Museum screens

Gwen recently got a new Macbook, and I’m thinking mighty hard about getting a new iMac. One controversial feature of both is the glossy screen.

These days, most laptops and many desktop monitors have glossy screens—Apple held the line for a long time, but has gone over to the shiny side (with the exception of the 17″ Macbook Pro, where the anti-glare option costs $50 extra). Glossy screens look great—better than the anti-glare screens—but only when there’s no glare. That’s an environmental condition that is hard to control, especially when out and about with a laptop. In the presence of direct light, the glare from the screen can make the screen image almost invisible, and generates a lot of eyestrain. Add-on anti-glare films do exist, but seem to get negative reviews, and strike me as an imperfect solution.

There is another way, and I’m surprised nobody has tried it yet: museum glass. This is a specialty product that I’ve only seen at framing shops. Its appearance is startling: the glass is just invisible. No glare, no visible matte coating, nothing—the only way you can tell it’s there is by poking at it and getting fingerprints on it. It’s worth going to a framing shop just to check it out. As far as I’m aware, it’s never been used for computer monitors, and I don’t doubt it would be a somewhat spendy upgrade, but it’s one that I suspect many buyers would gladly spring for—I know I would.

I know that the glass on the iMac is removable, with some difficulty. I wonder if it would be possible to get a piece of museum glass cut to fit it.