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A laptop that allows you to turn off the backlight and use an external source for display illumination. The opaque back of the display could fold out, revealing the translucent diffuser on the back of the LCD panel. If the fold-out section has a white reflecting surface, you could angle the reflector
to catch the sun and thus illuminate the back of the LCD. A fold-out shade on the top and/or sides of the LCD could help contrast by blocking out bright areas beyond the display. Because the backlight is a significant source of battery drain, this will improve battery life. [Now why you are using a laptop in a sunny place rather than swimming or loafing is a problem I leave for the user to solve.]
One more enhancement: make the front LCD polarizer removable. Then polarized sunglasses will block the glare from anywhere but the screen. As a further bonus, the screen becomes unreadable to anyone not wearing polarized glasses.
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The Toshiba 1000 (c.1988) was the ideal beach machine. |
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Reflective display, white case, six hour battery life. I had some very nice days on the beach with that baby. |
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At the very least they should orient the polarization of laptop displays so they match sunglasses. That way you can wear sunglasses to dim the sunshine without blocking out the screen. |
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How would you read the creen in a dark place? I like the idea of photo electric cells to carge the battery too. |
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gz: read the first sentence. There is a backlight for normal indoor
situations that folds down. |
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I had this idea before too. I like it - work on the beach. But we'd
have to go back to the thicker style of laptop. Modern ones have a
VERY thin top, and that cover provides the stiffness to keep the
fragile LCD from flexing and breaking. |
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//the screen becomes unreadable to anyone not wearing polarized glasses.// |
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I had a very similar idea the other day while trying to use a laptop in sunlight. Croissant. |
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[jtgd]: The Apple iBook case is transparent polycarbonate, with white painted on the inside of the plastic. If the opaque white layer were a removable sheet then the transparent case could remain for structural reasons while still letting you use the sun as a backlight. |
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// using a laptop in a sunny place rather than swimming or loafing //
using a laptop IS loafing. |
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wiml: Good to know about the Apple, however I thought that this was
something that would work in sunshine AND indoors, which means there
still needs to be the standard fluorescent backlight, which would need
to fold away from the LCD. |
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I had envisioned a triangular chamber with the LCD on the front
surface, a white inner bottom surface, and a translucent top
surface. This should give a fairly uniform lighting behind the LCD
(we don't want the shadows of leaves to make a pattern behind the
screen image.) I imagine the folded down backlight could be the white
surface, an the top translucent part could be a flexible film. |
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ah, [jtgd], that's the best part. Fluorescent lights aren't opaque, or at least don't have to be. Shine a flashlight at a common fluorescent tube and you'll see the beam diffused and illuminating part of the other side. The same should work for the flat fluorescents used as backlights. Some light will be lost, but on a sunny day you've got plenty of light to work with. The backlight can act as an extra diffuser, even. |
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(Probably won't work with electroluminescent backlights --- I think those usually have an opaque electrode covering one side --- but I think fluorescents are more common anyway.) |
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[Randomly-Churned] Free energy, beaches and polarisation, some of my favorite things. Apart from croissants. |
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The Powerbook 180 was also, like the Toshiba 1000, very good outdoors. |
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I still use mine, though less often now that I can read using a Palm. |
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One difficulty is that most color displays absorb most of the light put through them even when showing "white". Even if there weren't anything behind it a color LCD would be hard to use in any environment without backlighting since it would always be much dimmer than ambient. |
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