Thinkpads Forum

I stopped by Circuit City today to get a first-hand look at a T60 widescreen. I was very impressed with everything except (you guessed it) the screen.

It was the low-resolution model, but what really bothered me was how dim the screen was. It was absolutely the darkest screen I have ever seen. I tried adjusting the brightness with the keyboard, but that had zero effect (max brightness looked just like min brightness).

The sales rep assured me you can adjust the brightness in the BIOS, but he wouldn't actually show me. Anyone else had this problem or know if the brighness can be "fixed" in the BIOS? (The computer was on AC power by the way).

If on AC power, the screen should be in high-brightness mode. There is a BIOS option that allows for a reduction in the max brightness when on battery, but AC gets full power.

If there was no difference between min and max, either something is screwy in the software, or that machine has a hardware failure. My T60p WS is plenty bright - quite comparable to my T60p 15" UXGA and even similar to the panels on my desk. Not as bright as my MW800, but that's another story.

I find ThinkPad screens can tend to look very dim under bright light, especially if the light is angled at the screen in a certain way. But you'd still see a difference between max and minimum brightness. It was probably a machine specific problem if there was really no difference in brightness.

Hopefully it was just a bad unit. I'll try another Circuit City tonight and see if there's a difference.

I went to a different Circuit City today and found the display to be much better. The brightness was very adjustable this time, but it didn't get quite as bright as I would like. Probably bright enough though.

I'm still on the fence - too bad they didn't have a WSXGA+ to look at.