Good laptop display (OT)

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Although this isn't exactly specific to these lists, the subject of LCDs for
photo editing keeps coming up, so I just thought I'd share my most recent
experience.

I just got an IBM A31p laptop, which has a 1600x1200 LCD, and it's very
impressive. Previously, I had an A20p, which had a 1400x1050 LCD, but it's
viewing angle was pretty poor (especially vertically), which made it
impossible to profile properly (with OptiCal and a Spyder) without doing
extensive tweaking at the dark end. Its vertical viewing angle was so poor
that sitting two feet away from it my eye could see the variations from top
to bottom, making it useless for photo editing.

But the A31p display profiles quite well, losing almost nothing at the low
end of the scale. In case anyone cares, OptiCal indicates the following
primary colors:

	R: x=0.581 y=0.330
	G: x=0.299 y=0.536
	B: x=0.141 y=0.134

This isn't a huge gamut, and is rather weak in the greens (compared to a
CRT), but it has good blues and not bad reds (assuming the Spyder is
accurate). The uncalibrated luminance was 181, but for some reason the
Information dialog isn't listing the calibrated brightness; however, it's
much better than my A20p. In a fairly bright room, it's much brighter than a
white piece of paper on my desk.

I've not looked at a super high end Apple LCD, so I can't compare the
viewing angle, but in normal use I don't see any variations as I move my
head around a few inches. More to the point, pictures that I'm used to
viewing on my 21" Nokia CRT look damn close in quality on this laptop.

In short, while it may not satisfy a pro as his or her only computer, it
appears to be quite good for photo editing. I can't say who makes the
display, so it's possible that you can find a cheaper computer by someone
else that uses the same display, but everything else about the IBM is
top-notch, too. With a 1.7GHz P4, a gig of RAM, 60GB disk, Ethernet,
FireWire, and a DVD/CD-RW, it doesn't leave much to be desired for
horsepower or connectivity.

--

Ciao,               Paul D. DeRocco
Paul                mailto:pderocco@ix.netcom.com

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