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The components that have biggest influence
on the useful life of the product are the
backlight lamps. These are made of CCFL
(Cold-cathode Fluorescent Lamp). Over time
these will decay and give less and less light.
They generally have a spedification of 40,000
hours before they are worn out. If they are
constantly on one year of use corresponds to
just over 8,000 hours and thus a life of 5 years.
There are ways to improve the useful life.
The most radical and efficient way is to always
switch the monitor off when not used.
The second best is to use the Power Save
feature within the PC´s DPMA system. This
will not switch off the monitor entirely but the
backlight lamps will be switched off which is
the important thing. When you start to use
the keyboard or mouse, the monitor will be
switched on within a couple of seconds.
PLEASE, NOTE THAT A SCREENSAVER
WILL NOT SWITCH OFF THE BACKLIGHT
LAMPS AND THUS IS NOT A SOLUTION
FOR LONGER LIFE.
The higher the luminance is set on the
monitor the greater is the wear of the backlight
lamps. All monitors have the facility to adjust
brightness. Never set this at maximum since
this will cause the lamps to decay faster. A
setting at 50% will be sufficient for use in office
environment.
Gradual change of color
As the backlight lamps ages they will show
a warmer color temperature which can be
perceived as more yellow for white color than it
was initially when the monitor was new. There
are color filters in the panel which also will age
and add to the yellowish color tone.
You can usually from the monitors OSD set
your own color and by setting the value for blue
higher than red and green will change the color
temperature back to more normal. However,
the blue color filter has lower translucence so
the consequence is that you will get a lower
brightness.
Longer life for your monitor
