Just as I've always maintained (and been criticised for saying here a few times), there is really no evidence that "eye strain" is caused by reading from a screen as opposed to paper, or that ePaper is any easier on the eyes than an LCD. It's basically a popular misconception.
If it weren't for popular misconceptions, half the trolls on this site wouldn't have a leg to stand on.
For any real spreadsheet use, iWork is grossly inferior to Office, as is OpenOffice. While I feel I know my way around Excel very well, I am not using any macros or functions that shouldn't be supported by other applications. Excel does a better job with complex graphs, large data sets, and data navigation. There are a lot of things Excel does very poorly (scatter graphs with dates don't support "month" increments for major/minor axis divisions for one), but on the whole it does a good job.
If iWork wanted to leapfrog Excel, they would support multi-dimensional tables and innovative keyboard navgation for large data sets.
this is what we call bottom 5%. It's only important to the few people who have even discovered it, and understand it, AND have a use for it, on any sort of regular basis.
This is telling. Gates' recent comments about how little he thinks of the iPad are undercut by his company's decision to offer Office for it. They are obviously fearful that wide iPad adoption with free iWorks will cut into their software hegemony. Actions speak louder than words. They fear the iPad will be very successful and are hedging their bet.
Apple don't do 'free.'
Quote:
The iWork for iPad apps are $10 each and will be available at the iTunes App Store. The iPad is slated to ship at the end of March.
If it weren't for popular misconceptions, half the trolls on this site wouldn't have a leg to stand on.
It is a popular misconception that trolls need two legs to stand on. They actually have superb balance and often do better on one leg than many non trolls do on two.
In the wild, trolls have occasionally been observed to bite one of their own legs off in order to exploit this advantage.
It is a popular misconception that trolls need two legs to stand on. They actually have superb balance and often do better on one leg than many non trolls do on two.
In the wild, trolls have occasionally been observed to bite one of their own legs off in order to exploit this advantage.
I'm sure it's easier for the trolls to put their foot in their mouth if it isn't attached to their body.
Try reading for more than 30 minutes on an LCD at close range in low light and you will get a headache.
I don't. I often take off my glasses and hold the iPhone inches away from my face, and read eBooks for long periods of time.
I'm skeptical of reported eyestrain. I suspect that some of the folks who report eyestrain are also the same folks who report headaches from smelling wet latex paint, or headaches from eating msg-free chinese food, or headaches from any other thing that they imagine might cause headaches.
IOW, I suspect that some portion of the "I get eye strain" folks just like to bitch.
I don't. I often take off my glasses and hold the iPhone inches away from my face, and read eBooks for long periods of time.
I'm skeptical of reported eyestrain. I suspect that some of the folks who report eyestrain are also the same folks who report headaches from smelling wet latex paint, or headaches from eating msg-free chinese food, or headaches from any other thing that they imagine might cause headaches.
IOW, I suspect that some portion of the "I get eye strain" folks just like to bitch.
Who doesn't read on an LCD for more than 30 minutes per day? I have that beat by a very large margin; I assume most others do, too. If this was a problem it would have been diagnosed a long time ago and we wouldn't have seen print crumble in favour of a computer-based option.
I was under the impression that Macs came with heaps and heaps of shovelware installed on them - everything an unsophisticated user would likely want.
Is that wrong? Do you have to buy all the iSoftware separate? I thought it all came free.
Macs come with Mac OS X and iLife. There is no shovel or crapware on Macs. Not a single app is trial only. The only item on your desktop is the Macintosh HD icon.
The inclusion of iLife is to sweeten the deal, like other OEMs do by including full version apps on their systems. The cheaper the system the more crapware and shovelware you'll find. This helps the OEM lower the cost to the buyer by selling space on their OEM installations and restore discs. These tend to start up in the background even upon the first launch, as I'm sure you are aware.
OEMs have also made the move in recent years to make their own apps to run as widgets on their systems. From my experience these seem to be more of a nuisance than a useful tool.
From what I hear, the MS Stores sell OEM PCs without any crapware. They aren't installed with just Windows but have no trialware, just like Macs.
Note that MS is legally prohibited from supplying Windows with a robust app suite like iLife and supplying other apps, like DVD player, in the OS itself so the oft heard complaints about Windows not having the same apps as Mac OS X are usually unfounded. They're even getting in trouble for bundling Office apps.
Here is a review from PC Pro in the UK testing various OEMs preinstalled crapware. The MacBook came with less RAM than the other machines but it had no crapware, used the least amount of RAM and started up the fastest. You can save money with a crapware filled machine but personally I's prefer to spend a little more not to have it.
Screen size - hands down is the issue. An iPhone or Touch is easily adjustable to avert glare. Try that with a 27" sheet of gloss called the iMac .
I use the PowerSupport anti-glare sheet on my iPhone and absolutely love it- great for outdoors. I've stated before that PowerSupport will make a fortune with the iPad if it takes off.
I would never put a film over a laptop or desktop cause that would look half- arsed- IMHO.
I'm guessing you don't own a gloss Imac. Most people who complain about gloss macs don't own them. Glare on my 27" is zero issue, and never has been on any of my gloss mac screens. However the Matt versions were completely unusable outside or with any direct sunlight hitting them.
Good to know we were all just imagining the pain in our eyes that comes after reading screens for a while.
The next time I see someone print something off their computer avoid looking at a screen to read it, I'll be sure to call them a nutter and that the cheap printer paper there reading it off could actually be worse than the screen there staring at.
Or perhaps this persons wrong and staring at a screen that is basically a light for an hour while you read, may not actually be that good for you. Could explain why people that look at screens tend to need glasses more than those that don't. That's not to say that there's people it doesn't effect, but given the number of people that say it does I think we can safely say LCD screens cause eye strain (just not for everyone).
Glossy screens aro really bad. At least for my eyes and (some other persons). I have eye strain and headache after 2 hours of working on the screen of HP Pavilion dv7. My eyes are tired then 2 more days, and it is difficult to have everything in sharp focus.
While on the normal non-glossy panel I can work for 12-14 hours per day without any problems (only get normally tired).
I do not wear eye glasses. My sight is still very good. But I doubt it would take long to worsen it if I work on this sh&ty glossy monitor from HP. Maybe other glossy monitors would have had other effect, but I have my opinion about them based on this experience and those 20-30 monitors/notebooks which I looked on in various shops.
This differs from person to person as well. But to claim that it is a myth or not true in general is wrong. Don't judge only based on your 'non-failure' experience with glossy. It is like smoking in the same room with other person - for some one it is acceptable, for others it is an insult to their person/health. Please, do not insult me saying that it is ok, while I have health problems with it (smoking and glossy).
P.S. And it was God sent, when we replaced CRTs with LCDs. It become so much better. I do not have problems with non-glossy LCDs.
Additionally, glossy is bad for any graphical professional. Ask any of them (if they say that it is ok, they are either paid for having (Apple), or try to convince themselves not to regret the purchase, or are not very good at what they are doing).
From all glossy, Apple's makes the best glossy. But it is still worse than non-glossy overall.
It's more than ok. Since swapping to gloss, calibration is a dream, the print always matches what I show the client on the screen, and the Matt screen white-out I used to experience on bright days is a thing of the past. I will never go back to a Matt display.
There's another reason why LCDs may cause more eyestrain than e-ink that the article briefly mentions but glosses over.
From the article: ?The new LCDs don?t affect your eyes,? Mr. Taussig said. ?Today?s screens update every eight milliseconds, whereas the human eye is moving at a speed between 10 and 30 milliseconds.?
It's not clear, however, that by simply raising the refresh rate above what's perceptible to the eyes, no eye strain would be caused by the constant refreshing. This may vary from person to person, as there are reports of people perceiving flickering and color-switching effects at refresh rates above what people normally perceive.
It's important to note that e-ink displays are completely stable when not turning pages, etc. The image on the screen does not change at all when displaying a static image. LCDs however do refresh even when displaying a static image. Although LCDs don't flicker like CRTs do, because they have a backlight that's constantly lit, they are still not completely stable when displaying a static image, due to slight variations in the voltage at each pixel causing small changes in the pixel being displayed with each refresh.
You are assuming way too much here. It's been shown over the decades that the eye isn't sensitive to these small changes. in fact, both incandescent bulbs and fluorescent lighting undergo a flickering that is much more drastic than any coming from LCD displays.
Good to know we were all just imagining the pain in our eyes that comes after reading screens for a while.
The next time I see someone print something off their computer avoid looking at a screen to read it, I'll be sure to call them a nutter and that the cheap printer paper there reading it off could actually be worse than the screen there staring at.
Or perhaps this persons wrong and staring at a screen that is basically a light for an hour while you read, may not actually be that good for you. Could explain why people that look at screens tend to need glasses more than those that don't. That's not to say that there's people it doesn't effect, but given the number of people that say it does I think we can safely say LCD screens cause eye strain (just not for everyone).
I'd suggest getting yr eyes tested and turning down the backlight. I run a studio with a team of forteen working eight hour days. No eye strain here.
It's more than ok. Since swapping to gloss, calibration is a dream, the print always matches what I show the client on the screen, and the Matt screen white-out I used to experience on bright days is a thing of the past. I will never go back to a Matt display.
Comments
Not at all. It is a groupware/collaboration server, a bit like MS Exchange, but much more powerful.
So powerful, that everyone hates it in our 70,000 people corporation. (I have big enough sample to claim it). It is so 20th century (but not fox).
Just as I've always maintained (and been criticised for saying here a few times), there is really no evidence that "eye strain" is caused by reading from a screen as opposed to paper, or that ePaper is any easier on the eyes than an LCD. It's basically a popular misconception.
If it weren't for popular misconceptions, half the trolls on this site wouldn't have a leg to stand on.
For any real spreadsheet use, iWork is grossly inferior to Office, as is OpenOffice. While I feel I know my way around Excel very well, I am not using any macros or functions that shouldn't be supported by other applications. Excel does a better job with complex graphs, large data sets, and data navigation. There are a lot of things Excel does very poorly (scatter graphs with dates don't support "month" increments for major/minor axis divisions for one), but on the whole it does a good job.
If iWork wanted to leapfrog Excel, they would support multi-dimensional tables and innovative keyboard navgation for large data sets.
aka, ham-handed attempt at putting iWork down
This is telling. Gates' recent comments about how little he thinks of the iPad are undercut by his company's decision to offer Office for it. They are obviously fearful that wide iPad adoption with free iWorks will cut into their software hegemony. Actions speak louder than words. They fear the iPad will be very successful and are hedging their bet.
Apple don't do 'free.'
The iWork for iPad apps are $10 each and will be available at the iTunes App Store. The iPad is slated to ship at the end of March.
If it weren't for popular misconceptions, half the trolls on this site wouldn't have a leg to stand on.
It is a popular misconception that trolls need two legs to stand on. They actually have superb balance and often do better on one leg than many non trolls do on two.
In the wild, trolls have occasionally been observed to bite one of their own legs off in order to exploit this advantage.
It is a popular misconception that trolls need two legs to stand on. They actually have superb balance and often do better on one leg than many non trolls do on two.
In the wild, trolls have occasionally been observed to bite one of their own legs off in order to exploit this advantage.
I'm sure it's easier for the trolls to put their foot in their mouth if it isn't attached to their body.
Try reading for more than 30 minutes on an LCD at close range in low light and you will get a headache.
I don't. I often take off my glasses and hold the iPhone inches away from my face, and read eBooks for long periods of time.
I'm skeptical of reported eyestrain. I suspect that some of the folks who report eyestrain are also the same folks who report headaches from smelling wet latex paint, or headaches from eating msg-free chinese food, or headaches from any other thing that they imagine might cause headaches.
IOW, I suspect that some portion of the "I get eye strain" folks just like to bitch.
I don't. I often take off my glasses and hold the iPhone inches away from my face, and read eBooks for long periods of time.
I'm skeptical of reported eyestrain. I suspect that some of the folks who report eyestrain are also the same folks who report headaches from smelling wet latex paint, or headaches from eating msg-free chinese food, or headaches from any other thing that they imagine might cause headaches.
IOW, I suspect that some portion of the "I get eye strain" folks just like to bitch.
Who doesn't read on an LCD for more than 30 minutes per day? I have that beat by a very large margin; I assume most others do, too. If this was a problem it would have been diagnosed a long time ago and we wouldn't have seen print crumble in favour of a computer-based option.
Apple don't do 'free.'
I was under the impression that Macs came with heaps and heaps of shovelware installed on them - everything an unsophisticated user would likely want.
Is that wrong? Do you have to buy all the iSoftware separate? I thought it all came free.
I was under the impression that Macs came with heaps and heaps of shovelware installed on them - everything an unsophisticated user would likely want.
Is that wrong? Do you have to buy all the iSoftware separate? I thought it all came free.
Macs come with Mac OS X and iLife. There is no shovel or crapware on Macs. Not a single app is trial only. The only item on your desktop is the Macintosh HD icon.
The inclusion of iLife is to sweeten the deal, like other OEMs do by including full version apps on their systems. The cheaper the system the more crapware and shovelware you'll find. This helps the OEM lower the cost to the buyer by selling space on their OEM installations and restore discs. These tend to start up in the background even upon the first launch, as I'm sure you are aware.
OEMs have also made the move in recent years to make their own apps to run as widgets on their systems. From my experience these seem to be more of a nuisance than a useful tool.
From what I hear, the MS Stores sell OEM PCs without any crapware. They aren't installed with just Windows but have no trialware, just like Macs.
Note that MS is legally prohibited from supplying Windows with a robust app suite like iLife and supplying other apps, like DVD player, in the OS itself so the oft heard complaints about Windows not having the same apps as Mac OS X are usually unfounded. They're even getting in trouble for bundling Office apps.
Here is a review from PC Pro in the UK testing various OEMs preinstalled crapware. The MacBook came with less RAM than the other machines but it had no crapware, used the least amount of RAM and started up the fastest. You can save money with a crapware filled machine but personally I's prefer to spend a little more not to have it.
Screen size - hands down is the issue. An iPhone or Touch is easily adjustable to avert glare. Try that with a 27" sheet of gloss called the iMac .
I use the PowerSupport anti-glare sheet on my iPhone and absolutely love it- great for outdoors. I've stated before that PowerSupport will make a fortune with the iPad if it takes off.
I would never put a film over a laptop or desktop cause that would look half- arsed- IMHO.
I'm guessing you don't own a gloss Imac. Most people who complain about gloss macs don't own them. Glare on my 27" is zero issue, and never has been on any of my gloss mac screens. However the Matt versions were completely unusable outside or with any direct sunlight hitting them.
I was under the impression that Macs came with heaps and heaps of shovelware installed on them - everything an unsophisticated user would likely want.
Is that wrong? Do you have to buy all the iSoftware separate? I thought it all came free.
You've obviously never used the iLife suite, which is incredible. The software pre-installed on a mac is incredible and very, very high quality.
The next time I see someone print something off their computer avoid looking at a screen to read it, I'll be sure to call them a nutter and that the cheap printer paper there reading it off could actually be worse than the screen there staring at.
Or perhaps this persons wrong and staring at a screen that is basically a light for an hour while you read, may not actually be that good for you. Could explain why people that look at screens tend to need glasses more than those that don't. That's not to say that there's people it doesn't effect, but given the number of people that say it does I think we can safely say LCD screens cause eye strain (just not for everyone).
Glossy screens aro really bad. At least for my eyes and (some other persons). I have eye strain and headache after 2 hours of working on the screen of HP Pavilion dv7. My eyes are tired then 2 more days, and it is difficult to have everything in sharp focus.
While on the normal non-glossy panel I can work for 12-14 hours per day without any problems (only get normally tired).
I do not wear eye glasses. My sight is still very good. But I doubt it would take long to worsen it if I work on this sh&ty glossy monitor from HP. Maybe other glossy monitors would have had other effect, but I have my opinion about them based on this experience and those 20-30 monitors/notebooks which I looked on in various shops.
This differs from person to person as well. But to claim that it is a myth or not true in general is wrong. Don't judge only based on your 'non-failure' experience with glossy. It is like smoking in the same room with other person - for some one it is acceptable, for others it is an insult to their person/health. Please, do not insult me saying that it is ok, while I have health problems with it (smoking and glossy).
P.S. And it was God sent, when we replaced CRTs with LCDs. It become so much better. I do not have problems with non-glossy LCDs.
Additionally, glossy is bad for any graphical professional. Ask any of them (if they say that it is ok, they are either paid for having (Apple), or try to convince themselves not to regret the purchase, or are not very good at what they are doing).
From all glossy, Apple's makes the best glossy. But it is still worse than non-glossy overall.
It's more than ok. Since swapping to gloss, calibration is a dream, the print always matches what I show the client on the screen, and the Matt screen white-out I used to experience on bright days is a thing of the past. I will never go back to a Matt display.
There's another reason why LCDs may cause more eyestrain than e-ink that the article briefly mentions but glosses over.
From the article: ?The new LCDs don?t affect your eyes,? Mr. Taussig said. ?Today?s screens update every eight milliseconds, whereas the human eye is moving at a speed between 10 and 30 milliseconds.?
It's not clear, however, that by simply raising the refresh rate above what's perceptible to the eyes, no eye strain would be caused by the constant refreshing. This may vary from person to person, as there are reports of people perceiving flickering and color-switching effects at refresh rates above what people normally perceive.
It's important to note that e-ink displays are completely stable when not turning pages, etc. The image on the screen does not change at all when displaying a static image. LCDs however do refresh even when displaying a static image. Although LCDs don't flicker like CRTs do, because they have a backlight that's constantly lit, they are still not completely stable when displaying a static image, due to slight variations in the voltage at each pixel causing small changes in the pixel being displayed with each refresh.
You are assuming way too much here. It's been shown over the decades that the eye isn't sensitive to these small changes. in fact, both incandescent bulbs and fluorescent lighting undergo a flickering that is much more drastic than any coming from LCD displays.
Not a single app is trial only.
What are you talking about? My 2009 MacBook Pro 5,5 came with trial versions of Both MS Office and iWork.
Good to know we were all just imagining the pain in our eyes that comes after reading screens for a while.
The next time I see someone print something off their computer avoid looking at a screen to read it, I'll be sure to call them a nutter and that the cheap printer paper there reading it off could actually be worse than the screen there staring at.
Or perhaps this persons wrong and staring at a screen that is basically a light for an hour while you read, may not actually be that good for you. Could explain why people that look at screens tend to need glasses more than those that don't. That's not to say that there's people it doesn't effect, but given the number of people that say it does I think we can safely say LCD screens cause eye strain (just not for everyone).
I'd suggest getting yr eyes tested and turning down the backlight. I run a studio with a team of forteen working eight hour days. No eye strain here.
It's more than ok. Since swapping to gloss, calibration is a dream, the print always matches what I show the client on the screen, and the Matt screen white-out I used to experience on bright days is a thing of the past. I will never go back to a Matt display.
Very true.
What are you talking about? My 2009 MacBook Pro 5,5 came with trial versions of Both MS Office and iWork.
Where did you buy that? No such demos here...
Where did you buy that? No such demos here...
Hmm... maybe I'm just imagining it then... It must have been my old MacBook that came with those in 2006.