[PLUG] LCD thingies

[Elliott Mitchell]

>From: alan <alan at clueserver.org>
> My laptop is 1920x1200.  They seemed to have stopped selling that 
> resolution though. I think it made the mouse cursor just a bit too small.

Precisely. If you can't get it, what is the point of saying it exists?
Yet scaling everything would of taken care of this.  :-(   I suppose that
will be nVIDIA's next mission, pursuading MS to make the items under
"accessibility options" much more prominent and encouraging LCD makers to
go super high resolution (more pixels means more graphics horsepower is
needed).


>From: Keith Lofstrom <keithl at kl-ic.com>
> CCFL backlight in an LCD (and oh how I wish they would use ultrabright
> white LEDs instead), but it does use quite a bit less power and voltage,
> so the fire hazard is less, all other things equal.

Those are coming, some LCDs are reported to already use them. What looks
better to me would be a direct matrix of RGB LEDs. With the LEDs being a
directly emissive medium, you get the colors back. Doesn't solve the
issue of ridiculously low resolution matricies though.


>From: Keith Lofstrom <keithl at kl-ic.com>
> The question becomes, why would LCDs hit the landfills?  There is
> very little to wear out, besides the cold cathode fluorescent
> backlight, which can be replaced.  Of course, all electronics can
> wear out, but many of the high stress components are replacable if
> a repair industry exists.  One reason LCDs would hit the landfills
> is obsolescence, but if they are still useful, there are places like
> Free Geek that can find new homes them.  Some might get accidentally
> smashed screens, but the other parts are still usable as spares. 
> What remains is bad design, or evil design --- LCDs with mis-features
> or poor reliability that make nobody want them.

Given how awful even the LCDs being sold today (resolution and color!) I
imagine obsolescence will be a major issues with LCDs for a while yet.
Meanwhile, though very heavy (and requiring proper disposal) CRTs are a
mature technology.


>From: Keith Lofstrom <keithl at kl-ic.com>
> The CRT works for about 5 years, then off to the landfill it goes.
> OTOH, your inherited lead crystal objects have much less lead by
> weight in them, and are kept for a long time, as your example shows
> (I have some similar 80yo objects).  So the rate that the material
> enters the landfill is far lower.

Which 5 years would that be?

It has been quite some time since I last saw a CRT die. I've only been
seeing them dumped due to replacement with lighter LCDs, I pretty well
haven't been seeing them /die/.

CRTs weren't being repaired for the same reasons as LCDs, it is expensive
to do so and the price of new ones was low. At the moment CRT prices are
still depressed since folks are still replacing them with LCDs. I'm
wondering if CRT prices will spring back and repair shops will become
profitable again due to the dump phase ending...

> I agree that the fretting probably does more damage than the lead
> does, but it is wasteful to make a mess when you don't need to. 
> So I look forward to the day when we make CRTs go away, and also the
> day when people find something better to do than worry uselessly.

Unlikely to happen. Airplane scares still get the front page when you're
massively more likely to be killed in a car wreck...


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