[junebug630]

I have been on the fence for about 2 months now just lurking here. Today I went into CompUSA and went straight to the back to look at the 17" powerbooks. They were literally stuffed back into the corner all by themselves with no one around, but since no one bothered me I had about 40 min to play around. What I observed:
Since CompUSA has the PBs locked down so I couldn't adjust the screen angle or lift them in any way so had to adjust my eye level to keep the light even. I surfed a bit with both Safari and IE and downloaded a few quicktime movies from apple.com.
The text looked very sharp , if not a bit tiny. I actually had a little eyestrain after about 20min. The 15" PB next to me was playing demos over and over. I thought the demos looked washed out with more than a little streaking on the 15".
I also thought the aqua theme looked a little on the light side. Everything on the web pages had a bluish tinge. The reds looked a little orangish. I could have sworn that ie was a little faster than Safari but I won't swear to that.
What I was disappointed in was the weaker black levels. The movie trailers that I downloaded , Door in the Floor and the Incredibles both showed some graininess in the darker parts.
What threw me though was as I walked out of the store and passed the Windows machines which were set up better , read eye level, their colors looked much more vibrant and clear.
This cannot be. Is it the fact that the PBs are XGA and the other XP notebooks could have been UXGA ? I also didn't get a chance to watch a DVD , so I couldn't really do a fair test of the colors.

[gsxrboy]

Unfort the people setting up powerbooks and displays *never* calibrate them to get them looking the best.. plus if you cant adjust the viewing angle dependent on your viewing um er well angle then they will look less than perfect..

[junebug630]

I couldn't adjust the screen angle, but just lowered my head to the correct angle. I thought that it must have been the fact that I didn't know how to find out where to adjust the colors or brightness myself. One other thing. I had to adjust the sound all the way up to even hear it good. When I did though, the speakers , while not big sounding , were very clear, particularly on dialog. Is there an adjustment on the soundcard to fix this. I plan to go back sometime next week. maybe on an off night and just spend an hour or so playing around with it. I wish they had a mouse to use though.