TrueLife: Yay or Nay???

I'm buying an Inspiron 6400 in a week and can get TrueLife for E15, which is the equivalent of £10/$20 (I know somebody that knows somebody!). I'm tempted because glossy screens offer a sort of faux HD effect.

However, there is the issue of glare and mirroring. Then again, the computers in my college are all matte, and when the sun is bright, you can hardly see anything properly anyway... And in my room and/or conservatory, I can always shut the blinds if the sun gets too much. No different to when the big bad ball of fire glares out my TV screen, when I'm trying to play Xbox 360 or watch the Premiership!

I guess the only remaining problem is if I was to take my laptop to college, where I have less control over overhead/rear indoor lighting, but I'd rarely do that anyway. Similarly, I'll rarely use it outside.

What do you think I should do? I'm tempted by TrueLife, but only if it is of long-term benefit to me, and doesn't become a royal pain in the posterior!



PS. Are there any other glossy screen pros and cons that I should be aware of? Text/font sizes??

 

I can't really check today as it's cloudy,but I have mine at 90 degrees to the window and haven't had a problem despite a few days of sun.I've just put it under a strong spotlight style light fitting,and it mirrored enough to hurt my eyes but I could still read all the text underneath,possibly better than I could on a matte screen.It's just the pinpoint of the light that reflected the rest of the screen is unaffected.
Just to make things more complicated,I hear Dell has LCDs made by a few companies,not sure if that'd affect reflectivity though?Gotta say I love my Trueife screen but then it's still pretty new.

 

I got true life because I wanted the higher resolution, and honestly, I hated it at first. I thought the glare was ridiculous and annoying. But after about a day or two, I realized that it's a beautiful screen and have been very please with it (and it cost me $100). As I look at my entire screen right now, I can't see a single glare on it, and I'm in a room with a huge florecent light behind and above me.

Basically what I'm saying here is, never having directly compared it to a matte screen (but having had experience with them), I noticed a night and day difference when I turned on my glossy screen for the first time. And I love it. Though it gets pretty dusty...

 

definitely yay. The advantages outweigh the disadvantages.

 

I was in PC World today. For my American friends, it is the equivalent of a Best Buy or Circuit City or some other large electrical/appliance retail outlet along those lines. Had a gander at Toshiba's TruBrite and HP's Brightview.... I don't know if Truelife is any worse than them, but if it has a similar amount of glare and mirroring, then they're not enough for me to say "nay". Very impressed I was. Basically, it's no worse than your bog-standard glass panel CRT-TV. At least, that was my over-riding impression of the glossy screens on display. On that evidence, definitely a "yay", especially when the asking price is a mere E15!

 

i echo sirius with a definite yay. well worth it. I think the downsides such as glare and mirroring are vastly overrated actually