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On Fri, 11 Aug 95, dewar@nile.gnat.com (Robert Dewar) wrote:
>Best guess is that IBM does not want magazines to benchmark battery
>life with "full power options" including the bright screen. That makes
>perfectly good sense, battery life is something that any idiot reviewer
>can measure and report on, whereas it is much less likely that you get
>criticized for a dimmer screen on battery power.
Interesting comment Robert because I can't help wonder if some magazine
reviewers are totally oblivious to this "undocumented feature" too.
For example, look at the review of various "Super VGA" portables,
including the IBM 755CX ThinkPad, in the September issue of Mobile
Office Magazine. Although they picked the IBM 755CX as the best
all-around Super VGA notebook, their only negative comment was:
"Aside from its TFT Display, which falls short of the LCDs
from NEC and AT&T in brightness, the ThinkPad comes close
to perfection".
Also in their +/- summary they say "TFT display slightly dimmer,
colors slightly duller".
I looked at most of the notebooks available today (many side-by-side)
before I purchased my 755CX. My impression was that the IBM 755CX had
the brightest, sharpest, cleanest, most vibrant color display I saw and
made my purchase based on this observation. In fact, my application for
the notebook (portable photographic/graphic editing) demanded that I
buy the best possible display available (money was NOT an issue).
Sure, I saw other LCD displays with similar characteristics, but none
came close to the ThinkPad's Super VGA display at 65K color depth.
I wouldn't be at all surprised that the Mobile Office reviewers were
totally "in the dark" about this undocumented ThinkPad display "feature".
:-)
This just exemplifies why I have always taken magazine product reviews
"with a grain of salt". Even if you believe the magazine's review is
unbiased (you know it's very unlikely any magazine is going to "bad
mouth" any of its large advertisers), most reviewers don't spend enough
time with the product to properly evaluate it anyway. I think most
magazine product reviews are useful to help narrow down the choices to
a few and then it's up to us to evaluate them BEFORE we buy.
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