The difference between Apple and PC manufacturers

Apple puts a glowing fiber-optic backlight beneath the keys, fading in and out with the ambient light, subtly illuminating every key on the keyboard. The screen dims as the light comes on to save you from eye strain in dim environs. If you wish, you can control the light with the function keys, or configure it in System Preferences, but you're probably fine with the defaults.

As you manually change the brightness, an unobtrusive transparent bezel indicates your action on the screen. It quietly fades out. The glow impresses your friends.


IBM/Lenovo puts an LED reading light in the display bezel, points it at the keys, and calls it the ThinkLight. To turn it on, you press Fn-PgUp (after installing the appropriate driver, if you installed Windows yourself). You do this by the light of the screen, of course, because the keys are not illuminated.

When you turn the light on or off, a bright green bitmap indicator flashes up at the bottom of the screen for 3 seconds to punish you for your temerity.

The white (or orange) LED light washes wanly over your keyboard and your desk, reminding you that you're still working at midnight, and that you have a conference call in the morning.

Posted at 2007-06-14 22:31:19 by Richard • Link to The difference bet…