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> improperly generalizing what seemed to be their experience with $500 laptops to also argue against high-quality eInk, OLED and IPS LCDs. And what Grad studen

> improperly generalizing what seemed to be their experience with $500 laptops to also argue against high-quality eInk, OLED and IPS LCDs. And what Grad student can afford those at [Insert State University]. I was a PhD student in math not long ago, and vastly preferred paper books, and even printed out articles. It is way way easier on your eyes than something actively blasting light. Maybe in 20 years high quality e-ink will be cheap enough, but that has been promised since forever.

wtallis 8y ago
> It is way way easier on your eyes than something actively blasting light. See, this is the kind of bad argument that really irks me. There are good arguments about how computers aren't ready to replace pen and paper for actively doing math, and even a few shortcomings for computers replacing paper textbooks. But "actively blasting light" doesn't mean anything. Photons are photons. If you think a backlit display is somehow harder on your eyes than an indirectly-lit piece of paper, then you should be trying to figure out whether you simply have the backlight set too bright for your surroundings, or if your screen's contrast ratio at reasonable brightness levels is inadequate. Your LCD's default settings are probably optimized for movie-watching more than reading, but that's easily fixed and definitely not an inherent limitation of all backlit displays everywhere.
- abenedic 8y ago
  >not an inherent limitation of all backlit displays everywhere. This may be true, but in my experience(not very wealthy, typically sub $400 devices) the presets are set such that 0% backlight in the OS is glaringly bright. I cannot turn it down without rooting the device.
  - abenedic 8y ago
    Maybe for tech device things we should have two separate tracks, one for wealthy snd people who can modify devices and one for poor and people who cannot. Even my Thnkpad laptop under Ubuntu has a setting for 10% brightness which is far too high for a truly dark room. The next lowest setting is 0% which is absolute dark. How do you use your laptop under such conditions?
    - wtallis 8y ago
      I don't see how backlight settings for a truly dark room are relevant here. I've been annoyed by several of my devices being unable to dim far enough, but never in a situation where I would expect to be able to easily read words printed on paper. An office or classroom setting that has adequate light for pen and paper work could be too dim for an LCD at 100% brightness to be comfortable, but almost any device can be dimmed enough for that environment. Color temperature can also be a problem, but there's a lot of awareness of that issue nowadays. Most operating systems now support automatic adjustment of color temperature based on time of day, plus manual adjustment. Devices that adjust their color temperature to account for ambient lighting are starting to catch on, and I expect they'll be pretty common in a few years.
    - yaantc 8y ago
      You could use xbacklight to have a finer control of the display brightness. You can also rebind the brightness keys to shell scripts that use "xbacklight -inc <percent>" or -dec, with a finer resolution.

wtallis 8y ago

> It is way way easier on your eyes than something actively blasting light. See, this is the kind of bad argument that really irks me. There are good arguments about how computers aren't ready to replace pen and paper for actively doing math, and even a few shortcomings for computers replacing paper textbooks. But "actively blasting light" doesn't mean anything. Photons are photons. If you think a backlit display is somehow harder on your eyes than an indirectly-lit piece of paper, then you should be trying to figure out whether you simply have the backlight set too bright for your surroundings, or if your screen's contrast ratio at reasonable brightness levels is inadequate. Your LCD's default settings are probably optimized for movie-watching more than reading, but that's easily fixed and definitely not an inherent limitation of all backlit displays everywhere.

abenedic 8y ago
>not an inherent limitation of all backlit displays everywhere. This may be true, but in my experience(not very wealthy, typically sub $400 devices) the presets are set such that 0% backlight in the OS is glaringly bright. I cannot turn it down without rooting the device.
- abenedic 8y ago
  Maybe for tech device things we should have two separate tracks, one for wealthy snd people who can modify devices and one for poor and people who cannot. Even my Thnkpad laptop under Ubuntu has a setting for 10% brightness which is far too high for a truly dark room. The next lowest setting is 0% which is absolute dark. How do you use your laptop under such conditions?
  - wtallis 8y ago
    I don't see how backlight settings for a truly dark room are relevant here. I've been annoyed by several of my devices being unable to dim far enough, but never in a situation where I would expect to be able to easily read words printed on paper. An office or classroom setting that has adequate light for pen and paper work could be too dim for an LCD at 100% brightness to be comfortable, but almost any device can be dimmed enough for that environment. Color temperature can also be a problem, but there's a lot of awareness of that issue nowadays. Most operating systems now support automatic adjustment of color temperature based on time of day, plus manual adjustment. Devices that adjust their color temperature to account for ambient lighting are starting to catch on, and I expect they'll be pretty common in a few years.
  - yaantc 8y ago
    You could use xbacklight to have a finer control of the display brightness. You can also rebind the brightness keys to shell scripts that use "xbacklight -inc <percent>" or -dec, with a finer resolution.