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On Mon, 9 Feb 1998, David Ross wrote: > > > > While I haven't seen a CV machine, I did used to have an LCD TV > > with a similar arrangement - active LCD screen with a > > transparent rear. > [snip] > > goes through three layers of LCDs. So unless you can get the > > angles just right, most of the time the light reflecting off the > > screen is as bright as or brighter than the light going through > > the screen. > > But presumably this TV didn't have a built-in backlight. I'm suggesting > a laptop which uses *both* its usual backlight *and* some supplemental > ambient or solar light, for example by making the back plastic translucent. > Surely this has to be at least as good as the comparable machine without the > translucent back! Actually it did have a backlight. It used a prism and the reflective screen to redirect as much of the light as possible through the screen. Making the back plastic translucent would defeat much of this backlight redirection. There's this annoying quirk of physics where if light can take a path one way, it can just as easily go the other way (i.e. no light "diodes"). So if you make the rear translucent to allow sunlight in, you also allow the backlight light to leak out instead of reflecting off the (closed) screen and brightening your display. I suppose it would still be an improvement, but (backlight+sunlight) < (backlight) + (sunlight) -- John H. Kim kim@mak.com