Thinkpads Forum

Hi all - have an interesting dilemma here - I have a W700. The screens on these babies are EXTRA bright. Works great in daytime viewing, even in the sunshine. However, with summer here I sometimes sit on the porch after sundown and poke around on the web. In the dark, the screen is WAY too bright, even after dimming it all of the way down via Fn-End key. Only way to get it dimmer is to tilt the screen down some, which messes up viewing and is really not the way to go.

So, question: is there any other way to dim the screen even more? One would think there'd be some sort of software way to have the laptop cut the screen juice a bit and get it even darker. Would also help with battery life, too.

Within the NVIDIA Control Panel, you have sliders to adjust brightness, contrast, and gamma, all of which affect the apparent brightness of the display. Although the laptop stops using the calibrated color profile as soon as you adjust those sliders.

Also, when you run the color calibrator, it lets you select the gamma for the display, which can be adjusted to reduce the apparent brightness of the display. This preserves use of the calibrated color profile, although the adjustment range is more limited than in the NVIDIA control panel.

I'm not aware of any browser plug-ins that specifically let you control gamma, although that's another possibility.

You may be able to place a sheet of gel, acetate, or printable transparency film over the display, or perhaps something like 3M privacy film, to temporarily dim it.

If you activate Battery Stretch within the Windows Mobility Center control panel, it will reduce both the display refresh rate, and the color quality, both of which reduce power consumption. You can also change these two settings directly from within the NVIDIA Control Panel, without activating Battery Stretch.

Otherwise, sunglasses, medication, or eat fewer carrots.

Thx for the hints; will try in the next couple of days. I was more concerned about saving battery juice and lighting up my porch big-time(spotlight) than reading the screen. Interesting that even at fully dimmed, these screens still put out a LOT of light.