started peeling away. (I don't have any financial interest in the company. Just had the same complaint as the OP.)
Unfortunately for you probably the only really useful thing to do is to replace the screen (if you can't find a filter that fixes the problem).
I hate glossy screens, they are as bad from my point of view as keyboards with layout that screws up up/down/left/right keys and places insert/delete/home/end/pgup/pgdn vertically rather than horizontally, which means I can't use Borland style shortcuts for cut/paste/delete without looking.
You can't handle the truth.
Not sure why, but I've noticed time and time again that neurotypicals have no problem with glare that drives me nuts.
"LCDs are already polarized light -- that's how they are able to turn pixels on and off. "
True so far, but...
"Two polarizations 90 deg out of phase = no light transmission."
Not completely true. There are 2 ways light can be polarized: planar or circular. In planar polarized light (which is what you are speaking of) the electric field will move in one fixed plane, and the magnetic field in a plane at 90 degrees. In circular polarized light, the E and H fields corkscrew through space in either a clockwise or counterclockwise direction.
Either form of polarization can be used to implement an LCD. Polarized sunglasses are vertical planar polarized, because the bulk of the reflections you get off things like roads and water are horizontally planar polarized. Looking at an LCD that uses either form of circular polarization with planar polarized glasses does NOT reduce the light transmission to zero at any angle (it does reduce it by a fixed amount, just as it reduces the amount of light transmission from a non-polarized source.)
LCDs are moving to the circular polarization form for that reason.
(BTW and semi-OT: the glasses used in movie theaters showing 3D movies use circular polarization (clockwise for one eye, counterclockwise for the other) for the same reason: with the old planar polarized lenses, if you tilted your head, you began to lose the separation of the views. You don't get that with circular polarization.)
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This 90% figure is pure fiction. A journalist at The Guardian (loss making competitor to The Times) speculates that they might have lost 90% of their online readership. He doesn't have access to The Times' numbers.
16x10? I presume you mean 4:3 (16:12) which was common before 16:9 became all the rage.
I think 16:9 for desktops monitors is driven largely by use for consuming widescreen media (though for some applications, getting the width to get two large windows side-by-side makes them better than a 4:3 display with similar total pixel count.) Corporate use tends to them because they are what is cheap and common due to home use.
For notebooks, 16:9 format matches better to a convenient format for the keyboard part of the device than 4:3 does.
"I live in a small southern European country where natural light abounds." Wtf, you have a better sun than the rest of us?
Yes, I really meant "16x10". This was the most widely implemented widescreen aspect ratio before the 16x9 craze began a year ago.
The most common instances of 16x10 are the 22" 1680x1050 and the 24" 1920x1200 LCD monitors.
I like widescreen better than "TV" (4:3), but I like 16x10 widescreen better than 16x9 widescreen (too short).
If so, then 1920x1200 Thinkpads are still there, last I checked. And they have matte screens, too. And I don't know of anything better, specifically for the "corporate laptop" role (though I also have one for myself).
Calling 4:3 "TV" is kind of funny, since TVs are now almost invariably 16:9 which is exactly why monitors are almost invariably 16:9, since the main selling point of widescreen monitors is compatibility with 16:9 widescreen content designed for widescreen TVs.
There's probably less market for non-16:9 widescreen than for 4:3 monitors.
Not really correct. I wear polarized glasses, as the other poster said there's two ways to polarize lenses. If what you said was true, I'd be 100% screwed all the time and I'd be wearing contacts with polarized sunglasses everywhere. Go-go photophobia(aka light sensitivity). After nearly 6 years of migraines every few days, my eyesight isn't quite right anymore. But in my case I see maybe one LCD every few months that's partially blocked out.
Om, nomnomnom...
I think the main reason for the change was marketing - people respond to shiny things more than matte things. its evolutionary and we've not lost it from the fish -- who we attract to our hooks. Its used on products and packaging.
One could say many women use shiny things to catch men; some ear rings even look like fishing lures and the body piercings... well those make it look like they got hooked themselves and escaped... (notice how they area almost always shiny)
Democracy Now! - uncensored, anti-establishment news
I avoid glossy displays because I don't like wasting time and being distracted by moving my head or tilting the monitor (if it can be) to avoid glare and reflections.
With my iPhone--no choice but glossy--I'm frequently tilting the display to see it clearly. Such a pain.
A coat of clear matte finish spray paint?
"Is that real poncho or a Sears poncho?" ~~FZ
Need a matte finish? Just let the dust build up... Works great!
I can't see anything on a matte screen in bright sunlight. Neither can my wife, or any of my lab mates. Outdoors in sunlight, it's easy to keep the sun from reflecting into your eyes; with a matte screen, all kinds of stray light gets reflected your way. In medium brightness (eg, at my wife's old lab, where they had very bright lighting and everything was white), glossy can be a problem, but I haven't ever had any issues. Currently, I am in sunny southern california, next to an open window, in a white room. No problems.
An image is not accurate no matter how much you shake your stick when you have reflections super imposed on top of the image. It is a bit like you added a completely unrelated 20% visible layer on top of an image in Photoshop. It's the exact opposite of accuracy.
Now, I recently switched to a Matte screen from Glossy. I see no saturation difference with my present LED screen verses the old glossy. Marketing crap is marketing crap and it has to stop.
Once you start despising the jerks, you become one.
I like the glossy screen on my 17" laptop, but that is strictly used as an indoor computer, since I find it cumbersome to drag around from place to place. The non-glossy finish on my netbook however is sublime for outdoor activities.
The poster is probably from Greece and has plenty of good reasons to be ashamed of it. (Hint: search for 'PIGS' in the financial news).
I have an iMac at work with a glossy screen, and a MacBook Pro with a glossy screen. The iMac I can arrange to avoid bothersome reflections pretty easily. I can often arrange my MacBook Pro to avoid reflections at home, but not always when I'm travelling with it.
I typically have these screens at about 25% of max brightness. This is usually about the right level to match the ambient light indoors--which is the key to avoiding eye strain when you're staring at a monitor all day.
But when I'm in a brighter situation, and the reflections are more of a problem, my first step is to simply turn up up the backlight. The backlights on the new MacBook Pros are incredibly bright, and can often simply drown out reflections.
Build a man a fire, he's warm for one night. Set him on fire, and he's warm for the rest of his life.
A matte screen does not actually reflect any less light than a glossy screen. It just reflects it more randomly.
The scattering of light tends to decrease perceived saturation. This is why the sky does not look as blue on hazy days as it does when the air is clear and humidity is low.
A clear, flat piece of glass will transmit light more exactly (maintaining saturation), but it will also reflect incident light more exactly. This will cause sharper reflections, which might be more distracting. But someone who is very serious about color will be controlling the lighting for reflections anyway--no matter how matte or glossy their screen is. Again--because the two actually reflect the same amount of light, just differently.
It always cracks me up when people talk about "color accuracy" in the context of a laptop near a window. The first thing you do for color accuracy is control your ambient lighting. The second thing is to profile your monitor regularly. No one is doing professional prepress in a Starbucks on the corner. :-)
Build a man a fire, he's warm for one night. Set him on fire, and he's warm for the rest of his life.
Patience. Trans-reflective screens are coming: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eQvefuCHZds
Either form of polarization can be used to implement an LCD
I'm not gonna come out and say you're wrong here, but since liquid crystals work by rotating the orientation of linearly polarized light, and since that rotation shouldn't have any effect on circularly polarized light, I don't see how you can make an LCD that uses circular polarization.
Now, you can always add a quarter-wave plate to the front of the screen to convert the linearly polarized light to circular as it exits, but that's not the same thing.
LCDs are moving to the circular polarization form for that reason.
I can't find any info on the Net to suggest this is true, and I haven't ever seen an LCD screen that didn't respond to polarizing glasses.
You're right... but for the first 50 years of television, they were 4:3. Oops, I think my age is showing. I was born before the advent of HDTV. :-)
Some excellent products that beat the competition hands down in every other way are only available with one screen type.
It's tough to ditch the vendor when they only sell the same five models of glossy screen notebooks from the same three brands at every brick-and-mortar store within any reasonable driving distance. (Usually HP, Compaq, and Dell. Sometimes Gateway sneaks one in.)
Some folks don't like to purchase computers online or via the telephone because you can't touch it before you buy it, and can't just walk in for customer service or a return, but apparently they will be forced to comply...
After reading this thread, it seems that there is a certain, err, "vision type" (for lack of better term) that cannot focus correctly if distracted by gloss. It's almost like those people who can't see the 3d images in the blob-artwork, but in reverse--they can't stay focused on the screen and are constantly distracted by the 3dish images that are created by reflections and the such.
Since I don't have this problem, it is clear to me (pun intended) that glossy finish looks better.
Yes, you can enlarge text in individual applications, but here you have to go to considerable effort to end up with a solution that is inferior to what was standard before. All I want is the option to buy an i7-based 15" MacBook Pro with a matte screen and 1440x900 rez.
I was staying in a hotel that used iMacs for all their needs recently. I walked into the foyer wearing polarized shades and thought all their computers were switched off because the screens were black. So this trick won't work with those, it would seem.
Really cool setup though, they were streaming all the TV from a central server with VLC.
You are correct about the quarter wave plate - I was trying to keep my post as simple as possible while getting the bulk of the point across (you may notice I didn't say specifically HOW you implemented an LCD with circular polarization).
As to the screens moving over: Well, I've had to evaluate a large number of LCD screens for a product I am on the design team for, and I have seen that, however, I was evaluating mostly displays intended for telematics use, where the user wearing polarized sunglasses is a significant use case. In the field of larger displays such as laptop and desktop they may be lagging a bit.
www.eFax.com are spammers
They are only good for fixing your hair in the reflection, or looking over your shoulder.
They are ONLY OK in specific lighting conditions which are rare.
Colour Matching on them is unrealistic to.
After years of using matte screens, and suffering from periodic migraines, I asked my optometrist for some help, I was sure it was caused by vision since I almost always got a migraine when I went to a movie theatre. So he said try a glossy screen. Well, now instead of 30 or 40 migraines a year, it is more like 10 (theatre). Yes Glossy has its tradeoffs, but for me, it reduced the strain on my eyes. It appears that my eyes kept trying to focus on the fuzzy edges of fonts on the matte screen, where the glossy has sharp definition of fonts.
I like widescreen better than "TV" (4:3), but I like 16x10 widescreen better than 16x9 widescreen (too short).
Actually, that makes sense. Monitors have historically been available in aspect ratios of (roughly) 1.25 (5x4), 1.333 (4x3), 1.6 (16x10), and 1.778 (16x9). Of these, 1.6 is far and away the closest to being a Golden Rectangle, which would have an aspect ratio of about 1.618. The Golden Rectangle is so named because it is considered the most beautiful of rectangles, and it shows up repeatedly in both art and architecture. Frankly, I'm surprised that the 16:9 aspect ratio has had as much market success as it has, given that it's taking people further away from an aesthetic ideal that has stood for hundreds of years.
It's only funny if you didn't grow up decades ago watching 4:3 TV sets. (The first TV I remember my family owning was black and white, and it had vacuum tubes. One of the best Zenith TVs we ever owned.) For some of us, this new 16:9 screen format isn't "TV." For me, it's "high def TV," and the old format will always be plain old "TV" to me.
I should also point out that digital vs. analog doesn't enter into it, because 480i/480p content still dominates many networks -- and I'm saying this as a DirecTV subscriber. Those black side bars have become a common sight on my HDTV screen, since I absolutely can't stand seeing 4:3 content stretched horizontally unless some kind of "smart stretch" algorithm is applied (where the distortion increases toward the left and right edges of the display, but is zero at the center).
I should also point out that many laptop manufacturers deliberately choose 16:10 aspect ratio for their screens because their customers demand the extra real-estate, and because such designs allow widescreen HD content to be rendered while leaving room at the bottom or top for player HUD, controls, or for other use. Apple uses 16:10 for the MacBook Pro, for example.
Furthermore, Samsung widescreen monitors are often 16:10 (I own one for a desktop machine, purchased within the last year). I could go on. There's nothing preventing the display of 16:9 content on a 16:10 screen -- those extra scanlines are either going to be letterbox area, or they'll be used for controls or information. It's not the huge swath of black that letterboxing on a 4:3 screen causes.
I don't think your supposition on the market size for 16:10 monitors (or "non-16:9 widescreen," as you describe them) is supportable, considering how many 16:10 devices are on the market right now.
That's interesting, thanks for posting, although I wonder if you have the details about LCDs right. I didn't know 3D movie glasses are circularly polarized but had wondered why they don't act like regular polarized material.
I just put on a pair of Real 3D glasses; looking at my LCD seems to change the color balance: if my head is straight it's fairly normal, if I tilt to the right it looks warmer, if I tilt to the left the blue starts to dominate more. It's not an absolute blockout of some colors, just a shift in the proportion of them, which seems to have its max effect if my head is tilted about 45 degrees.
The real problem here is power consumption. The LCD's signal has to be stronger than the reflection's signal, and you can only do this by giving the LCD a very powerful backlight, which would wear your battery out very quickly. Probably backlights can't even be made that bright anyway. The bright light would also hurt your eyes.
On the other hand, you could make the surface matte, thus adding noise to the reflection, and also adding noise to the LCD image. To overcome this noise, you would again have to make the LCD brighter. Same problem.
Our eyes perceive relative brightness, not absolute brightness. They tend to adjust to the over-all brightness we see, and only distinguish differences in brightness. That's why, if it's bright outside, and you look into a dark house through a window, you can't see in. The light from inside the house is indeed coming through the window, but the reflected light is much stronger, and your eye perceives the variations in the reflected image, not the fainter variations in the light transmitted from the inside. Hence you have to lean in and cup your hands around your head to block out the daylight, to see the light from inside.
That's why you need curtains. At night, people inside a lit room in a house see only their reflections on the window, not the fainter light from outside. But people outside see the stronger light from the room, not their own fainter reflection.
So, just use a matte surface, and crank the brightness way up.
They're stupid. Stop the madness.
In the 1920s they called 1900-1910 the "oughts" as in "in nineteen-ought-seven my flivver burned 12 hogsheads of whale oil per rod, and that's the way I liked it!". People could and did say "nineteen-ought-ten" but the usage was also mocked, sort of like "loch ness monsta stole mah dolla-three-fitty".
The called 1911-1919 the "teens" as you'd expect.
You can look it up, really.
Reflective displays are obviously not the solution in bright light situations.
Transflective is what I want: http://www.liliputing.com/2010/06/cpt-transflective-display-could-give-pixel-qi-a-run-for-its-money.html
I want to say most people do, since most laptops are. But I can only say that I have preferred them since they came out. I will only buy a laptop with a glossy screen. I upgrade my own laptop about every 6 months. I work on a laptop 8hrs a day. If I were to spend most of my time on laptops outside or for some reason backup up against a window, I'd probably have a different preference. But that's not the case. Yes, once in a while I find myself in a position where the glossy is not optimal. That's very rare compared to the other times.
I work for an LCD manufacturer so let me give you some pointers:
First of all neither of them is best overall. It all depends on what you use it for. It is like having to decide on whether a fork, or a spoon is "best". Forks are great until you are served soup...
The original poster asked for a screen that works in sunny conditions. In that case matte screens are best.
Glossy is best in the dark.
Let me try to explain why.
Assume that you have a screen with 400 cd/m2 brightness and a 400:1 contrast ratio. That means that white shines with 400 cd/m2 and that the backlight bleeds through with 1 cd/m2 when showing black.
What manufacturers will not tell you is that you only get a 400:1 contrast ratio in a completely dark room. This is not the intended use case of the display. It is like buying a car that is advertised to make 1000 miles to the gallon... but only in a downhill.
If the room is even the slightest tiny bit dim your *viewing* contrast ratio will be degraded. The existing ambient light will be reflected from the display surface adding, lets say a mere 1 cd/m2 extra to both the white and black graphics. So now your viewing contrast ratio will be degraded to (white + reflected)/(black + reflected) = (400+1)/(1+1) = 200:1 even in a dimly lit room. When the brightness of the ambient reflected light is in the order of the display brightness itself, then your expensive 400:1 display is degraded to a (400+400)/(1+400) = 2:1 contrast ratio.
Yeah, you may say, that is why I spent a boatload of money to get the TV with the advertised 1,000,000:1 contrast ratio so I am safe... But all the manufacturer needs to do, is to lower the blackness of the display from 1 cd/m2 to 0.0004 cd/m2 so he gets 400/0.0004 = 1000000:1 CR.
But still... when the reflected ambient light reaches 400 cd/m2, your expensive 1000000:1 TV degrades to a measly (400+400)(0.0004+400) = 2:1 CR.
There are only 3 ways to solve the problem
1) Use only in a dark room
2) Use a higher brightness backlight
3) Get rid of the reflected light
(or 4, get a transflective display like the pixel-qi, but at the cost of poor color graphics reproduction)
Solution 1 does not apply to the original poster.
Solution 2 works fine for desktop screens and TVs where you have electrical power available. A high luminosity screen on a laptop will drain your batteries like crazy and will need a fan to cool the display.
Now to solution 3. There are actually 2 kinds of reflection: Specular and diffuse.
To reduce the diffuse reflection you use an AR (Anti Reflection) treatment. That is commonly applied to eyeglasses and binoculars.
To reduce the specular reflection you use an AG (Anti Glare) treatment
A really good quality (and expensive) AR/AG will reflect only 0.5% of the ambient light. Plain glass reflects about 30% I think. So AR/AG is about 60 times better than glass.
So comparing a hypothetical display with a plain glass surface, with a good AR/AG display we get the following calculations:
1) Reference glass display with 400:1 CR that under some hypothetical lighting conditions reflects 400 cd/m2:
CR = (400+400)/(1+400) = 2:1
2) AR/AG display that is 60 times better at avoiding reflections:
CR = (400+400/60)/(1+400/60) = 406.6/7.6 = 53:1
The difference can be seen here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Glossy-Matte-394-S1.png
***The conclusion is simple: To get best results in high ambient light conditions you must buy a matte display.***
The reason why laptop manufacturers use glossy screens is the following.
1) Good Anti Glare screens are more expensive to produce.
2) Anti Glare is a thin film applied to the screen. If you pick an anti glare film up and try to look through it, you will notice that it is hazy. This means that applying an AG/AR will lose you some Distinctness Of Image (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Distinctness_of_image)
This is the reason that manufacturers will claim, in order to justify the choice of glossy screen. Sure it *does
Is this just a way of saying you don't have buildings in your country? I'm surprised you have electricity, then.
...I'd get one. For a display, I want to see what's on the screen, not me or what's behind me. I have to admit this imac isn't as bad as I was afraid it would be, but it helps that a lot of the windows I use have light backgrounds. Anything with a dark background is both bad display and a bad mirror.
that's North.
Wait, which latitudinal hemisphere are you in? Crap, I can't figure it out either...
The problem isn't that the product isn't made for you.
The problem is you are making yourself difficult.
Adapt.
They make me want to puke. Can I sue them?
Worthless reflective crap... and manufacturers no longer post if their screens are defective by design in their descriptions.
Return the damn things if they are defectively reflective!
Think of poor ceiling cat...
-- Terry
Order a Thinkpad anywhere. Buy correctly localized keyboard FRU.
Insert "that try and" or "hopefully," or similar where appropriate, for reality, but he's talking about it in relation to marketing. And as we all know, marketing has nothing in common with reality.
Canada: The US's more awesome sibling.
And while we're at it, I'm not a fan of these wide screens either. My primary use of my computer is for work, not watching movies. I want screen real-estate.
What, pray tell, makes glossy screens "less accurate"? A matte panel is a LCD with a piece of pitted glass in front. A glossy panel is a LCD with a piece of unpitted glass in front.
And neither one gives accurate color rendition, for sufficiently professional values of "accurate". But that's beside the point of the present discussion, I suppose. The glossy screen does give better contrast—because there's no milky haze in front of the black parts of the image being displayed, they look blacker. However, I don't find that this compensates for the annoying reflections I get from the shiny screen.
I understand, dear reader, that you may not find the reflections annoying. I think you should buy whatever screen suits your fancy. The problem is that your fancy will be well suited only if you like shiny screens, because matte screens are next to impossible to find.
I had to buy a laptop for business reasons a couple of months ago. I went to Frys, and found a large selection. Quite a few matched my technical requirements, and I wound up buying a shiny screen. I did not want a shiny screen. But not one of the laptops on display in the whole store had a matte screen. I literally had no choice. (Perhaps I could have shopped around for obscure obsolete laptops on the web, and maybe found one with a frosted screen...but I didn't have time to do that.)
The story is similar with the no-longer-new "wide screen" displays. I hate them. They're fine for watching movies, but not for working with multiple documents and windows. I'm hanging onto my 1200 x 1600 desktop display until it dies. After that, I will have to buy a huge "wide screen" display to get the same real estate, and to prevent that cramped "slit view" feeling every time I get when I work on my new laptop which of course has a wide screen dammit!
My point isn't that you shouldn't be able to buy a laptop or display that's as shiny as you like and proportioned to your tastes. Everyone should get to buy what they want, and can afford. My point—and the source of my anger— is that the marketing cabal that runs the industry has decided to simplify their lives by simplifying our choices: we can have any display we want, as long as it's shiny and narrow. Henry Ford tried to do this with the Model T: as he famously is alleged to have said, "You can have any color Model T you want—as long as it's black." Eventually, competition forced Ford to offer a variety of colors. However, we have now gone a huge step backward: the mega-manufacturers who make all the computer parts and sell them under a variety of brand names have simply decided that they can make more money if they give us no real choices.
Well, there's one choice, of course: how much money you spend. That's where all the marketing schemes are concentrated—in presenting you with an obfuscated range of choices based purely on price range and hyped features. For an example of this, I direct the gentle reader to the way Intel is currently marketing their "i series" CPUs. Do note that the laptop and desktop i series nomenclatures do not have anything that resembles a logical relationship.
Great men are almost always bad men--Lord Acton's Corollary
Blame the MPAA.
When TV came out, it was easier to build deflection coils that weren't radically different from each other, and it was much easier to build tubes that were conical in shape, so the first TVs were round, and the picture was a square in the middle of an oscilloscope tube.
That's not going to do for usability, because gravity tends to put a lot of the world's interesting stuff on the horizon, and not much above or below us. So 3:4 was picked as the aspect ratio.
When TV started to take audience share away from movies, the movie studios started going to widescreen. Then wider-than-widescreen. Then really-really-widescreen - 2.33:1. Easy to do with film and optics, and 2.33:1 was impossible to do with most TV. Moviegoers got great expansive vistas of landscapes, and it kept the theaters alive. If you wanted current events/variety shows, you watched TV. If you wanted to see something beautiful, you had to go to the theater.
Enter the home video revolution some decades later. Letterboxing and what-not bit both TV manufacturers and moviemakers in the foot. 16:9 was a pretty good compromise.
But the root cause of the move to wider aspect ratios was the MPAA trying to make sure that their form of entertainment could never be properly replicated on a television... and then having to change its mind as soon as they realize the movie rental business was more profitable than the moviemaking business.
Noticing is something someone chooses to do. Glossy screens have horrible color representation. They are the equivalent of if you stick a image of yourself over the main image with 30% opacity. That is just abysmal! I don't want my whites tainted with the colors of my fingers! If you want, I can calculate the hex value color difference so I can give you a percentage of how off the colors are.
Once you start despising the jerks, you become one.
I'd much rather have a matte screen and a 4:3 ratio (I guess it is cheaper to build a glossy screen in widescreen)
When I replace the 20-month-old Macbook Pro I'm typing this on, I am so gonna spring a bit extra for the matte screen.
egypt urnash minimal art.
I luv my Toshiba R500 Transflexive LCD...
Outside you can just turn off the lcd backlight and the ambient light is reflected behind the lcd so that it bounce and illuminate your screen!
So on a sunny day I can code like 12hrs outside in the sun without having to need sunglasses or a single wire... No need to hide in the shades anymore.
I will never buy a glossy screen.
In fact, the majority of people do, that's why they are popular. Next question.
I thought that just made the wellhead swell and stay hard longer.
No.
I absolutely hate (and I'm not normally a hater) the glare from the glossy screens... and the fingerprints that seem to magically appear whenever I shift or close my eyes for a moment of respite.
FWIW - There are privacy filters available, that also act as anti-glare filters. Personally, I've found certain size displays to be absent from your selection of these screens, and some are incompatible with laptop displays. Not to mention that the privacy filtering makes them a rather poor choice of anti-glare covering when trying to share your entertainment with others on a laptop.
Luckily, I found a WUXGA 1920x1200 screen for my purposes... but it cost me.
Nope, don't confuse 4:3, 16:10, and 16:9. They are different, period.
Not to mention running 1024x768 VMs. The laptop I am typing this on has a 1280x800 screen, and yes I actually tried once to run VMs on it.
On the contrary. As you've just described, ALL the light coming out of an LCD display (apart from a bit of leakage, which isn't a good thing anyway) is polarised in a particular direction. If you sit there with polarised glasses in the correct orientation, you're not blocking much of the intended light.
Sure, you can't use them in portrait that way, but when was the last time you tried to do that with a laptop? Well, unless it's an iPad-alike, anyway.
"I Know You Are But What Am I?"
You sissy, quit whining about your screen and be grateful you have the technology to do any of this.
You've been only a few tech company successes away from only having a calculator and no internet this whole time.
Try being happy that CRTs are off the radar, that MP3 was invented, that your motherboard has no jumpers.
Quit bein' a damn whineypants.
On the average I've found the colors to be brighter and more accurate on a high-gloss screen as compared to the diffused screens of most other displays. Black really becomes black as the display doesn't catch and reflect the ambient glow, which turns it to a dark grey while contrast and sharpness are enhanced as well.
Yes, I realize there are issues as well. If you have a bright light or bright reflections behind you, or you happen to wear a brightly-colored shirt (including white) those reflections will make dark images harder to see. But by using subdued lighting throughout the workspace and eliminating any direct reflections, the glossy display is a much better one to use.
In my own case, I sit right beside an east-facing window and all I need to do is simply angle the display enough away that I don't get any direct reflection out of the window or off of my clothing.
Wouldn't it be more proper to refer to 16:10 as 8:5?
They're great when you can get them in ideal conditions, but on a laptop, they're a stupid idea. It makes it impossible to use in many situations.
3M Makes a privacy filter that helps, but last time I used one, it was not a thin film that you could easily apply (like the shields that various companies make for your touch screen phone) but was a sort of clip on affair. They may have made some improvement in that area.
While the display IS more color accurate, it's less useful on a display that you'll be not using exclusively indoors in a dim indirectly lit setting. Even normal overhead lights completely ruin their color.
This may sound good http://www.coachoutletfactory.com/
You could maybe buy a matt screen laptop abroad and then change the keyboard. With most laptops you can quite easily pop out the keys and move them around. If the problem is that you have a unique alphabet, maybe you could buy a replacement keyboard. They're not too expensive for laptops. I was looking for a replacement for mine the other day and they were about $20 (australian).
They sell them in sheets of different sizes (here in Japan at least). They go on like stickers but the "adhesive" is usually pretty weak so you can peel them off, rinse them, and stick them again. I had one on my previous notebook (15" screen) and my Zaurus, but my current notebook I don't use outside and my Zaurus has been replaced with a Z1 which has a screen that works fine in sunlight. As I recall the 15" sheet was somewhat expensive but it worked great.