OKYO - I've been traveling for the past week. Normally, that means working on my laptop. But this time I brought along a screen of my own: a 15-inch liquid crystal display manufactured by ViewSonic that can display a very readable 1024x768 pixels in full color.
The best thing about this LCD display is its clarity: It has all the readability of a 17-inch video monitor. But instead of weighing 40 pounds, it weighs less than six.
Unlike a big tube, this display can fit in my Jeep's cargo area and I still have room for my luggage. The screen is also well-behaved from an environmental standpoint, drawing only a fraction of the power that it takes to light the 19-inch monitor I've left at home.
Of course, there has got to be a catch, and there is. My 19-inch monitor, a ViewSonic V95, has a suggested retail price of $945. The 15-inch LCD display, a ViewSonic VP140, has a suggested retail price of $2,399.
Liquid crystal screens and other kinds of flat-panel displays are truly the screens of the future. With the exception of cost, they are better in many ways than the vacuum tubes that they replace. Because they are lighter and smaller, they are easier to move around: You won't hurt your back picking up an LCD panel.
The panels take up less space on your desk - or in your living room, which is why flat-panel TV screens will ultimately replace the tubes we use today. And because the screens are absolutely flat, they don't distort the screen around the edges. This makes LCDs better for precision work.
Flat-panel displays were all the rage at the Japan Consumer Electronics Show, held here earlier this month. Large, 40-inch TV displays were a constant companion in the booths of such companies as Panasonic, Pioneer, Sony, and Sharp. For the most part, the companies weren't actually selling these screens. They were simply using them as props to demonstrate their technological prowess. Some of the big 40-inch displays were LCD; others were full-color gas plasma, which produce brilliant displays but are incredibly expensive. But no matter whether they were LCD or plasma, large flat-panel displays are still too expensive for most consumers.
For the computer enthusiast, the screens on display at the show were a disappointment for a different reason: Most of them displayed images with TV resolution. Walk up to one of these 40-inch screens, and the images look downright fuzzy. They are great for watching the ''X-Files,'' but terrible for running X Windows, a popular program on large-screen UNIX workstations.
In the computer world, the main application for flat-panel screens is laptops. Over the past few years, laptop screens have gone from black and white to color, they've grown in size from 8.5 inches to 13.1 inches, and they've increased in resolution from 640x480 to 1024x768. Behind the scenes, laptop screens have also gotten thinner, lighter, and more energy efficient.
For example, in 1991, a 10.4-inch VGA screen required 18 watts of power to run. In 1993, that same screen required just 10 watts. In 1995, the power was down to 3 watts. This improved power consumption is reflected in longer-lived laptop batteries, although many of the gains have been eaten away by the laptop vendors themselves, who have added power-hungry multimedia features to their machines.
As the 15-inch ViewSonic demonstrates, LCD screens are now poised to move to the desktop. Next year, vendors will be introducing screens in the 17-inch to 20-inch range, with screen resolution of 1024x768 (XGA) to 1280x1024 (SXGA). And in 1999, we should see the first 20-inch computer screens hitting the market, with a whopping 1600x1200 (UXGA) pixel resolution. Expect correspondingly high prices as well, at least at the start.
Companies are also finding new roles for the screens. One of the hottest consumer products in Japan right now is the car navigation system, which combines a CD-ROM of maps with a global positioning receiver. When you are not trying to learn where you are, the screen doubles as a TV..
Sharp demonstrated a revolutionary new kind of flat screen at the Japan Electronics Show. Called the Super Mobile LCD, this LCD screen is reflective. As a result, the screen actually looks brighter under bright lights. The Super Mobile LCD is also thinner, lighter, and uses one-seventh the power of today's back-lit screens. Although Sharp has engineering prototypes today, it will probably be two years before this LCD screen finds its way into handheld computers and digital cameras.
The desktop LCD screens look very futuristic, and I expect they'll remain something of a novelty for the immediate future. The main reason isn't price: It's quality. After using the 15-inch LCD screen for a few weeks, I was yearning to put the 19-inch tube back on my desk. The tube may be bigger and heavier, but it also has a better picture. The tube is also brighter and easier to read from an angle.
Today's video displays are more flexible than their LCD replacements: A tube can display 640x480, 800x600, 1024x768, and 1280x1024 resolutions, and all equally well. Today's LCD displays can handle different resolutions, but don't look right in any but their natural resolution. That can be a problem for some games or multimedia presentations.
Eventually, video tubes will go the way of radio tubes. On that day, we will truly have solid-state computers. For people who want to sample that future today, it's available for a stiff price.
Technology writer Simson L. Garfinkel can be reached at plugged-in@simson.net.
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