Thinkpads Forum

anyone have any ideas of the life expectancy for the IPS Flexview screens? life expectancy as in how long it can be trusted for color accuracy with digital photo color correction?

i've heard standard CRT monitors are only 2-3 years before it's not really trustworthy...

actually, while on the topic of life expectancies, what about for thinkpads and macbook pros? how many years can you go before the new versions of the OS, internet browsers and say photoshop require more system requirements than the notebook can handle?

just trying to figure out how worthwhile it is to get the newest fastest T60, or if could just get a half as good one, have it last half as long, and get a new notebook twice as often, cause then you'll have newer stuff more often.

any thoughts?
allen

I don't know about the life expectancies for the IPS Flexview screens, but I do know that most of my older collection of LCD screens still portray colors well after 3 yearsm including the ones on laptops going back even farther in terms of age.

For how long you can use the laptop with the software? Depends on how far out on the "Software Upgrade" branch you want to go. With the Thinkpads, you should be able to easily cover almost all of the Photoshop versions right up to Photoshop CS2 even on T2X, Early T4X, T30s, and X Series systems. It is really best to go with the version that you feel runs the best for you and not just the latest upgraded version. For OS X, life cycles of the OS and updates (even the hardware) are more important than on most Thinkpads. There isn't going to be an update that breaks a feature per se, but there will be refreshed versions of the hardware/software combinations and the official support, as well as the application developers, will rather speedily migrate over to the new release.

My IBM CRT has been running for over 5 years. Possibly from the mid 90's. Advice I have heard is that CRT's generally more durable than LCD.

My CRT gives nice sharp type, it would be hard for me to switch to a LCD monitor for that reason

Stone

My 2 year old Samsung SyncMaster 997DF CRT still shows an excellent picture and to this day I've never had to adjust the brightness or convergance settings when calibrating the colors.

My 7 year old ThinkPad 600's LCD, while not as nice as some newer laptops, is still bright enough that I often have to turn down the brightness when in a low lit or dark room in order to avoid hurting my eyes.

I have a 12-year-old Packard Bell CRT that still looks and works as fine as when it was new. I am sure it varies, but I doubt very much that "standard CRT monitors are only 2-3 years before it's not really trustworthy".