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Zaku's avatar

What are the best laptop monitors for reading in sunlight?

Asked by Zaku (30571points) September 9th, 2011

I work with computers, generally writing program code or other text.

I love to work outdoors when it is nice.

It would be lovely to have a nice laptop computer to do this with, but most have a hard time being visible when there is sunlight. My aging Dell laptop’s screen is worse for this than a MacBook I have compared side by side. I hear that the wind-up power charity laptop has a great special screen that is good for outdoors too.

A secondary concern is battery life. The more the better.

Even less important are other computer abilities. I wish people designed laptops for more life and visibility and were willing to sacrifice CPU power, RAM, etc., as those don’t matter nearly so much to me.

So I am fishing for suggestions and tips from the Fluther. Thanks!

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6 Answers

RocketGuy's avatar

The One-Laptop-Per-Child computer uses a black and white LCD screen, works best with lots of light:
http://laptop.org/en/laptop/index.shtml

SpatzieLover's avatar

@Zaku I can tell you from personal experience that the Kindle screen is amazing for reading outside. I don’t know what laptop sceen equates to that of the Kindle, though. If I did, I’m in the market for a new laptop myself…and I’d buy one with the same non glare material.

EDIT: Apparently this Samsung has an anti-reflective screen and a super long battery life. I’ll look into it further when my computer geek comes home & see what he says.

RocketGuy's avatar

The Kindle uses an e-ink screen, which is really good in med or bright light. Also it only uses power when you change pages.

Zaku's avatar

I wonder if it is possible to get an e-ink screen for a laptop?

Zaku's avatar

@SpatzieLover Wow, that’s an interesting idea to use a Chromebook. Sounds like the specs are about right, actually, though it’s certainly a step sideways in being based on a web browser rather than having a “real” OS on it.

I wonder if people have got Linux to run on it yet…

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