Vista Wallpaper - Grainy screen or just poor pictures???

I have spent half the evening trying to convince myself that my screen is not grainy. It looks OK during normal use.

However, I have tried setting all the default Vista wallpaper as my background and every picture is grainy as ****.

I have the WXGA 1280x800 Truelife screen and these pictures are not crisp at all.

Is there some dodgy setting I am using or is this just a terrible screen?

I saw a £400 Acer today with a much crisper screen than this

Not happy

 

I actually have exactly the same question - got my 1520 today, and well...Vista pictures look quite horrible

 

They just suck

 

my tablet pc's grainy and they're supposed to. they dont look that bad if you're far away

 

Probably the screen. I hate dell. They replaced the screen with another grainy SEC, and then they scratched my laptop. If you aren't happy with your screen, I promise a replacement is painful....I'm biased though, cause they did cause me headaches.

 

One of the things about Vista, i would have thought, was to bring windows into the age of High Definition. The default pictures look very poor on my Vostro. Grainy beyond belief.

So either these pictures are poor quality or my screen is awful. Anyone else with a Vostro 1500 able to comment on this??

I even tried a high def picture from another website and that was as bad!

 

Hold on guys.

Some of them just suck. Try this random file, if this is grainy, then you have a problem

 

I'd recommend all users set the above file as a backdrop, take a shot with a digicam and post it as an attachment; so that we onlookers can compare and contrast your screen luminance and overall LCD quality between models.

 

That pic looks OK, thanks for that, but if it is supposed to look amazing I am afraid it doesn't but I don't see half as much grain as the Vista wallpaper.

 

A lot of Vista's stock wallpapers are noticeably grainy, I started to wonder when I first got my notebook too but then compared with some other images and those weren't grainy. Not sure why the stock walls are grainy though, as a lot of them are actually pretty nice pictures. Maybe it's on purpose?

 

I just think they've been taken from a digital camera. Probably...a 3-4 megapixel camera.

 

I though it might be the Vista wallpapers being bad but I d/loaded some HD/Widescreen wallpaper from deviantart and they were just as bad.

Also, playback from original DVD's shows up the grain too.

My video card is the 8400M GS. Could this be a factor in the display or is it simply the screen??

 

the thing is dell screens are grainier and vista wallpapers are even more granier,
so in short if u get a HD quality wallpaper, one wouldn't see much grain

 

Don't worry about wallpapers. If you can see a grainy, sparkly, oily type effect when the white backgrounds of websites or a word processor, then your screen is grainy.

The video card is not the cause it is the actualy display. It seems that the probability of getting a grainy display is influenced by the manufacturer of the display.

 

I see. My screen is the LG code 'LPC...' something or other and this was supposed to be the one that everyone wanted!!!!!

Also my screen has light bleed at the botton which is very noticable on the black bootup screen and during windows media playback.

I think it is going to have to be returned which is a pain. Got the 1yr collect and return but may ask for a callout due to defective goods received.

If they will not do this then I may cancel and re-order as I would probably like to up the spec a bit.

 

The LG's are the better WSXGA+ displays (1680x1050). I'm not sure which company manufactures the better WXGA displays. A quick search of this forum should lead to the answer.

 

The vista wallpapers are probably grainy because they are resized/stretched to suit whatever resolution monitor is displaying them. I doubt microsoft included a version of each image in every possible resolution. If you download the image attached earlier in this thread and the image is still grainy - then you have a grainy screen - not the image.

 

I did download that picture. It didn't really see any grain in that but the colours were not really ones that show the grain up that well.

The white background of this website shows it up very well. I am waiting on a call back from CS to see what they are going to do for me.

 

That means your screen is grainy then.

Hopefully your CS is understanding and cooperative.

 

go to interfacelift.com and download a wallpaper that is the resolution of your screen. There are a lot of amazing wallpapers (high resolution) that will tell ya if it's your screen.

 

Ok, thanks for all the help here.

I have basically been on the phone all afternoon about this.

Firstly, Customer Care say if they replace my machine with another of the same spec then my screen will be exactly the same. They were trying to get me to pay X amount extra to upgrade to the highest res screen. Pathetic

Secondly, I spoke to Sales as well who told me that as it is a business machine they are not meant to be Home entertainment systems, therefore the display quality may not be as sharp. I said 'So Dell are putting inferior quality screens in the Business Laptops over Home Laptops ?' He said 'Yes, that is correct'.

Outrageous!!!! I am being fed some total bulls*** here!

I have insisted on a replacement machine and they are going to get back to me.

I will update my progress for those who are interested.

I am sure CS make everything as painful as possible so that people give up and live with a product they are unhappy with.........

 

Wow... if that's true ask him why it includes Media Direct which is mainly for showing multimedia features...

And yes, he is feeding you BS, a business laptop should be every bit as good looking as a home laptop.

 

Exactly! I am sure the Insirons have also suffered from this problem also.

I bet they don't call me back either, certainly not before they finish today (In half an hour)

The thing is, they really don't seem bothered.

Might send an email Michael Dell's way if I can find it!!

 

you should say your 'business' is related to multimedia design, obviously thats why you bought a business laptop .. not a 'home'

 

Fair point, they will probably just try and sell me a better screen res though!!!!

 

Good luck finding Michael Dells email, if anyone below senior management finds out about it, I think he gets a new one in like 13 seconds.

If they try to sell you a higher res tell them you will be happy to accept it as compensation for selling you a poor product to begin with.

 

I would have to agree that Vista's default pictures are a bit crappy, but I'm not sure if that's my screen or just the pictures. And tell the truth, I'm not sure what the difference between a grainy screen and normal are. I know, I'm a noob!

 

How dare a business try to sell you something?! There are issues in your situation worth complaining about. This is just you whining for whining's sake.

 

Ummm... did you read what was written? They aren't just trying to sell him something... they are lying to him about why his parts are sub par, then rather than fixing what they should fix, they are telling him he must buy the solution.

Selling something defective, then charging to fix what should never have been broken in the first place.... that's just fraud.

That is not "just selling" that is ripping off.

If they had said "we can send you a replacement or for only $30 an upgrade to an even better screen" that would be legit selling.

 

No not really. If it was the case that all Vostro 1500's had a grainy screen then it would be tough s*** on me.

It's not though, some have excellent screens some do not. It is a lottery and that is wrong.

Don't get your second sentence either, is it sarcasm? who knows?

I bet you are a salesmans dream................

 

RE: UKClaret

I just received my inspiron 1521 featuring the same screen you have (LPLCC00). I too notice the whites aren't as clean or sharp as what I'm used to seeing on my desktop LCD monitor. As this is my first laptop, I am going down to the local best buy to check out other manufacturer's screens in person. I will take my inspiron along for the comparison.

 

Try these wallpaper, http://www.hamaddarwish.com/content/index_2.html

 

guess i lucked out here, i got the lg screen and i love it. never seen csr be such a pain though. hope it all works out

 

Thanks for the replies....

The wallpapers look pretty nice on my screen, but on closer look the "sparkle" effect is apparent on the lighter colours like the blue of the sky.....I will call Dell to see what my options are.....

 

Thank you for the file. Compared side by side with a WSGXA+ Vostro 1500 display and a Samsung 204T 20" LCD monitor (TFT/S-PVA matte desktop monitor). Nothing wrong I can see with the Vostro (except poor viewing angles, but that is expected). A lot higher contrast so if there is no glare the glossy screen does work as advertised. Part number JN997 so I guess it is not an LG.

 

Sorry if this is a silly suggestion......but why don't you just return the laptop for a full refund?

 

Hi ukclaret, Can I offer a possiblility?

Firstly I am not saying that there is nothing wrong with the screen as I obviously have not seen it so don't get the wrong impression with this post.

I am a graphic artist and deal with electronic images all the time. A perfectly good image at amazingly high resolutions can appear grainy on good monitors if the image display rezise is not compatible with the ratio. It's like radio waves, at certain frequencies you will get noise with a good signal (I was a radio signalman for the army as well).

For example an image @ X resolution will not display nicely at Y resolution but will display great at Z resolution. I haven't recorded any specific ratio for this so I can't give real life examples. However, there is a full proof way to fix an image that has this problem. You need to manually resize the image file and match it to the screen resolution. If the image still looks grainy then you could say it's the monitor but you did mention in your first post "It looks OK during normal use".

Anyway I hope you get a good monitor when you get your replacement and if the images are still grainy then I would use picture manager (every windows has this) and manually change the resolutions and see if it makes a difference.