I'm typing this text on a laptop in a city park. The problem with
laptop displays in daylight or in bright rooms is you get a lot of
hindering reflexions. I'm sitting in bright sunlight with the Sun
facing me. Typing would be impossible if I didn't put on a black
T-shirt, a hat and my new "magic" clip-ons.
The light from laptop displays and all such LCD / TFT displays is
polarized. So when you put on polarized spectacles (or add polarized
clip-ons to your spectacles), most of the light from the display
reaches
your eyes while the other sources of light are dimmed, especially the
reflexions. This is very handy. The resulting proportional enhancement
of the display is not tremendous but it can make a comfortable
difference.
The problem is you cannot use common clip-ons. Indeed standard
polarized
clip-ons have a vertical polarization (90°) while laptop displays have
a
45° or -45° polarization. So I had to transform commercial clip-ons to
conform them to the 45° polarization of my laptop display. The
photograph below shows standard clip-ons and below old ones I
transformed. I detached the filters and attached them back on with a
45° rotation. Later I cut the filters with scissors to make them more
symmetric and let my nose through.
The enhancement brought by the clip-ons is better in bright rooms than
in sunlight. In some cases I notice no enhancement at all. The GIF
animation below shows a screen photographed in the outside with and
without the polarized filter. I'll make better photographs, anyway it
gives a rough idea:
One drawback on my laptop is its little keyboard LCD display has a -45°
polarization, hence 90° opposite to the main TFT display. So I can no
more read the battery state and the Caps Lock and Num Lock states.
Unless I rotate my head a little bit... This is not a serious problem.
I believe the enhancement is sufficient to justify the
commercialization of spectacles and clip-ons dedicated to laptops.
Friends told me they would spend between 5 and 20 € on such clip-ons.
The common price of low cost standard clip-ons is 8 €. For quality
spectacles or clip-ons, for example for people working outside,
probably
a much higher price would be acceptable and necessary. (Remind two
kinds of spectacles or clip-ons are necessary: ones for +45° polarized
displays and ones for -45° displays.)
