Dell announces software-based notebook privacy screen
Reviewers who cover notebook computers often spend time discussing wide-angle viewing capabilities of the notebook as it can be important to readers. Sometimes the opposite is true for those who work in tight spaces and who want to keep private information private. Dell is offering a unique privacy screen that promises to keep the screen from being seen by those at your side and thus protecting your information from neighbors. The unique attribute of Dell’s privacy screen is that it is software-based and invoked by a simple keypress. While the $139 price tag seems a bit high it is certainly cheap enough for those who find privacy to be very important. Dell claims the electronic privacy screen software creates a pixel-based pattern on the screen that reduces side viewing without impacting the straight-on view. This is certainly better than those hardware screens that must be snapped over the screen to do the same thing. Dell is offering the privacy screen option on the E6400 laptop but there’s no reason a software-based solution couldn’t be used with other notebooks, I would think.
(via Gizmag)
ive never heard of anything like this before but it is very interesting. i dont see how it could be Dell specific if its just a software solution.
what im wondering is just how well it actually works? scrambling text is 1 thing, but lets say you are looking at some “questionable material” of the female form. does it scramble the picture enough to where they snooper cant even make it out at all? or can they still see the basic outline?
My Toshiba m200 Tablet solved the wide viewing angle problem years ago.
To me it sounds more like it’s a hardware option that is software-controlled – so it’s not a software-only solution, and thus not portable.