Extending LCD Display Life? 25
polymath69 asks: "I use a laptop as my primary home machine, and wish the display to last as long as possible. There are two main camps of opinion on how one ought to ensure this, each grounded on a seemingly logical point. Opinion One goes like this: An LCD's backlight is only going to emit photons for some number of hours, therefore shut it off when not in use to maximize life. Opinion Two counters: A backlight can only be turned on some number of times, therefore leave it on to maximize life. The conclusions in each camp are diametrically opposed. So what is the truth? And how do you make a choice when two seemingly irrefutable arguments are in disagreement? Both these truths start from the same given: that eventually, the LCD will fail. But looking at that given from two points of view leads to contradictory answers. Now, one of these arguments has got to prevail. But which is it, and why?"
Re:Honestly.... (Score:1)
My no-name laptop only has two mouse-buttons, but has the undocumented feature that the touchpad recognizes a tap with two fingers as being a click of the middle mouse-button, and a tap with three as being the right mouse-button. Since I prefer tapping the pad to pressing buttons, it works fine - I never have to press buttons.
Touchpads made by Synaptics can be configured so that the left physical button acts as middle button - to left-click, you tap, to middle-click, you press the left button, and to right-click, you press the right button. There's a link to the appropriate program (tpconfig, IIRC) from Synaptics' web site.
Re:Honestly.... (Score:1)
Re:Honestly....(Linux notebooks) (Score:1)
It's got 3 mouse buttons, and the internal modem works fine with the ltmodem driver from linmodems.org. I didn't opt for the internal ethernet, instead I use a Netgear FA510 10/100 PCMCIA card.
The built in sound originally required the ALSA drivers from www.alsa-project.org, but I think the later kernels have support for it.
If you pick the right model thinkpad, you can even get Linux preinstalled on it.
Even APM works, including suspend and hibernate.
I'm not too worried about the LCD backlight wearing out... Not for a few years, after which I'll probably need a new computer with a bigger drive to accommodate my files ever increasing size and entrophy.
Re:LOL! (Score:1)
Don't worry too much... (Score:1)
Re:Honestly.... (Score:1)
Sony Vaio C1 Picturebook series have three buttons.
Re:Honestly.... (Score:1)
- Mike
Re:Honestly.... (Score:1)
Re:LOL! (Score:1)
the college i attend has a laptop program, which requires incomming freshmen to pay out the nose for a 2 year lease on a laptop, then another 2 year lease on a newer laptop, which if you graduate you get to keep.
sounds good right, well the major problem is we get compaq laptops because one of their vice presidents is a alumnus (i think gender is correct there, in any case, the vp is a member of the alumni
i haven't worked with too many laptops before, but i did not envision them requiring duct tape all over to stay in one piece (compaq armada e500), and yes peoples backlights do go out, the system isn't totally unusable, its just dark
Somewhat related question... (Score:1)
Later.
Hard Drives (Score:1)
I have also run into resolution issues (under x windows) as the display can only run 800x600 (old fujitsu lifebook 420) So the display's clarity really isn't the issue so much as the supporting hardware is!
Re:LOL! (Score:1)
A laptop with a dead LCD need not be trash. It can be permanently installed in one of your company's conference rooms to run the projector for slide shows. Small and out of the way when not needed and that's ideal since most conference rooms are lacking for storage space.
When your display fails in 5 years.... (Score:1)
Would you still be using your 15-pound 486/33 notebook that you bought 5 years ago today?
Notebooks get cheaper and cheaper as part prices fall through the floor. Just replace the damn thing!
Mine Fails (Score:1)
re: lcd/backlights going bad (Score:1)
By the time a current laptop would suffer such a fate they'll probably have OLED's and such. Hopefully current lcd/backlights are improved over the older ones.
Other Options Than Death (Score:2)
One, is that many LCD brands, if they use flourescent Backlighting (like most Laptops do), often times the flourescent tube can be replaced -- sometimes with ease, sometime with difficulty. Examples of ease are the Mac PowerBook 1xx series, where a new tube is only a few bucks and can be replace in a a a few minutes. Examples of difficultly are my Fujitsu Lifebook, where the entire LCD panel itself had to be taken apart.
The other option you have is, depending on how old you machine is and how much time and money you want to put into it, is to just replace the screen when it becomes a problem. If it's an 'older' (i.e. 1 year old) machine, you can pick up a new-from-factory LCD for 300 USD, or your can watch eBay for a model like yours with a dead logic board or something.
Anyway, if it's your main machine, then I have a feeling that other parts of the box will go before the backlight does -- especially the battery and the hinge.
Re:Make a reasonable compromise (Score:2)
a. n. A person of much or varied learning; one acquainted with various subjects of study.
b. adj. Very learned.
(OED)
Re:Honestly....(Linux notebooks) (Score:2)
Re:Make a reasonable compromise (Score:2)
I think that this quickly changes from a failure analysis problem to an accounting problem, which takes it far out of my range of experience, which is primarily engineering.
With one or two of the lifetime lengthening measures, and without expending the effort on the PDE solution to the problem, you can probably easily extend the lifetime way past the expected lifetime of the laptop, or at least past the "crap, I spilled Coke all over my keyboard" event.
Honestly.... (Score:2)
Re:Honestly.... (Score:2)
Re:Honestly....(Linux notebooks) (Score:2)
Ok I just checked it and I see it has been updated....finally! Looks like some resourceful hackers hacked on the original to make it work similarly to the way the aureal hackers did. Actually a coworker of mine has this same laptop (I think) and he's running lilo dual boot with slack ware on the other partition. He needs to get a new HD cuz he has barely 1.2 gig of space and that's not hardly enough to seriously play.
You are definitely right about the hardware though. I see most laptops getting replaced before the LCD burns out.
Re:Make a reasonable compromise (Score:2)
Judging by your nickname, polymath69, you are probably mathematical in nature. The problems that you describe, brightness dimming over time Vs. power cycling breaks up very nicely into a linear separable partial differential equation. I know this because I've solved a similar problem for a harddrive (spin up/down Vs. spinning time). I'm fairly certain that the solution to the PDE is analytic and you will be able to find an exact solution, yielding an optimum amount of time to leave it on as opposed to turning it off. If it doesn't have an analytic solution, then you can use the linear simplex algorithm or find a solution using Galerkin's method. Each of these numerical techniques are fun and will converge to an optimal solution relatively quickly.
For further info, I recommend MacCluer's industrial mathematics book.
I've had all of my LCD failures when.... (Score:2)
Generally there are a few ways that an LCD will die. None of them have anything to do with the backlight. The backlights on my LCD displays have never failed. My earliest palmtop's case broke so it wouldn't stay open. Not an LCD failure. My next palmtop got smooshed and cracked the screen. My latest palmtop has a nick-mark on the screen because I accidentally dropped something on it. My first laptop had a depression in the screen becaue some @$^$ kicked it, but it was still usable. It finally died when the motherboard stopped working. Also not a LCD failure.
Don't worry about your backlight. Wory about everything else breaking.
Make a reasonable compromise (Score:4)
That gives you some options:
1. Don't run the backlight at 100% intensity- try to reduce the lighting in the areas where you are using the laptop. This saves batteries too.
2. Turn off the backlight after something like
3. If you must leave the monitor on to be able to check things at a glance, reduce the intensity as much as possible.
Also, just for the general lifetime of your laptop, use the power-down/suspend power saving features- laptops are dense little packages of electronics- which generate a lot of heat, but don't dissipate it well. Heat kills electronics and batteries, try to keep the heat down, and you will greatly improve the lifetime of the whole laptop, not just the screen. If you're not using it, and the laptop is warm, you're wasting power and laptop lifetime.