ACK! my eyes!

a week ago i received my first ever personal laptop and all i've got to say about it is that Dell's Vostro 1400 rocks!

BUT... i have one issue with it. remember back in the good ol' days when looking at a monitor would hurt your eyes because those monitors had much lower screen refresh rates? wellll... I never thought an LCD panel could hurt anyone's eyes, yet the Anti-Glare panel my 1400 is equipped with ( ChiMei CMO1426 ) just bothers and dries my eyes out! though not as intolerably as, say, the ancient monitors would. i've worked with lots of laptops ranging from HP, Sony, Apple, Dell, and IBM but I promise you I've never, ever had this issue with a laptop LCD. not cool for an $800 present day device.

my Vostro also has NVidia 128mb 8400m gs. i downloaded the latest MobileForce drivers for it, didn't make a difference. also there don't appear to be any driver updates for the lcd panel.

i don't know what i should do. is this even a known issue for some users? i wonder if it's worth calling Dell up about this. =\ thanks in advance everyone!

 

Give Dell a call and see what they say... can't hurt can it? Maybe Dell could replace the LCD screen with one of a different brand if you can describe the problem well to them (e.g. image looks washed out or grainy or something similar to that).

Otherwise, if you are really peeved and it's within the return period, you could send it back and maybe get a different one (by chance) that has a better screen (e.g. an LG screen). Others on the forum here might be able to point you to resolution screens that are the best for the Vostro. I can say that my LPL0000 panel (LG brand) on my Inspiron 1420 (1280x800) isn't too bad on the eyes.

 

definitly contact dell and if they won't either replace the lcd or the laptop ask for your money back!

 

Another bad screen thread.

 

Maybe the fluorescent backlight of the LCD has a flicker.

 

yeah it does. with the default Vostro wallpaper the screen flicker is especially noticable because the contrasting dark & light gray stripes on the graphic exaggerate the flicker.

the panel's color clarity is better than most antiglare panels, sharpness just as sharp as any other. but that damn low refresh rate flicker...i'll call Dell today.

 

Have you ever used a LCD monitor before ?

 

been working with computers for a decade now... decent LCD panels don't *flicker* despite running at 60hz refresh rate. but again even with laptops, i've never before had an issue with a panel that flickers (thus hurting my eyes) :|

 

weeeee check this out: RostokMcSpoons's find FIXED my issue and added considerably to the viewing angles:

my panel still has a slight flicker when tested with the Vostro wallpaper (it's great for testing the viewing angles & backlight distribution), however now the flicker is less than half of what it was before... meaning it's exactly the way it should be! on top of that it doesn't bug my eyes out anymore.

normality has been restored. thanks everyone for your consideration! =]

 

LCD monitors shouldn't flicker at all.
You got a lemon and Dell should replace it.