[John Layne]

the dell M90 had a VERY UNUSABLE screen. It was like trying to color manage a kaleidoscope! I ended up dreading to use it despite my initial enthusiasm.

Could you elaborate on the Unusable and Kaleidoscope comments, I was just about to buy one of these!?

I need a performance machine to run SolidWorks and possibly some FEA, Maxwell is secondary consideration, for me.

What exactly is wrong with the screen?

[ricardo]

I think he is talking about monitor calibration. During the process you have to place a chromatic reader in front of the screen, calibrating software will blink the screen in a set of colors and read the value showed by the screen.

This is used to build you monitor profile, which is important when you are going for print, film and other output that has to meet color quality standards. It compensate for the uneven color output of devices to keep the best possible color consistency around medias.

The problem with LCD/Plasma monitors is that sometimes they show a heavy color rainbow when touched, so it's a nightmare to calibrate those because this happens when the calibrating device touches the screen.

Solidworks will run fine and you will never know what he is talking about until you try to print something to 3 different printers while trying to match a color to a given sample.

Ricardo

EDIT: More on the subject can be found here : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Color_management

[codygo]

ricardo is right about the monitor calibration problem. The problem can best be described as the difference in colors from 90 degrees to 0 degrees. Naturally LCD screens have a lower viewing range than CRTs, but that M90's screen was just horrible, even viewing the screen dead on 90 degrees I would see a great difference from a single color in the center of the screen to the same color anywhere else on the screen.

A way to see this is to fill your screen with one solid color like 127,127,127 either on desktop background or in a maximized photoshop file and move your head around to see if it looks like a solid block of color, or a radial gradient that is affected by your point of view.

This made it impossible to rely on the monitor for any kind of color editing in photoshop. The one dell monitor I do recommend is the dell 2407wfp, excellent consistency at all viewing angles, similar to the apple cinema displays, and reviews say it's technically even better, but it's no laptop screen of course.

[John Layne]

Thanks for clearing that up, I do understand monitor calibration and regularly calibrate my desktop monitors.

I didn't realise that the M90's monitor is such a pig. Do all, large, laptops suffer the same problems, I haven't worked with one on a regular basis for years, even then it was only for Word or Excel?

It's probably not a big problem for me, if the colours aren't perfect, as I will, more often than not, plugin a desktop LCD. The biggest issue I'll have is with performance.