screens complaints, hang head in shame

just a little vent session. friends are relentless. it all started when i tried to show a video to some people around my desk. didnt work out too well.

i am an enterprise dell technician and for that reason refuse to buy another one again. i love my thinkpad, but can definetely not brag about the screen. the screen is vibrant with great resolution when plugged in. but i have to say my coworkers do heckle me about their dell 1530's.

i have to admit the screen on the dell is exceptionally better than my R61. The viewing angle is actually pretty amazing and the contrast is great with minimal light leakage. i dont like the glossy screen but would take it if i could get the experience with the rest of the features. im not buying a dell, but i needed to vent a little envy out. although i will be laughing when i tell them their screen is worthless when the rest of the computer doesnt work.

and yes i do have a samsung panel.

 

I read and heard that many of the 1530 dell screens are no good. They have light leakage and many stuck pixels

 

from what i read i would agree. but from what i see i would say otherwise. i believe what i see over what i read.

 

I can tell you that the screen on my T61p is the worst LCD I've ever seen. My wife has a Dell 1525 with the XGA screen and aside from a little light bleed from the bottom, it's perfect.

 

I am afraid of Dells grainy screen effect more than any. Having lived with my E1505 for 3 years, I'm glad for this T61 screen.

 

Yeah, I hope Lenovo sees fit to upgrade the panels (brightness and colour depth, the dithering on my T61p's WSXGA+ LG panel is pretty bad) when they release the next-gen machines this summer, or offer an upgrade option - not just to upgrade the resolution, but to offer a better panel at a given resolution

 

For you people who say the screen is bad. Could you post screen shots of the screen from dead on(i.e from an angle that you would use the laptop for yourself to type etc)? I think peoples idea of a bad screen vary widely. I think viewing angle complaints are a pointless argument, since all the new laptop screen have this problem. This would help a lot of us to determine what is really "bad" for us and what we can live with. Thanks.

 

snake, ill post some pics of what i mean. when i have the laptop at different levels, i constantly have to adjust the screen at awkward angles to make out what is on the screen. the dell's look the same no matter what angle. ill throw some pics up when i get them.

 

I'm working on posting pics, but my complaint isn't so much viewing angles (even though they're not good, but I have the "glittery" grainy look that people complain about on the Samsung XPS 1530 panels.

 

I just called the Hardware Support center and they're sending me a box to ship the laptop in with. I guess I'll see what the service depot says.

The FRU I pulled up on my parts list showed as 42T0329. If you look in the service manual for the T61p SXGA+, the FRU's listed are 42X4641, 42T0417, and 42T0423. I told the CSR this and his excuse was that those FRU's change a lot. He didn't have much to say when I told him that I found the 42T0329 FRU in the T60p service manual.

I'm convinced that they found this LCD in the bottom of a warehouse somewhere.

 

how do you check which screen you have?

 

There's a couple ways. To scan and find out what Lenovo says they sent, you can go here:

http://www-307.ibm.com/pc/support/s...=/partslookup/partsLookup.vm&sitestyle=lenovo

And either auto-scan or enter your machine type and serial number to get the parts that shipped with the laptop.

If you want to know the exact manufacturer model number, PC Wizard 2008 is a good tool. For instance, PC Wizard says that I have a Samsung LTN154P2-L05, manufactured in 2005(!).

 

here is some proof to my claim. these are both plugged in and at full brightness. both on the exact same page. not the end of the world but still nonetheless dissapointing. good thing this is mostly for work.


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I think my t61 14" wxga+ LG screen is pretty nice. Just as clear and much brighter than my old dell 15" wsxga+. On par with my wifes dell d530 xga once you get past the resolution difference. My old powerbook ti-book 15" was better, but that was a truly great screen.

Really, my only complaint about the t61 screen is the poor viewing angles. However, the t61 hinges are so tight and smooth, I really don't mind adjusting the angle at all.

 

i also have the wxga+, i cant imagine what the screen looks like with a lower resolution. at least Active Directory is not full of bright colors and video! ha. the two complaints i have to make with my R61 is the screen and port selection, otherwise its stellar.

 

i wish i got the wxga+ screen on my 14.1 inch R61. i'm too used to my old 17 inch laptop where i can open like 2 windows side by side without blocking anything. now i can really only open one thing at a time. i guess this will help me focus on one thing at a time rather than being everywhere at once.

 

have a look at the review linked in my sig - nothing I can't live with, but I would have gladly paid a little more to get a little more (of course I can say that because I got mine with a generous friends and family discount )

 

It's not the broightness I have issues with - the colours aren't great, and there is obvious dithering. Not great if you do any work on photos or graphics... which is odd given that they market it to graphics people by offering a professional graphics card

 

excellent point.

 

Yeah, no problem with brightness here either. In fact, it's almost too bright, but I think that's because of the extremely small viewing angles. It's like the backlight is focused on the center of the screen. Then there's the issue of grainy, glittery, dirt-like artifacts all over the screen.

What's scary, keh, is that you have an LG panel which is what everyone usually says is better.

 

i agree, brightness from front on is great. And angles are usually not a problem if the machine if perfectly eye level or slightly lower. i use my laptop all over the place and rarely have it on a perfect surface.

the bottom line is that its really all in the eyes of the beholder. plus its good for a potential purchaser to know what they are getting into. if you asked me today about the dell screen i would tell you its got a beautiful picture. not from what i read or what others say, but from whats in front of my face. the thinkpad has a great screen that is very bright and looks excellent but only from head on.

 

Thanks for posting the pic. Yes that is pretty bad. The first thing that struck me with the picture is the really uneven illumination. Its like there are patches of dark areas on the screen. The screen doesn't seem too graney, but maybe thats' because I can't tell from the picture.

 

Thanks for posting your screen shots. Your screen seems pretty decent to me, but I see what you guys mean about the view angles between the Dell and Thinkpad, wow. It looks like the Thinkpad is a little more bluish/purplish and the Dell looks pure white.

 

The grain got lost a little in the scaling down of the pic. If you've ever seen pics of the XPS 1530 screens that people complain about, it looks just like that.

 

i can see the grainyness (if thats even a word) in your pic. One of my older chembooks looked like that. I have yet to see anything like this on the 1530. Thats what the pics in my post are of. Nothing like what i used to see. I am interested to see what Lenovo does for you.

 

Did those 1530's have the SXGA+ screen? Are they Samsung screens?

 

The 1530's come in widescreens I believe, so no standard resolutions.

 

correct Ark, i also believe it is the same as my R61 also. 1440 X 900 if im not mistaken.

 

I think that everyone focuses mainly on brightness when forming their initial impression of a panel (which is why TV sets are sold with the brightness cranked), and on that basis the reviews do seem to show that the LG panel has an advantage... but somebody (maybe Joooeeee) had a chance to look at the two panels side-by-side, and I believe (but could be wrong) that the samsung may have had better colour

Now I do all my photo work (and game playing) on my desktop at home, the laptop is for excel and word work mainly, so it isn't a big deal for me... but if I were a pro photographer using this in the field... well, I would be hiring the lawyers those guys used to go after apple for selling 6 bit panels

 

Just dropped my boxed T61p off at the local DHL pickup location, so it's on its way to Memphis. I included a very descriptive letter detailing my issue, so we'll see what happens.

I actually thought the color and brightness on the LCD was fine. My main concern, aside from the headache inducing haze and grain, is that the LCD had a FRU associated with T60 laptops and if I wanted a T60p with a crappy LCD, I'd have bought one from the IBM Employee Purchase Program for quite a bit less than what I paid for the T61p.

 

Wohoo, just got my T61 14.1WXGA+ and found out that I have the 200nit LG screen and also the Hitachi 160GB HDD. W00T!

The screen isn't too bad when on max brightness compared to my 2 yr old Asus A8Jm... I wouldn't complain too much, but the colors are a little less vibrant... Oh well, at least now I can use my laptop for 3+ hrs on the go compared to the measly 2.5 hrs from Asus

 

+1 to Dell

 

Nice... my 160gb was from the evil litigious seagate corp unfortunately - swapped it out for my 100gb hitachi.

Heh, yeah, I had an Asus before this one too - what, you mean batteries in laptops aren't just for emergency backup in case of power outage?!

 

HAHA, yah... unfortunately Asus is a bit behind in the battery side of the game even though I still like everything else.

Re: the battery as a UPS, I need about 4 - 5 hrs of battery life on the go because of University. I can't carry the A8Jm + Adapter all day because it is too heavy! Even with the 9-cell on the T61 it weighs about the same as the Asus... Btw, I'll be able to play some basic games on the T61, but I'm not much of a gamer anymore

But if i were a gamer, I would definitely use a desktop and spend 150$ to get a 8800GT or 9600GT which would dwarf most laptop gaming performance, hAhA =D

I'm looking forward to the new 13.3" lenovo laptops that are hopefully debuting w/ LED displays, ahhh *Drool*

 

Yeah the screen on my Asus was definitely top notch (perhaps a bit too glossy though), better than this one, or the one on my Dell before it. I really don't run off the battery too often, so I'm never too concerned about battery life... the only real issue I had with Asus was the build quality. After a year of use, I had two significant cracks in the casing of my system - one running from the keyboard out to the edge of the system, and one whole corner, up the hinges, looked ready to fall off.

 

techboydino,
Thanks for posting the side by side pics. The difference between the two is huge on all aspects. I was pretty pleased with the display on my 1 month old X61. That is until this thread prompted me to take it in my son's room and do a side by side comparison with his 19" dell LCD monitor. I can't believe how dim and lifeless this LCD reallly is. That and the problem with the disabled stero mixer, I think I'm going to seriously check out the Dell XPS. I'm really going to miss the trackpoint though...

 

I think all manufacturers have the screen problem with the notebooks.

I have seen many many T61s working and haven't seen a screen problem - this is with the 1440x resolution. No grainy screen or anything.

 

maybe lenovo will kick it up a notch with the latest offerings. it seems pretty clear that most are on the same page with the screens being a little on the lacking side. i had an asus that was actually worse, so no matter what you get there are some screens that just dont look good. if your considering a heavy multimedia machine, i may go elsewhere. but for the business/professional needs their is no other match to thinkpads.

 

I returned(w restocking fees) a T61 few months ago. The vertical viewing angles were the worst I encountered on a laptop. The brightness was OK. The screen on the replacement machine, a Dell D630, is far superior. It's not perfect, but I can see a lot more clearly. If you look at the Dell forums, you will see a lot of people have issues with their new Dell screens as well. Many of them call Dell for a replacement laptop which Dell happily sends out in the initial guaranteed satisfaction period. Some have to do this more than once before they finally get a good screen. Lenovo could take a cue from Dell. But Lenovo has been moving in the opposite direction with their no return policy return policy. If you get stuck with a bad screen on a Lenovo (like I did), good luck.

 

Most laptop screens will pale in comparison to a stand alone monitor. Another laptop screen would be a much fairer comparison. Hopefully, Lenovo will address their customer service issues(doubtful) and add better screens to the next gen of Thinkpads(we'll see). The next gen D630's come out in June and may be worth a look. They have trackpoints(as do the current ones).