Are your Eyes are Dying -- Better Monitors are Coming 06/04/2001 Search Hound Executive Vice President and Director says “sometimes my eyes ache after a day of intense computer work. What I wouldn't give for a monitor that doesn't leave a sting. That day may not be so far away. A very cool monitor technology promises a better future for your eyes. I'll tell you about it. Plus I've got the latest on flat panels to keep your eyes satisfied until the better stuff gets here.

GOING ORGANIC The buzz surrounds organic light-emitting diodes, or OLEDs. The technology is based on electroluminescence. It works like this: an electric current is passed through certain organic materials that emit light. Cram these materials between two electrodes and you get a display.

OLED's use less electricity than LCDs, are Easier to manufacture, Cheaper to build Brighter display Better color saturation Wider viewing angle.

more information can be found at :- http://www.techreview.com/magazine/apr01/johnstone.asp

Kodak first developed the OLED concept in the late 1970s. Since then other firms -- Cambridge Display Technology, NEC, DuPont, IBM, Universal Display, Philips -- have been perfecting it. When will these new monitors be widely available? My guess: Two years. Still, small OLEDs are showing up now. So things could move along quicker. Consider: Pioneer has released a car navigation device in Japan with a 64-by-256-pixel OLED screen; Motorola has a Timeport phone (which came out last fall in Japan) with an OLED screen; and Seiko will release an OLED-equipped phone next year.
More information at :- .

In the meantime, GO FLAT If you need eye relief right now and have the money, LCD monitors have dropped in price recently. Some worth checking out: Dell's 17-inch LCD (made by Samsung) and Apple's 22-inch LCD got raves at Geek.com. Princeton has an $899 17-inch LCD flat panel that is both PC and Mac compatible.
     # 14 june 2001