Beginning a few years back, when graphics cards in computers not used for games became powerful enough to do something interesting, out came features that tried to take advantage of this power. I’m talking about things like circular windows, transparency, video wallpapers, flipping window previews, 3d desktops, like a cube or whatever…

Now trust me. Since I don’t play games, I’ve thought about using the idle GPU for other purposes, too. So I tried the above features. And they all suck. Greatly. (I also tried GPGPU but that’s a rant for another day.)

Along the way, I’ve become convinced that trying too hard to “use” GPU power is the wrong way to go. Alas, it’s probably better to stick to the basics and think of things that are actually useful. But first, why are the aforementioned graphics features so repugnant that users (at least I) turn them off after a few tries? Because they are unnatural, that’s why!

For example, the shape of windows. Look, rectangles are nice, for a good reason. They tesselate well. Hexagons may even work. Circles do not work. Odd shaped windows are the bane of my existence. How about the use of transparency? It never works! You don’t actually want to see what’s underneath, because if you do, it’s distracting. So transparency blurs what’s behind to the degree that you can’t tell what’s behind. This is paradoxical and completely useless. Video wallpapers. Bad idea. The desktop should not be distracting with movements. The eye is extremely capable of detecting scene change, especially change due to movement. You do not want the background to move at all! Flipping windows as in Vista… no. It’s harder to see what’s in the window due to the 3d angle and harder to see which one is at the forefront because of a stack of very different looking windows all competing for attention. Cube or spherical surfaces for desktops a la Compiz: fail. Nothing on our current desktop naturally wraps around a cube or sphere. You’re introducing extra distortion to generate the unnecessary projection to 2D. This is stupid.

However, I can think of two useful graphics features that are modifications of the failures described here:

1. Getting things out of your way
Do you see all these people with multiple monitors? Why? Because people want space. They want multiple windows showing at the same time. They want a big desktop. Now desktop resolutions even on a single monitor these days are by no means small. I argue that it is the extremely inefficient use of a single monitor that drives people to multiple monitors. This is quite ridiculous, actually. Why do I say this? Because I’ve seen a good MDI (multiple document interface) in, say, source code editors and development environments that can easily put all the documents you want (usually just two) on screen at the same time. So there is no reason to give up on the same level of efficiency between multiple applications.

Okay, so what am I talking about. I think most space problems can be solved if there is a way to get things out of your way. For example, if I want to tesselate a screen with rectangles I may end up leaving unused space due to some windows being certain sizes. Wouldn’t it be nice for windows to be unions of rectangles and their contents flow within them naturally so that the entire screen looked like a newspaper page layout? This requires window content to be amenable to reflow, but whatever. It can be done. Barring that, it’d be nice if you can throw windows out of your way to a automatically determined reasonable location, either temporarily or permanently. Windows 7 sort of does that (but only to pre-defined locations and sizes like half a screen) and Mac OS X sort ot does the … opposite … of that by bringing all windows into view…

2. Changing backgrounds
While video backgrounds are extremely distracting, a changing background itself isn’t a bad idea at all. The background can be equally used to get attention, as a conduit for conveying information — provided that is the goal. After all, it is already used to convey some information, with desktop icons, etc., although this happens only when the background is actually the foreground — when all other windows are out of the way. So can the background convey information while still being the background, and how?

Yes, it can. First thing to realize is the background can’t really convey a huge amount of information, since during normal operation, either (a) a small portion of it is revealed at a time — e.g. the gap between windows; and (2) a large portion is revealed only briefly — e.g. when switching windows. But a small amount of information can still be conveyed through this. One of the best uses for the background is to convey quasistatic or low frequency data. For instance, you’ve seen little weather and time indicators… why not let the background show the time and weather display by actually displaying a scene of that? It can be either current conditions or forecast, so long as the user knows what it is. So, if you want to know if it will rain 6 hours from now in Capetown, and have set the display to show that, the desktop can simply display a scene of that — and this doesn’t really change except when the weather changes, which is precisely when you want to be distracted with this new information, and in a non-intrusive way (you’ll just notice something new between switching windows). At other times you don’t even notice.

I’m sure there are other applications like these. There is no excuse to pretend that piss poor UI design is acceptable if it just seems “cool”.

This is part of the laptop backlight repair documentation.

So I gave up on fixing the laptop screen. The screen shall forever stay apart from the laptop. I even removed the laptop cover from its hinges so I just get a nice flat machine, and lighter, too. On second thought, this isn’t that bad. It’s no worse than a desktop machine. It’s still portable, and I just need to find a VGA monitor to connect to. Or just use Remote Desktop to connect in. Fine with me. But before I can get an external monitor, I still have a transition period where I need output from the machine right on the desk.

Now remember when you held down shift or control or some such key too long in Windows and Windows thought you were retarded or blind and needed help? I do. I’ve been offered StickyKeys and Narrator before and randomly paid attention to what they did. So I turn on Narrator (accessibility feature, comes with Windows). I wish that it were a better screen reader, but alas, it only reads text in some mutable controls, like buttons, drop down boxes, selectable labels, and hyperlinks, and it announces on-screen events. Nevertheless, with that, I was able to open programs, browse the web, copy files, all by listening on my headphone through Narrator and using all the keyboard shortcuts I could muster. I could not use Outlook because its aural interface was too sparse, but could use Webmail and Gmail and I could type and respond. Of course I never was quite certain what I was actually doing, but from the sound of it I was doing all right!

After a few days of this crap, I remembered that I have a Pocket PC and it has Remote Desktop client on it. A 3″ screen is a bit desperate for viewing a megapixel desktop, but in a pinch, it was what I needed. Only one problem, the Pocket PC needed network drivers installed. So back to Narrator and restoring an old backup of the Pocket PC files from that POS software known as ActiveSync. Really it was a chore trying to establish a partnership by listening to Narrator … then to aurally browse the file system by parsing mangled readings of filenames … then an hour of copying files and checking on the “progress bar” by alt-tabbing back and forth to generate “on-screen events” for Narrator to read.

Amazingly it all worked and I am now able to do all my work over a 3″ Remote Desktop. Wow, even I’m impressed. Moral of the story, replacing the CCFL has unintended consequences and is not guaranteed to work. Second moral: learn your keyboard shortcuts and Narrator. Who knows when you may need them.

Back to the beginning.

This is part of the laptop backlight repair documentation.

The main difficulty in replacing the CCFL is taking apart the laptop screen. I followed some of these references:

• This from here on how to open the lid portion that holds the screen.
• This from here on how to go the rest of the way to take apart the screen.

I didn’t take great pictures of the process but I took some.

The first steps are entirely straight-forward.

1. Removed the buttons panel and the lid panel

2. Closeup on the inverter and power supply board for the screen

3. Back of the screen with CCFL power cable disconnected and liquid crystal color filter video cable disconnected

Now the screen is completely detached from the computer. If you buy a laptop screen replacement, this whole piece of thing will be replaced. But we keep going. The next steps are harder.

The screen is constructed in several layers. From the back to front are: the tape-held LCD controller board, a white-painted reflector sheet, a diffuser panel sitting in the CCFL slot, three transparent films for who knows what (polarizer?), then the liquid crystal color filter itself, finally a plastic protector screen.

4. Peeling back the sticky copper ground plane on the back. LCD controller board is underneath.

5. Here, all the tapes are peeled back: electric tape that holds the CCFL power cable, ground plane tape, and electric tape that holds the LCD controller board. The back layers up to the liquid crystal color filter have been removed.

6. The back layers and the front layers separated

7. Back layers separated and CCFL slot removed. CCFL sitting inside

So I removed the rubber caps and took out the dying CCFL and realized the power cable is soldered on. Oops, I have no soldering iron at hand. Not to worry, I just turn the electric stove range to medium and solder away. I make sure to keep enough solder on the cable ends to put the new CCFL in. Clip the ends and done. Beautiful.

Then it was time to put everything back together. Now you’ll notice in 5 that the LCD controller board is attached to the liquid crystal color filter via a printed circuit film. There are two of these things and the wider one holds the data signal lines. They are latched in to the board, but somehow one was loose, and I had to push it back in to the controller board connector with some force. Then I put everything back together and turn on the computer and …

… I get a white screen. Not a black screen, but a white screen. So the new CCFL works perfectly, but the LCD died. After much inspection and disconnecting and reconnecting things on the controller board, I could only manage to get a few stray lines on the LCD. Sad. My best guess is the printed circuit film got bent out of shape or some traces inside broke. There was nothing I could do about it.

8. The controller board (top item) at a glance, with the connector in question on the left.

So back to square one.

On to Part 2.

This is part of the laptop backlight repair documentation.

So a few months ago, my 4-year-old Dell laptop screen started getting a red hue when the screen first got turned on. It happens to be the first sign of CCFL failure — failure of the fluorescent backlight that is the light source for the screen. The second symptom soon after was the backlight going off by itself, especially when light level was set high. You can stall this process somewhat by lowering the light level but eventually the backlight will go off so frequently that the only choice is replacement.

Indeed, this was the third thing to fail on this laptop. Unfortunately, unlike the success of repairing hard disk failure and mechanical issues with the CD drive, this issue didn’t get resolved to full satisfaction, but it was amusingly educational nonetheless.

While considering my options, I got this program called “Turn Off LCD”. This is to turn the backlight back on when it goes off, without a reboot. You see, the backlight going off doesn’t mean the screen is off; the computer still thinks the screen is on and the liquid-crystal color filter is in fact still on. The backlight, being a fluorescent light, needs a startup current, so turning off the screen allows the computer to initiate the screen-start sequence again so the backlight can be turned back on.

To get the repair going, there are really 3 options ranked by expense. The whole laptop could be replaced, but that’s exceedingly wasteful. The entire screen portion could be replaced at a cost of about $120+, which is a tough call because, though it presents the easiest installation, one concern is the CCFL that comes with those machine-salvaged replacements tend to be old albeit working, so perhaps not a great choice. Eventually I found a CCFL of the right size on eBay for about $10+ and decided to just replace that. It’ll be like lab work, no big deal, right?

On to Part 1.