Slashdot Mirror
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?"
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
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.
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...
Ah, slashdot, the place where people will jump in and start talking about dark rooms when the parent poster specifically talked about being sat in front of a tall window.
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?
So really it should be "Good-looking-screen-but-with-reflections vs. Not-as-good-looking-without-as-many-reflections"
Which can be efficiently summarized as "Glossy vs Matte".
i freaking HATE the glossy screen on my netbook. i dont want to look at the lights on the ceiling, i want to see my screen.
Isn't it ironic that we now buy products, specifically to reduce the LCD viewing angle to nearly zero degrees, after all this time spent on developing LCDs with greater viewing angles?
Comment removed based on user account deletion
That's what built-in webcams are for.
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.
We all know that once the ring goes on the finger, our libido stops cold.
Our libido?! I take it you're female, then.
Why assume he's single?....
He was posting here...
It really sounds like most of the people posting here are comparing apples to oranges -- i.e. comparing two different panels, one that happens to be glossy and one that happens to be matte. Unless you are comparing two identical panels, one with a glossy coating, the other matte, you can't draw any conclusions about which is 'better'. Personally, I have a laptop with a glossy screen and a desktop with matte screens. The laptop screen has a dull and washed out look to it, while the desktop monitors have a crisp and vibrant look to them, but this has nothing to do with the fact that one is glossy and the other matte -- the laptop panel is just rubbish.
I will say that given the choice, I'd always go with a matte panel -- even if it does reduce vibrancy or brightness (of which I am skeptical), I very much value the ability to work in poor lighting conditions without angling the screen. I presume Apple's screens are among the best glossy panels available (you'd hope so for the price...) but I still hate using my girlfriend's macbook pro in a bright environment....