Laptop Screen Brightness

[Mikey Gribble]

I had the same problem with screen brightness last year so I got a Toshiba Qosmio. The screen is great. It is 15 inch hi def., but the damn thing is a power hog. I can't run XM and the computer off the car at the same time. I have tried everything; different power inverters for each one, I tried it in another car, and I finally had to buy a bunch of car jumper batteries to power my computer. Now, every time I get a hotel I have to lug in 7 car batteries and charge the ones I have used. It is a serioius pain in the butt. Whatever you do, don't buy a Toshiba Qosmio.

 

[cdcollura]

Good day,

I have a SONY VAIO PCG-K45. This has the WXGA LCD Screen (1200x768) and I have no complaints about the computer or OS (MS Windows XP Home) itself but I noticed something peculiar with the LCD.

Once in a blue moon, I power up the unit and is does its normal boot sequence OK. Then, as it says its "Starting Windows..." the LCD backlight turns OFF. It is clearly NOT the LCD connections or anything otherwise you would not see the boot sequence, and "Starting Windows..." display, which are in full LCD backlight.

When the backlight goes off, and if you hold the screen up to bright light, you could see the screen OK ... Windows up and running fine, no errors, even edited video this way! This reminds me of the Sony Camcorders, particularly my HDR-FX1, where there is a 3-position switch for the "LCD Flip-Out screen" back-light saying "Hi", "Lo", and "Off". When OFF, the LCD only can be viewed in bright sunlight (I guess it is a battery saving feature).

Now back to my laptop, has anyone else ever seen this? Is there a "switch" in windows (besides the F-Key on the screen which only goes from low to high brightness and does NOT turn off backlighting)? I also found that if my unit powers up and boots and the backlight is off, sometimes closing the LCD cover and opening it turns it on. It might be a switch there, and fiddling with it might help?

As expected, Sony customer service had no idea of this problem but I did flash the "Phoenix BIOS" to a latest version. We'll see if that helps since this looks like an intermittent problem and hard to pinpoint its cause.

Chris C - KG4PJN

 

[Patrick Ware]

I have the Dell XPS. All I can say is that the screen resoultion and brightness is awsome!

 

[John Gnuechtel]

I've been chasing with my Motion Computing M1200 tablet for two years now. While it's no speed demon, I haven't found a weather related app that ever chugged on it. I would absolutely recommend it to any chaser. It has a bright screen, the best battery life of anything I've ever used (up to 6 hours), and it's extremely durable. There's no keyboard or hinge to break, and the screen is reinforced against scratches so that you can use the stylus directly on it. The thing is built like a tank. I have no intention of replacing mine any time soon.

 

[Tony Perkins]

I would like to thank everyone for their input on this. I'm happy hear how a wide variety gets the job done. Now to the hard part of deciding.