Burn Spot On Laptop

[Gump]

Quick question--I have a 5 month old Toshiba laptop. Yesterday I noticed a small quarter sized burn mark (brown in the center fading to a lighter brown discoloration on the sides) on the right side of the screen on the edge about halfway up.

3 Questions:

1) Am I "F'd?"

2) What caused it? My wife uses it more than me and she swears she hasn't left it on the same page for extended periods of time.

3) What can I do to fix it and will the warranty cover it? (Basically a more elaborate repeat of question #1).

Thanks,

Gump

[Kevin P]

LCDs aren't normally susceptible to screen burn. More likely it's a defect in the screen. The warranty should cover it. Call Toshiba or the place you got it from.

[Gump]

LCDs aren't normally susceptible to screen burn. More likely it's a defect in the screen. The warranty should cover it. Call Toshiba or the place you got it from.

Thanks Kevin

[Hdale85]

Yeah lcd's deffinately don't usually burn! My laptop is about a year and a half old and i've left it sitting on web pages like all day before and no screen burn at all.

[ShadowZA]

Lcd's use a backlight. This is the reason that a screensaver is not necessary to preserve the life of the backlight. In fact, as far as I know, the backlight remains 'on' even if you do use a screensaver. To preserve the backlight, simply turn off the monitor/laptop.

Gump, it might be a fault with the screen panel. Hopefully your warranty should sort it out.

Here are some sites with some technical stuff on lcd monitor panels:

http://www.hardforum.com/showthread.php?t=1039222

http://www.tftcentral.co.uk/

Good luck

[Gump]

Ok, thanks everyone for the reply's.

Maybe characterizing this as a "burn" was a mistake. Perhaps a less leading description would be a yellowish/brownish discoloration.

Anyway, I'll be checking with Toshiba and Best Buy tomorrow.

Thanks again!

Gump

[audioqueso]

My 3 year old laptop has a slightly noticeable fade in the bottom center. A lot of the laptops at work have them too. All Dells. Ha ha.

You can only really see the darker area with a blank white screen. You can't really tell it's there any other time, but the fact is... there is a burn-in on these LCDs.

[Chris7]

No one has mentioned this yet, but newer laptops with glossy screens are very susceptible to friction from the keyboard when the lid is closed. The glossy layer is very thin and once rubbed off, there can be a discoloration in that area of the screen due to differences in how light is diffracted, especially when viewed off-axis. Does the discoloration get worse when you move your head to the left and right? If so, that's probably what it is.

For glossy screens, I strongly suggest getting a microfiber screen protector and not carrying the laptop with the screen side towards your back in an unpadded backpack (causes uneven rubbing through the screen).

[joecarrow]

I had a Thinkpad T20 for years (before the cat destroyed it), and after the many flights I took where the laptop was squished with my textbooks into an overhead bit, the screen developed a few "hot spots" that looked a bit brighter and washed out, compared to the rest of the screen. Pressing on the screen from behind exacerbated the problem, and they never went away. This was totally separate from the spots on the screen where high areas of the keyboard rubbed.

Maybe I'm just lazy, but I don't stress too much about the quality of my laptop screen. I consider it to be a convenience, and as long as I don't have any spots or things that keep me from getting work done then I don't let it bother me. I just want the thing to take my abuse and keep working. Having said that, I don't seriously watch movies or play games on it.

I understand why you're upset about this. They really ought to cover that, even if you're a bit outside of warranty.