[PLUG] lcd care and feeding

[Eric Wilhelm]

Hi all,

Does anyone know what the implications are of power-cycling an LCD 
backlight?  I've heard that one should not turn a CRT on and off too 
frequently because it reduces the life span.  1)  Is that true? and 2) 
does it matter so much with an LCD?

I'm considering replacing my screensaver with:

  xset dpms force off

(Suggestions of how to make that happen in kde land?)

Interesting facts:

1) My samsung 20" LCD draws 0.38A (about 0.44kW/hr), which is a bit over 
one-third the power (1.05A) used by an idling AMD 6400+ with an 80+ 
(certified) efficient power supply (idling at 1GHz down from 3.2 with 
the powernow driver in the 2.6.22-3-amd64 kernel.)  (Disclaimer: 
current measurements taken with an analog clamp-on amprobe on a 
ten-wrap (mail me a digital meter if you're concerned about 
precision :-D .))

2) Contrary to my previous belief, the LCD panels actually suffer from 
something like "burn in", though it is just a cell memory and not the 
permanent burn that you get with a CRT.

  http://www.viewsonic.com/support/qa.cfm?topic=lcd&question=09

--Eric
-- 
But as soon as you hear the Doppler shift dropping in pitch, you know
that they're probably going to miss your house, because if they were on
a collision course with your house, the pitch would stay the same until
impact. As I said, that one's subtle.
--Larry Wall
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