Hot pixels on my laptop LCD?

Factual Questions
1

Every so often the center-most pixel on my laptop’s LCD turns on red coloured, irrespective of what else is being displayed. The only way to get rid of it is to shut down the power then restart. Sometimes it stays off, sometimes it pops up again.

I just got the laptop about a week ago and I purchased the additional 3 year warranty…does this sound indicative of a problem?

2

LCD’s can come with bad pixels - check your warranty to see if requires X number of pixels to go bad before they will replace it.

3

This is known as “pixel anomaly” or “dead pixel” which will crop up in LCD screens after a period of use, though they can be shipped like that too. Here’s a good article explaining the phenomenon.

If you’ve got all the packaging and the store has a decent return policy (and you raise enough stink if need be), you can probably get an identical trade-in.

4

My freshman year at RPI, we were required to buy a laptop. I got one from them because you got a good deal on it, it had a three year warrenty on anything breaking or going wrong supplied by the school, anything goes wrong, take it to the ocmputing center, they will fix it…anything except the screen. If that breaks, cough up $1000. I got my laptop, from day one it has had a perma-green pixel in the top left corner of the screen, and there’s not a damn thing I can do about it…just kinda irks me, is all.

5

I’m pretty sure I could just return it; but if its a common problem that I just have to live with - which it seems it is - the hassle of returning it (and the trouble associated with backing up my HD, xfering to the new computer) probably isn’t worth it.

6

Dead pixels are not unusual, unfortunatly. If you can live with it, it is probably not worth the hassle of fixing. I have one or two myself.

7

Admittedly a bit of a hijack, but closely related nonetheless:

I’ve got one pixel on my desktop monitor that is always black. I just noticed it about a month ago. Do I need to worry?

-FrL-

8

You can try rubbing it with a pencil eraser, I haven’t tried this but I recall someone mentioning it. One pixel isn’t much to concern yourself with.

9

The problem is its the center-most (horizontally and vertically) pixel on the screen which means I can’t really avoid looking at it.

10

Rubbing it with an eraser? what the heck is that supposed to do other than damage the screen coating? Erasers are mildly abrasive. Why not just tell him to scour the screen with steel wool?

11

That eraser mark made me go :dubious: too.

But HorseFlesh’s article suggests that rubbing the pixel can tickle it back to life. Personally, I’m not sure I want to try it; and certainly not with an eraser.

12

There are 2 problems being discussed here:

  • dead pixels are ones that don’t respond at all – they are always black.
  • constant-on pixels (sometimes called zombie pixels (they never go dead)) are ones that are constantly on, always the same color.

Both are fairly common in LCD panels; and the bigger the pane the more likely that you will have a pixel like this.

Most manufacturer’s warranty specifies a certain minimum number (often 5-10) of bad pixels before they will replace the screen. But sometimes they take into account the location of the bad pixel.

I’d certainly complain about a zombie green pixel that was smack dab in the middle of the screen, even if it was the only bad pixel. They ought to replace that under warranty, I’d say.