Quote:
Originally Posted by HarryT
Have you visited an optician? In all seriousness, there's something very wrong if looking at a computer screen for 15 minutes makes your eyes hurt. I really would seek professional advice.
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I have the same problem. I can read 15 minutes, sometimes even 20 minutes, with no problem. Much longer and I can't read for a while.
I've discussed this with ophthalmologists at length. It's something they're very aware of. There's a big difference in reading on an LCD screen and doing other things on them.
I was a computer programmer long before computers hand screens but when they got them I started having to deal with eyestrain issues. Nothing serious. Nothing I couldn't deal with. But too much intense staring into the screen would give me eyestrain. As a programmer that was mostly pretty easy to avoid. When I was thinking I'd look away or close my eyes. Actually most of the time I was programming wasn't spent gazing into the screen anyway. Only certain tasks did that. Designing a user interface was a sometimes example.
Reading, on the other hand, is staring straight into the screen, almost unblinkingly, for extended periods. That's more than I can handle. I'm careful to adjust the brightness as low as is comfortable. Reverse modes help a little but I prefer black text on a light background so I read that way for short times. I read on my phone 10 or 15 minutes at a time every day, many times a day. If I try it for 30 minutes I can't read at all on any device for a few hours.
I'm just about to turn 76 so it would seem age might have something to do with this but really it's something I was aware of in my 40's. Maybe earlier.
I started reading ebooks in the early 1990s, mostly on an HP 95lx with a non-backlit LCD screen. It was no problem at all. When I tried it on my PC I had problems. When I got a Palm 3x with a non-backlit screen that was fine. Then the Palm 3c with a backlight gave me problems.
Fortunately a lot of people aren't bothered much by this. I recently lent a Nook HD to a neighbor for reading and she says she reads 4 or 5 hours a day on it and it doesn't bother her a bit. There's just no way I could do that. She's a couple years older than I am. A lot of people read on backlit LCD devices. A lot of people can't do it easily.
Barry