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Horizontal Lines in New Powerbooks

This is a picture from my 17" Powerbook, 1GHZ version, so it's older now.

But I think depending on your camera, you will see different things, taking a photo of my screen with a Highgrade Digital SLR camera, seemed to highlight it more than usual.

And I can not see this even with my face pressed against the screen, I'm not sure what these new Powerbook 15" screens are like, but a friend got one, and he combed over his with a Magnifying glass, and didn't see any of these horizontal lines issue.

Not sure about other places, but my CTO laptop has been a LONG time, 3 weeks, don't know what they are doing, but maybe they are holding them and investigating the problem more.

Here's the shot of my 17" and it has a little lines, but again, I think this is mostly due to the camera picking up just about anything.

 
wildcard said:
My advice? Mention when talking to tech support that the lines are present in the Apple Hardware test. That rules out anything but a hardware problem, and will result in your laptop being declared DOA. I was advised by Apple sales that my 2nd powerbook would need to be DOA for a refund.
Click to expand...

Damned, too late for me to see this now. Good tip.
 
finchwizard said:
...Here's the shot of my 17" and it has a little lines, but again, I think this is mostly due to the camera picking up just about anything.

Click to expand...

See! Your screen is PERFECT! No lines: All the picels are exactly the same brightness. We don't care about the black outlines - that is normal and unavoidable on current TFT screens. The point is that alternate pixel rows of the new 15" PB are brighter (or darker, depending how you look at things ;))

See, here (yet again) are a couple of pics from my screen. Last time I posted these a guy told me that my screen looked "really bad" - cheers to whoever that was :D
 

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Yea, I've read the whole thread, saw all the pictures, some are worse than others, but those ones, I still see black lines between all the pixels, and not really horizontal lines.

The second one, in the black has a little, but yea, I'd have to see in real life to get the bigger picture.
 
finchwizard said:
Yea, I've read the whole thread, saw all the pictures, some are worse than others, but those ones, I still see black lines between all the pixels, and not really horizontal lines.

The second one, in the black has a little, but yea, I'd have to see in real life to get the bigger picture.
Click to expand...

You obviously don't understand what this thread is about. We're not talking about black lines between pixels. The horizontal lines are caused by every even row of pixels being slightly darker than the uneven rows of pixels.
 
To those getting headaches from this display, there are two possible reasons:
1. refresh rate is wrong (as some people have said)
2. the new resolution is hard for some people to focus on. That was the problem when I had a 15" PC laptop at 1400x1050. It took me a month to get used to, but then it was ok.
The lines shouldn't be giving people headaches.
 
I associate the eye strains I've been getting to the seemingly slow refresh rate. If you scroll up and down quickly on any text, you almost see a trail.

If I lowered the refresh rate of another monitor, I get the same effect. Is there a way to adjust the refresh rate on these powerbooks?
 
That is the question. And the reason why EVERYONE needs to contact Apple to complain otherwise a solution to the problem is going nowhere.

loktin said:
... Is there a way to adjust the refresh rate on these powerbooks?
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ColorSyn profile for you to use

This is pretty subjective of course - but I've been playing around for ages and finally got a coloursync profile that I'm pretty happy with - it makes webpage more easy on my eyes. Only problem is it is a little dark... I'm losing a lot of detail in shadows now on photos, but if you like it enjoy!


You need to put it in User>Library>ColorSync>Profiles

At least that's where I've taken it from!

It should work I think ;)

But don't blame me if I trash your comp :D

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RATS! What's going on with the message board? I keep posting "accidentally"

ANyway - no profile attached - it won't let me attach it.

---

A-ha. OK so here it is (Finally! :)). I've changed the filetype extension to .doc so that MacRum allowed me to upload (I hope this is not against the rules...:eek: )

If you want to use the profile you'll have to change it back to .icc and put it into the aforementioned Profiles folder - I've just tried it and it works fine for me.
 

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Bummer!

Was hoping something would come up before my 14 days is up, which is tomorrow, but it's not looking like it.

Guess I'll just be getting my refund and buying a used or refurb 12" or 15" and then maybe a ACD or something. VERY frustrating.
 
During the weekend I visited the Applestore in Willow Bend:
Both 15 inches had seroious (really bad) lines showing up with the Crankycat image.

CompuUSA had one machine and it looked almost perfect, so faint were the lines.

MicroCenter, could not download Crankycat due to their firewall but a blue background looked good so I think it was ok on the lines BUT the battery was stone dead.
I tried removing and reinstalling but the machine still did not recognize it.

That leaves 1 out of 4 PBs that I would have actually bought! Not good stats...
Interestingly enough, nobody I talk to at the stores have ever heard about the line issues.
So nobody working with Apple products ever read these forums? Hm.... Dont think so.

Apple used to have very good QC I never had a machine in 15 years that was bad and I have had a bunch of them. Now though it does not look good for their QC.
Since Amazon has a good return policy I took the chance and ordered the PB 15 yesterday with 2 day delivery so I can check it during a long weekend.
I want to have the last PPC version since it has all the features I need.

Also, Since Daystar now is marketing a 1.92 upgrade to earlier PB it makes me wonder if Apple knowlingly kept the processor speed the same on the existing PB so that it would be a more substantial speed difference to the Intel PB once it comes out. I dont doubt that the roadmap for Intel is great and that we will get chips that makes OS X fly but I dont see the current Intel offerings running laps around the existing PB G4 in terms of performance and battery time. Looking at what HP, Sony and Dell are offering right now anything with a performance close to the PB has less than 2h of battery time.

Just my 2 cents. Hoping for the best with my new PB on Wednesday!
 
Maybe its me but I just don't see the lines.

Give me your opinion.
 

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DrizztG said:
Maybe its me but I just don't see the lines.

Give me your opinion.
Click to expand...


To my eyes, yours looks good - just compare to the pictures earlier on in this thread. What do others think? I mean, let's face it, it's only as bad as it bother you and if it doesn't bother you then everything is fine.
 
verveshen said:
:p They are there!
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Its normal to see the lines of pixels but you cant say there is a difference of brightness between the odd and even rows of pixels like Spectrum's screen posted a little earlier.
 
the lines are there, but hardly noticeable even at that magnification. You wouldn't be able to see them even with your nose against the screen (unless you are really picky!). So if I were you, I wouldn't worry about it.
 
Drizzt -- you do have the lines. It looks to me like a pretty mild case, but they do show on the blue background. Not at all on the white menu bar, however.

How are you finding the computer for rendering text? The thing I've really noticed with the new 15 is that it does not render text as sharply as the 17 and the 12 -- but the only new 15s I have seen had the lines thing really quite badly.
 
I'm interested in this text rendering question too - Drizzit, your picture really seems to show a very subtle lines problem, but you can just about make out brighter alternate lines - apparently not nearly as bad as my screen... but then we used different cameras/backgrounds/profiles etc...

I think I've said this earlier, but I've resorted to using TinkerTool to turn off text smoothing for fonts up to 16pt. This has greatly increased the clarity of text in the GUI and in webpages such as this - without TinkerTool, font smoothing on 8-16pt text in Safari REALLY gives me a headache from squinting/concentrating, and is not helped by increasing font size.

What I don't know is whether this is related to the lines issue or not.

Drizzit: what serial number is your PB? (first 5 digits is enough).

Could they be getting better finally?

dblissmn said:
Drizzt -- you do have the lines. It looks to me like a pretty mild case, but they do show on the blue background. Not at all on the white menu bar, however.

How are you finding the computer for rendering text? The thing I've really noticed with the new 15 is that it does not render text as sharply as the 17 and the 12 -- but the only new 15s I have seen had the lines thing really quite badly.
Click to expand...
 
Spectrum said:
I'm interested in this text rendering question too - Drizzit, your picture really seems to show a very subtle lines problem, but you can just about make out brighter alternate lines - apparently not nearly as bad as my screen... but then we used different cameras/backgrounds/profiles etc...

I think I've said this earlier, but I've resorted to using TinkerTool to turn off text smoothing for fonts up to 16pt. This has greatly increased the clarity of text in the GUI and in webpages such as this - without TinkerTool, font smoothing on 8-16pt text in Safari REALLY gives me a headache from squinting/concentrating, and is not helped by increasing font size.

What I don't know is whether this is related to the lines issue or not.

Drizzit: what serial number is your PB? (first 5 digits is enough).

Could they be getting better finally?
Click to expand...


The serial: W8544

I do see a slight difference, but I guess the problem is on a different scale for me.
 
Thanks, well mine is W8543 (one week earlier?). Maybe there really is just sample variation...

Quick question: Do you observe the interference/wavy lines/wider banding patterns that the crankycat image is good at highlighting? I'm talking about the artifacts in the oranges on the left of the picture not the scan lines in the boy/blue panels.

http://crankycat.com/pb15_problems.png

It might help to see them if you tilt the display back 45 degrees or more. If you are convinced that you don't have these, then I might really try and do something with mine in the future - but for now I need to use it too much to send it away.

Make sure you have the colorsync profile set to ColorLCD (I just swapped back now briefly, and the interference lines are glaringly obvious - even more so when you tilt the display right back - I'd forgotten how bad they are! - definitely photographable...).


DrizztG said:
The serial: W8544

I do see a slight difference, but I guess the problem is on a different scale for me.
Click to expand...
 
Awaiting my 1st mac, a PB 15"


"Out For Delivery AMSTERDAM, NH, NL 19 Nov 2005 11:36"

...so, how long will it be? (I'm in southern sweden)


About the lines... what can I say. It sucks! Just hope I get a good one.
Even if I find the lines not to bother me, I'll sure as hell call Apple to let them know that lines on my screen is not acceptable at all...!

My serial: W8546
I'll post photos of my screen when I get it...
 
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