titusnowl | (no subject)

(no subject)

Computer screen at work is a DOS-style terminal (it doesn't actually run on DOS, I don't think, but I don't know from computer languages), black background and green text and visible horizontal lines across it and shit. By the end of a day of looking up accounts and shit ("AND SHIT AND SHIT AND SHIT" that is the STOCK PHRASE OF THE DAY) my eyes hurt really bad. Is there any way to aid this?

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It's probably an emulation of some ancient IBM-based system that ran on text-only monitors (because that's the only thing available back in the Precambrian Age) that's been forcibly converted to display on top of MS Windows. Back in the day, if you were lucky and got a non-monochrome terminal, the terminal would probably have had some controls to change the colors a bit. If the software you're running now is written to emulate a monochrome terminal, though, you're pretty much out of luck.

If you have the privilege to access your PC's control panel, you may want to look at the display settings and make sure it's running at some high refresh rate (75 or 85 Hz); and it's important that it's non-interlaced. This won't affect what the emulation software shows, but it'll stop the screen from looking like it's boiling.

It's not even a full PC. All I've got is a monitor and a keyboard. There are only three people in our workgroup who have real personal computers instead of terminals. The eye-aching black-and-green program is the only thing I have any way of accessing.

Oh wow. You actually have a real-deal, old-school dumb terminal, straight from the Precambrian. Yeah, these things don't do much more than display whatever the server sends them. Sounds like you only have a monochrome, too. In my experience these displays aren't bad enough to cause headaches, but nowadays whatever equipment's still being used is probably ancient, and the CRT's pretty much shot. Unless you can switch to a less-abused terminal, you're probably SOL.

El Guapo (that's the name he wrote on his desk plate) across the cube-hall has some sort of an anti-glare screen on his; would that do any good, do you think? I could get a requisition slip for one if I asked.

I've never liked them, but some people do, so I can't make a recommendation here. Is it possible to borrow El Guapo's and try it out for a while to see if it works for you?

If you actually DO have a glare problem (that is, the screen is reflecting some blazing orb of light straight at your eyes), then repositioning the monitor (if that's possible) to reduce or eliminate the reflection will help.

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