Laptops

Pauline R · Sep 21, 2003

I will soon be purchasing my first digital camera, so I have it all to learn. Not a power user of computers, either.

I just read a comment by another individual, who said, "The images looked ok on my laptop, maybe I should be viewing it on a CRT to get a better idea."

Is it to be expected that a laptop isn't going to give you a good idea of what the picture will look like when viewed on a CRT or when printed?

Pauline

Evil Eggplant · Sep 21, 2003

Pauline

If your laptop has a decent LCD the images will look (and print) fine. Unless you're into the whole "ICC calibrated monitor thing" you'll never notice the difference. Eventually you may notice shortcomings with the LCD. For now, at least, CRT offers much more bang for the buck. If I had unlimited funds I would work on a nice PowerBook, for now I use my home PC.

Pauline R said:
I will soon be purchasing my first digital camera, so I have it all
to learn. Not a power user of computers, either.

I just read a comment by another individual, who said, "The images
looked ok on my laptop, maybe I should be viewing it on a CRT to
get a better idea."

Is it to be expected that a laptop isn't going to give you a good
idea of what the picture will look like when viewed on a CRT or
when printed?

Pauline

--
rich
'beware the eggplant'
c-7oo, d-51O, DSC-F7O7
'it's not having what you want, it's wanting what you got'
http://www.pbase.com/iceninevt

Pauline R · Sep 21, 2003

How does one know one will be buying a laptop with "a decent LCD?" I am going to buy a laptop at some point (maybe not for a while), and I wouldn't know what to ask for.

At this point in time I am seriously looking at Dell, because they seem to have a good reputation where service is concerned. Have thought about Macs, but they are expensive, as you know. Also, I have need for MS Access.

Decisions, decisions!

Evil Eggplant said:
If your laptop has a decent LCD the images will look (and print)
fine. Unless you're into the whole "ICC calibrated monitor thing"
you'll never notice the difference. Eventually you may notice
shortcomings with the LCD. For now, at least, CRT offers much more
bang for the buck. If I had unlimited funds I would work on a nice
PowerBook, for now I use my home PC.

Pauline R said:

I will soon be purchasing my first digital camera, so I have it all
to learn. Not a power user of computers, either.

I just read a comment by another individual, who said, "The images
looked ok on my laptop, maybe I should be viewing it on a CRT to
get a better idea."

Is it to be expected that a laptop isn't going to give you a good
idea of what the picture will look like when viewed on a CRT or
when printed?

Pauline

Click to expand...

--
rich
'beware the eggplant'
c-7oo, d-51O, DSC-F7O7
'it's not having what you want, it's wanting what you got'
http://www.pbase.com/iceninevt

--
Pauline

Jian · Sep 21, 2003

I have 2 Sony VAIO laptops. Sony are known to have the better LCD than other brands except for Mac IMO. With that saying, I do not trust my laptops' LCD for photo editing. The viewing angle can really affect how the photo look. This is why I always view my photos in my desktop LCD before I make the decision to delete or do photo editing.

--
http://www.pbase.com/zuffy

kage · Sep 21, 2003

Actually.

Dell used to have a great reputation for service (it's why I bought my Inspiron 8000), but the quality of service has degraded substantially since then (it's why the Inspiron 8500 I have now will probably be the last Dell I will ever own, if I can find someone else to give my loyalties to). There was a big article on this some months back in one of the major PC mags.. I forget which. They did a big survey on customer satisfaction with regards to product and service/support. If I recall correctly Dell didn't even make the top ten... (or it might have even been the top twenty). In the analysis they conclude that this probably has to do with the double edged nature of their rapid rise to success, in that their growth in customer base outpaced their ability to grow their customer support resources. This resulting in the outsourcing of much of their tech support to countries like India.

I've experienced this first hand. It took me almost a year of phone calls to finally resolve an issue with my laptop. During the process I was put on hold for hours at a time (one time for ten hours... fortunately I have speaker phone and a tolerant boss). I was told out and out lies (fortunately I had internet access on another computer so was able to find the information on their site to contradict what the voice on the phone was telling me... which usually resulted in alot of backpedaling... after some more time on hold of course). I was often told (after being on the phone for hours) that their computers were running slow (hello? they are supposedly the makers of some of the best computers out there? At least according to their own marketing? What's the deal with their own computers?) and that they would call back when they could process my request. Never once did I ever get a call back. I would usually have to callback and run through the entire process again (alot of run around and hold time).. only to be told I would be called back again ... wash, rinse, repeat.

Eventually, after I had jumped through hoops for these people (we're talking numerous formats of my computer, several motherboard replacements, a few graphic chip replacements, the replacement of the lower chassis among other things... all of which I had TOLD them would not address my issue), they had me ship the system back to them.

It was returned to me a week later with a note telling me that the problem was guaranteed to have been fixed. Fired up the old laptop, went through the steps to reproduce the problem (I had even gone as far as to write up a comprehensive seven segment test regimen for theirt technicians to go through that would confirm whether or not the problem was fixed or not), and sure enough the problem was still not fixed.

Went through the phone gauntlet again for a month or so.

Wash, rinse, repeat.

It should be noted that alot of my phone time was spent on the phone with their India tech support. During that time I have found them to be rude, hostile, badly trained (in some cases I knew more than them... and in some cases that fact helped me detect when they were out and out lying to me), and dishonest. I won't knock the language thing. In general they spoke passable english and you can't help having an accent so I'm not gonna go on about that (though at times it made things all the more difficult).

Anyway. To summarise and recap. Dell support ain't the fabled tech support that it used to be.

-Kage

(PS: I REALLY wish I had bought that mag.. I would have scanned it and emailed it to yah... Maybe someone else on this forum knows which one I am talking about and has a copy handy).

kage · Sep 21, 2003

Whew... sory about ranting like that.

Still a raw wound I guess.

But to give you an idea of what their tech support is like. One of the last times I called them an Indian woman asked me in a rather hostile manner.

"Have you ever called anyone about this problem before?"

and before I could answer.

"Why not??? You should have called someone before!"

First of all, whether I did or didn't call before would be available to them in their records (I mean, as I was talking to her I was looking at my call record online, at their site, staring sadly at the long list of calls I had made).

Second of all, whether I had called before or not should have been pretty irrelevent to her. What was, was the fact that I was calling HER... and asking HER to help me with the issue. She definitely should not have been scolding ME about it.

Have you ever seen the first Indiana Jones? You know that scene near the beginning between him and Satipo? "Throw me the whip", "Throw me the idol I throw you the whip!". That whole thing? That's sorta what this whole Dell experience has been like for me. With a similar outcome as well.

Whew, there I go ranting again.

Hrmm.. actually...that was rather cathartic.

(^ ^)

-Kage

Joe Mitchell · Sep 22, 2003

kage said:
Actually.

Dell used to have a great reputation for service (it's why I bought
my Inspiron 8000), but the quality of service has degraded
substantially since then (it's why the Inspiron 8500 I have now
will probably be the last Dell I will ever own, if I can find
someone else to give my loyalties to). There was a big article on
this some months back in one of the major PC mags.. I forget which.
They did a big survey on customer satisfaction with regards to
product and service/support. If I recall correctly Dell didn't
even make the top ten... (or it might have even been the top
twenty). In the analysis they conclude that this probably has to
do with the double edged nature of their rapid rise to success, in
that their growth in customer base outpaced their ability to grow
their customer support resources. This resulting in the
outsourcing of much of their tech support to countries like India.

I've experienced this first hand. It took me almost a year of
phone calls to finally resolve an issue with my laptop. During the
process I was put on hold for hours at a time (one time for ten
hours... fortunately I have speaker phone and a tolerant boss). I
was told out and out lies (fortunately I had internet access on
another computer so was able to find the information on their site
to contradict what the voice on the phone was telling me... which
usually resulted in alot of backpedaling... after some more time on
hold of course). I was often told (after being on the phone for
hours) that their computers were running slow (hello? they are
supposedly the makers of some of the best computers out there? At
least according to their own marketing? What's the deal with their
own computers?) and that they would call back when they could
process my request. Never once did I ever get a call back. I
would usually have to callback and run through the entire process
again (alot of run around and hold time).. only to be told I would
be called back again ... wash, rinse, repeat.

Eventually, after I had jumped through hoops for these people
(we're talking numerous formats of my computer, several motherboard
replacements, a few graphic chip replacements, the replacement of
the lower chassis among other things... all of which I had TOLD
them would not address my issue), they had me ship the system back
to them.

It was returned to me a week later with a note telling me that the
problem was guaranteed to have been fixed. Fired up the old
laptop, went through the steps to reproduce the problem (I had even
gone as far as to write up a comprehensive seven segment test
regimen for theirt technicians to go through that would confirm
whether or not the problem was fixed or not), and sure enough the
problem was still not fixed.

Went through the phone gauntlet again for a month or so.

Wash, rinse, repeat.

It should be noted that alot of my phone time was spent on the
phone with their India tech support. During that time I have found
them to be rude, hostile, badly trained (in some cases I knew more
than them... and in some cases that fact helped me detect when they
were out and out lying to me), and dishonest. I won't knock the
language thing. In general they spoke passable english and you
can't help having an accent so I'm not gonna go on about that
(though at times it made things all the more difficult).

Anyway. To summarise and recap. Dell support ain't the fabled
tech support that it used to be.

-Kage

(PS: I REALLY wish I had bought that mag.. I would have scanned it
and emailed it to yah... Maybe someone else on this forum knows
which one I am talking about and has a copy handy).

Hi Kage,

Now that you've got that off your chest, do you have anything to contribute to answer Pauline's question about the differences between viewing images on an LCD as opposed to a CRT?

From my experience I have found that there is a difference between viewing images on my Apple PowerBook LCD monitor and a CRT monitor at work. The LCD image can appear a bit "flatter" i.e. not quite as punchy or vivid as a CRT monitor. However, I only ever notice this if the two monitors are side-by-side. In many ways I actually prefer the LCD monitor and the on-screen images appear very similar to the ones I print so I'm quite satisfied.

Joe

Greg Gebhardt · Sep 22, 2003

Pauline R said:
I will soon be purchasing my first digital camera, so I have it all
to learn. Not a power user of computers, either.

I just read a comment by another individual, who said, "The images
looked ok on my laptop, maybe I should be viewing it on a CRT to
get a better idea."

Is it to be expected that a laptop isn't going to give you a good
idea of what the picture will look like when viewed on a CRT or
when printed?

Pauline

--

My IBM T40 screen is better than most CRTs. On most laptop screen you will be able to see how the image is doing. Laptops are great accessories for digital cameras.

Greg Gebhardt in
Jacksonville, Florida

EJN · Sep 22, 2003

Jian said:
I have 2 Sony VAIO laptops. Sony are known to have the better LCD
than other brands except for Mac IMO. With that saying, I do not
trust my laptops' LCD for photo editing. The viewing angle can
really affect how the photo look. This is why I always view my
photos in my desktop LCD before I make the decision to delete or do
photo editing.

--
http://www.pbase.com/zuffy

For various personal reasons I've been a total laptop user for 10 years or more so I guess I can say I've experience enough with a variety of them. You do bring up one valid point - I totally agree with Greg that a GOOD (that's top-class, good make) laptop these days gives a screen that is incredibly superior to that of 10 years or so ago - they are nearly all now quite excellent .. but the one snag is that DIRECTION of view does matter, unlike a CRT. I suppose I've got used to that but with that reservation I'd say that a top laptop will work with your pics every bit as good in most respects as a good many desktops (of which there are many more second-rate than second-rate laptops I think). I'd say, go sahead, get a good middle range Sony (there are others equal in UK but don't know other names to quote for US) but if it's well-known for good quality, and recommended , then you'll not regret it. And the pics if anything will very probably come out slightly better than you see onscreen !!
Trust it - it's worked for me , and I'm VERY fussy.

--
EJN

Andy Williams · Sep 22, 2003

it depends on the laptop's screen. i have a sony tr1a laptop with a beautiful 10.6" widescreen tft display (1280 x 768). the colors on this laptop exactly match what i have on my big desktop monitor at home.

other laptops i've had (from work, etc) haven't been as good.

--
-- andy
http://williams.smugmug.com - gallieries

EJN · Sep 22, 2003

andy99999andy said:
it depends on the laptop's screen. i have a sony tr1a laptop with
a beautiful 10.6" widescreen tft display (1280 x 768). the colors
on this laptop exactly match what i have on my big desktop monitor
at home.

other laptops i've had (from work, etc) haven't been as good.

--
-- andy
http://williams.smugmug.com - gallieries

andy -

I'm glad you mentioned this ...a point I've long wondered about but not had chance tio take up....the widescreen thing. Just cannot understand how you can use a widescreen laptop ...how do you get the right proportions without stretching??? or I have I just not understood it right. Just puzzled me by sheer ignorance and never having had chance to SEE one in working mode. Just seems odd

--
EJN

kage · Sep 22, 2003

Sure,

(Though I do think my laptop post is relevant, I sure would hate to have someone else go through what I did)

In my industry we are very sensitive to the accuracy of one's screen. It's generally accepted that a CRT will always be superior to an LCD in terms of brightness, color accuracy and response/refresh rate. However LCD screens have been improving since those generalizations have been established, so unless the LCD is being used for professional purposes I think it is possible to find some pretty good LCD's out there nowadays.

Quite a few of the artists where I work seem to think the new Toshibas (like on the 17" Sattelite) have extremely nice screens.

I use both an external LCD monitor (a Dell 2000fp) and the one on my laptop (the UWXGA screen on the Inspiron 8500). Side by side you can definitely tell the difference. The external LCD is far superior to the one on the laptop.

So I guess what I'm saying is that not all LCD's are created equal?

Anyway, here is a pretty good hardware review/information site that has some articles on LCD's http://www6.tomshardware.com/display/index.html

-Kage

kage · Sep 22, 2003

If you are using a widescreen, you can avoid "stretching" by setting the screen resolution to one that supports that aspect ratio. For example on my laptop I use a screen resolution of 1920 X 1200, while on my 20" LCD (non wide screen) I use a resolution of 1600X1200.

The additional 320 pixels on the horizontal are those that help maintain the proper proportions for the wide screen (if you were to use 1600X1200 on my laptop then things would look stretched... depending on the vid chip that is. on my laptop I just get black bars down the side).

The only time you might find stretching on a wide screen is if you are running a full screen app (like a video game) that runs at a specific resolution. For example when I play Battlefield 1942 (for research purposes

), it only supports regular width resolutions, yet the game engine pushes the images to the very edge of the screen so my game looks slightly stretched.

Though that doesn't prevent me from schooling people

.

So anyway, for most things (like Photoshop and non-game apps), as long as your vid chip supports wide screen resolutions (which, in the case of a laptop, the manufacturer will usually make sure is the case) than your images will look fine.

Hope that answers your questions.

-Kage

Shiuming Lai · Sep 22, 2003

Jian said:
I have 2 Sony VAIO laptops. Sony are known to have the better LCD
than other brands except for Mac IMO. With that saying, I do not
trust my laptops' LCD for photo editing. The viewing angle can
really affect how the photo look. This is why I always view my
photos in my desktop LCD before I make the decision to delete or do
photo editing.

Although Sony has a reputation for image quality, it is currently not one of the really major manufacturers of LCD panels. The Korean manufacturers have that honour. Sony's Vaio displays are sourced from Toshiba and its desktop panels are from Fujitsu, LG and maybe others. Of course, the final colour rendition can vary according to how the response is tuned (and Sony claims it has modelled the response on its Trinitron CRTs) but at the end of the day it's still an LCD. I've seen the new "Onyx-Black" LCD on the latest Vaios and admittedly the contrast and colour vibrancy looks stunning. The screen is darker and the surface is glossy smooth, not matt like other LCDs. However, I noticed some Toshiba notebooks with this type of display, but obviously not called the same name. It is, in fact, perhaps too vivid. When I look at my screen at home, nothing comes to mind, it's so natural.

Sony is investing in LCD manufacturing now so in the future more of its flat panel displays will use original Sony technology.

My main screen is a Sony GDM-F520 CRT, wouldn't swap it for anything (except maybe the CRS version with internal calibration circuitry and external photo-spectrometer, or 24" 16:10 wide-screen version). I previously had a GDM-F500, which was also an excellent colour monitor.

Joe Mitchell · Sep 22, 2003

kage said:
Sure,

(Though I do think my laptop post is relevant, I sure would hate to
have someone else go through what I did)

In my industry we are very sensitive to the accuracy of one's
screen. It's generally accepted that a CRT will always be superior
to an LCD in terms of brightness, color accuracy and
response/refresh rate. However LCD screens have been improving
since those generalizations have been established, so unless the
LCD is being used for professional purposes I think it is possible
to find some pretty good LCD's out there nowadays.

Quite a few of the artists where I work seem to think the new
Toshibas (like on the 17" Sattelite) have extremely nice screens.

I use both an external LCD monitor (a Dell 2000fp) and the one on
my laptop (the UWXGA screen on the Inspiron 8500). Side by side
you can definitely tell the difference. The external LCD is far
superior to the one on the laptop.

So I guess what I'm saying is that not all LCD's are created equal?

Anyway, here is a pretty good hardware review/information site that
has some articles on LCD's
http://www6.tomshardware.com/display/index.html

-Kage

Hi Kage,

Sorry to hear about your experiences with DELL. I certainly agree with your comments about differences between LCD monitors. I use a DELL Inspiron laptop at work and an Apple PowerBook Titanium at home and there are definitely differences. However, to be fair, since all my digital editing is done at home I have taken care to adjust the brightness, contract and colour profiles to suite my personal preferences, it's just occurred to me that the DELL is just as it was when our IT staff put it on my desk. My best advice would be for Pauline to visit her local store and to view a few monitors side by side. It might be useful to take a CD with some images on so that you can compare like-with-like.

Joe

Andy Williams · Sep 22, 2003

for its' size. it is the only laptop that i've ever had that i can actually open when sitting on the commuter train or on an airplane. the size is fantastic, the weight is also tiny (3lbs!). it has built in wi-fi, too. the screen quality is truly amazing for a laptop. the size took me some getting used to, i do end up scrolling my images a lot when i need to use the laptop for editing. but mainly, i use my desktop system (also a sony) for editing and ps work.

oh - the laptop also comes in very handy when traveling, as i can dump all the memory sticks onto it each night.

Member said:
andy -
I'm glad you mentioned this ...a point I've long wondered about but
not had chance tio take up....the widescreen thing. Just cannot
understand how you can use a widescreen laptop ...how do you get
the right proportions without stretching??? or I have I just not
understood it right. Just puzzled me by sheer ignorance and never
having had chance to SEE one in working mode. Just seems odd

--
EJN

--
-- andy
http://williams.smugmug.com - galleries

Search

Laptops

Pauline R

Member

Evil Eggplant

Veteran Member

Pauline R

Member

Jian

Senior Member

kage

Senior Member

kage

Senior Member

Joe Mitchell

Leading Member

Greg Gebhardt

Forum Pro

EJN

Guest

Andy Williams

Forum Pro

EJN

Guest

kage

Senior Member

kage

Senior Member

Shiuming Lai

Senior Member

Joe Mitchell

Leading Member

Andy Williams

Forum Pro

Keyboard shortcuts