T40 screen uniformity?

[Calibur721]

Hey, quick question regarding the T40 screen. I just got my T40 laptop with the 1400*1050 sxga+ screen, and so far it looks great- excellent color and contrast, except for the fact that the brightness uniformity from top to bottom sucks!
Compared to my old 13 inch dual scan laptop, this one has about the same performance, the bottom is extremely washed out while the top is pretty dark. Now compared to other laptops their screen uniformity seems to be spot on, so i was wondering if this is just the case with all T40 screens or somethings wrong with my specific one.

Also, the right hand palmrest tends to get pretty hot, in addition to the bottom of the laptop. Now I have the 80gig drive so its not the high speed one, so again is the excessive heat normal?

 

[Calibur721]

Anyone? I know a bunch of you have the T40...

 

[mocca]

The 14" SXGA+ on the T40 is best in term of clarity and the brightness. However, there are two part numbers for the SXGA+ LCD that IBM used for the T40. One is ID Tech, another is Samsung. I have both LCDs and posted a write up about this sometime ago which you can fine it here. The vertical viewing angle on both LCD is comparable but the Samsung lcd have a wider viewing angle (but the ID Tech lcd have higher brightness which I really like). You might get an ID Tech LCD (which is perfectly fine as long as it have no dead pixels). The best you can expect from the vertical viewing angle is about +/- 45 degree on the Samsung LCD and about +/- 30 degree on the ID Tech.

About the palmrest, if you get the 80GB (which I assume it is hitachi 80GN at 4200rpm), it should run quite cool. It can get a little bit warm, but no where near hot. The max temp I have read from the 80GN 80GB hdd is about 37C which is the same as the body temp so I only feel slightly warm (this is at room temp about 25-30C). A 5400rpm or 7200rpm HDD, is naturally, run hotter (the max temp for both is around 43C at the same room temp). I would suggest if your HDD run a little bit hot, try download the IBM Feature tool from Hitachi web site and set the acoustic management to the most quietest mode. This will automatically make the HDD run a little bit slower in general but it will be a little bit quieter and hopefully run cooler.

Mocca

 

[mocca]

Oh, I forgot to mention that the brightness is actually quite uniform. The changes in brightness from top to bottom that you see is the normal effect of TN Technology. In order to allow light pass the LCD, the pixels must change their alignment. When you look at the center of the lcd, you actually look at variation of the pixel orientation, the most correct at center, and the most off at the edge.

Mocca

 

[nicowju]

the brightness of my t40's sxga+ screen is very uniform too. if you look at it at an angle, the section closest to you looks brighter than others, but it's very uniform looking at it straight on