new mac screens

[John Camp]

I went in today to look at one of the new Mac dual-core laptops, and was told that in addition to the regular "matte" screen that they would, in the next few days, begin offering a glossy screen like those on the Sony Viaos. What do you think,  both for general use and photo processing? Glossy screens always seemed sharper to me, although that may be an optical illusion, but they also reflect  overhead lights & such. Any comments? Any preferences?

JC

[boku]

I recently acquired a Dell laptop with their newly-offered glossy screen upgrade. (I forget the marketing terminology they used - it was about a $100 upgrade).

I went for it even though I didn't expect much (they claim a 10% improvement in image quality - a totally empirical statement to make).

I was very impressed. It is much better than I ever had on a laptop.

Take that with a grain of salt - the only laptops I ever had were Dells and Compaqs.

The screen seemed to calibarate much better than my other Dell work laptop, mostly because a truer luminance and tonal range.

[61Dynamic]

My brother graduated recently and got a new MacBook for it. The screen is the glossy version and it isn't too bad. As with most glossy screens, colors are more saturated and blacks are richer than regular laptop screens. However, I don't know how well it will calibrate; I'll have to wait until tuesday before I can get my hands on it again. Then again, I've never heard of a laptop screen being suitable for color accurate work anyway; just basic stuff.

One concern people have is that of glare/reflections. It's not bad. Far less of an issue on this screen than most  glossy laptops I've seen. What glare/reflections do occur aren't as strong as others. If you encounter reflections at all of course depends on where you use it.