Developing eye-strain with T43, will newer model help?

Have been using stationary machines mostly, but have recently "moved" to laptops. So, I don't have all that much to say about their general screen quality compared to desktop screens, but using my 14" T43, disregarding its horrible display, I have now developed some eye strain. I develop software, so "use computer" less would not be a good piece of advice for me, I am afraid.

What I am wondering about is, how is your experience with the screens of newer models, especially LED-backlit vs CCFL? I might consider purchasing T400 with a LED backlit screen.

Also, given equal luminosity, how is your experience with different resolutions? Perhaps, if my text is composed of more pixels, I can read it better?

 

Well there are many dimensions to the answer...

1.) The older Thinkpads had very dim screens hovering around 150 nits. I know that if the screen is very dim, it causes me a lot of eye strain. It is ok in a dark room, but if the room is medium to highly bright, the dim screen can cause a lot of strain. The newer Thinkpads have improved in this regard, but having higher nit screens. Most of the newer Thinkpad screens are about 200 nit +.

2.) LED backlit screen tend to be brighter than the CCFL equivalent. Though this sounds great, there are some who swear that the LED backlight bothers their eyes and they see a flickering effect. I don't have personal experience with this, as I have always used CCFL backlights.

3.) The higher resolution screens do lead to crisper images and text since there are so many pixels that are so tightly packed together, but it does also lead to the image being very small in size. So the small size can cause a lot of eye strain but this can also be compensated with increasing the DPI.

If you go for the T400, you might want to consider the super high nit screen.

 

What resolution is your T43?

 

14" XGA 1024x768 here.

Like I said, resolutions are disregarded, if luminosity is the same. In fact, from my posting history, you can see that I am a big proponent of "as high resolution as you can get". The problem is operating system(s) and software that are unable to "scale" well with resolution. I have no problem with resolutions being 20000x15000 or whatever, I use software that scales and Ubuntu, which scales a bit better than Windows. So, like I said screen resolution is irrelevant, as long as qualitywise people can confirm it does not cause more eye strain than similiar lower-resolution screens.

I also heard that even for LCD-backlit screens, there is WXGA LCDs which are termed "superbright" and WXGA+ which are just " bright". Has anyone any personal experience with either?