"Steve Lusardi" wrote in message
...
GBM,
I'm not speaking about the dimming of just the displayed data. I'm talking
about the back glow of the powered up screen itself. The back glow on some
of these PC screens will light up the whole cockpit ruining your night
vision. No software fixes that.
Steve

Steve,

Perhaps some laptops may do that, but we have sailed with a conventional
laptop sitting on cabin top, under bimini day and night and not found it to
be a problem.

We also use our iPaq day and night with the software compensating for
day/night conditions and it works perfectly - even in car where any glare
would be distracting. The iPaq has adjustable backlighting (as do most
laptops) but I don't find any need to adjust it - it's mainly a power saving
feature.

Do the low cost chartplotters by Garmin and others have any special nightime
visibility built into their displays? I seem to recall that they too have
software that changes colours for day/night use and perhaps they too have
adjustable backlighting like the iPaq.

I am sure that the commercial displays are better, but for us at least, we
see no problems using standard low cost computer hardware for recreational
navigation purposes.

GBM