600M viewing poor viewing angles

What you are seeing sounds like it meets the degree specs and is typical for the screen you got.  Is this your first LCD?

Your 600M has a standard LCD panel, which has limited viewing angles.  It should look good viewing is straight on, but if the screen is not positioned just so, or you look at it from even a slightly off angle, its limitations become apparent.  Only Dell's "ultrasharp" screens have the wider viewing angle ; unfortunately these screens are not available on any of Dell's smaller, lighter notebooks ; right now they're available on the 8600 and 5150.  I have an Inspiron 8100 with standard UXGA screen ; it's a great screen, but with the limited viewing angles you mentioned.  Any new computer I get will have to have a state-of-the-art screen.  If this is troubling to you, and your computer is new, I'd recommend returning it and buying one with an ultrasharp or comparable screen (different manufacturers have different names for them).

Actually, Ive owned a few lcds. I had an old P2 Toshiba (4020cdt to be exact) which had a great clear crisp screen with good viewing angles. Ive also owned a Dell latitude cpx h500gt. The latitudes colors were not great, but I cant remember the screen being this bad with regards to viewing angles. I find that this screen is reminiscent of my 15 inch desktop lcd (samsung 570v) which I must admit is very similar to the 600m screen with regards to viewing angles and colors. I must admit though, I have been spoiled with my new samsung 172t screen which is great in every respect, especially viewing angles. I just found it a bit weird that this laptops lcd was inferior to my fiances 12.1 inch notebook screen. She has a very budget notebook, an Averatec 3150H and I must admit that it puts my 600M to shame, unfortuntately. Ive recently been able to compare my 600M side by side to a so called ultrasharp screen, even though it was a compaq laptop. It was a 15.4 inch wide screen x1050 laptop, and I must admit that the screen was beyond beautiful. It put my desktop lcd to shame. Its just sad that those laptops are so wide and are a bit too big to be bringing them around school and to use in class. I love the size and weight of the 600m ( the price is great too), but the ultrasharp screens are tempting.

i had both the compaq x1000 and the dell 8600 and when put side to side the x1000 definitely had wider viewing angles and was brighter. the dell was wsxga instead of the compaq which was wxga but my eyes thank me every time i use the compaq. i have since returned the 8600 :)

 

edit: regarding portability, the compaq is much more portable (thinner + lighter) than the dell and it fits in my backpack (it's a samsonite backpack with a laptop compartment) easily.

Message Edited by nmopepisdn on 11-05-2003 01:11 PM

Yes, I just got this system. At first I thought my system was defective, knowing modern TFT's have wide viewing angles. Calling DELL Support was USELESS. I don't know who gave them "awards". Funny thing, i haven't seen any pictures of india in their commercials...

But after searching google for a few hours, found this:
http://www1.ca.dell.com/content/learnmore/learnmore.aspx?c=ca&l=en&s=dhs&~id=screen&~line=notebooks&~series=inspn&~subcat=14
Meager 30 degrees down, less than half of UXGA.

The only good choice is UltraSharp, with +/-70degree vertical viewing angle (not available on 600m).

I am now considering returning this unit since 30 degree viewing angle down is just not good enough for this price. I like 1400x1050, I don't want 15" 1600x1200 (that's too big for a mobile), but living with this, I don't know... Dell certainly did NOT mention this viewing angle in their selling literature. I'd keep this if not for this one limitation. What did you decide to do? It's sad, since this 14.1 is the only reason I even went with dell, and now seems like the only reason to not keep it. Every 15" notebook doesn't even look like a notebook, more like a small desktop.

P.S.
Just to recount the tech support. This was my first dell, and I asked the guy what the first 31 FAT dos partition was for (didn't realize that was test utils at first). After "checking" he says it's a SWAP partition when stuff doesn't fit into my 512 ram. 31 meg swap partition for 512 ram. Obviously it's not. Just shows how wonderful this "Award Winning Support" is. When dell shows Interns in their commercials, they're not kidding. This ofcourse after I got hung up on by first tech (just as clueless) after I was put on hold. But that's normal for all techs to hang up, so...