. . . or don't. It wont affect visibility unless it's been poorly manufactured or incorrectly applied (unlikely), and I'm sure buy.com would prefer if it were left on.

Unfortunately, as we age, our cornea loses flexibility, and we begin to need to hold objects further away from us to be able to focus on them (Presbyopia). This means for some of us, holding it 6"-8" will not be an answer. GIJP may already be feeling these effects.

Also, the shimmering effect may be a sensitivity to the slightly different images each eye gets from the screen. This is caused by both glare effecting the image, but also from the inherently not quite perfect viewing angles of the screen. I found it disturbing at first, but I was able to get over it. On my Toshiba M200 tablet, it was such an issue that I never got over it and had to stop using the tablet. My experience with other M200 owners showed me that there is a very dramatic range in sensitivty to this issue, with some people not noticing it, and others, like myself, being severely impacted.

Then again, the responsiveness issue does sound like a hardware problem with the N800.

Or it could be metalayer-crawler doing it's "thing".

It's the lens that becomes stiffer, not the cornea.

Gabor (MD)

I can empathise here, I am very susceptible to display screen vagaries. I once had a tv set that gave me a blinding headache after 10 minutes, nobody else was affected including the friend that I gave the set to. Also I have had similar problems with certain monitors, laptop screens and so on. I need to be very careful as to what I buy but I still can’t define exactly what it is that produces the eye strain.

My only such issue with the N800 is with late night use in a dark room, e.g. bedtime reading. Even with the brightness turned right down it hurts my eyes after a while. Otherwise it is perfectly fine and I have used it for hours on end watching videos.

I have seen very wide differences in quality of N800 displays and it seems to me that you might have a bad one, especially judging by the shimmery effect you describe.

Generally speaking the N800 display is superlative so it should not give you this discomfort; if it was an intrinsic characteristic then others – including me – would have reported similar experiences.

IMHO The best option is to return yours and get a replacement, there is every possibility the new one will be better.

Yeah the metacrawler really frustrates me. Every time i switch on my tablet or put back the memory card it just shows 100% cpu usage and the tablet is unresponsive. After a few minutes the tablet comes back to normal and it is great. Which program does this metacrawler belong to??

Yeah it is indeed the lens....

I don't know if this makes sense, but would an anti-glare screen help?

http://www.boxwave.com/products/clea...-n800_2569.htm

It has made the screen much more readable for me, before there was a lot of glare.

If you do try this use scotch tape to lift the lint off of both the screen and the screen protector in addition to their instructions.

Thanks for all of the responses.
First of all, yes - I don't have 20/20 vision. I'm 34 years old and have been wearing glasses since I was 3 years old. I do go to the eye doctor every year, however, and I have been recently. My rx is good.
Anyway, it probably is just old age - mostly.
I have my Buy.com return merchandise auth #, and I plan on losing $32 re-stocking fee (15%) + shipping. Damn.
I bought 2 SD cards and a boxwave screen protector for this thing. I haven't received the boxwave yet so I left the factory one on.
Someone mentioned having a hard time reading this at night. Coincindentally, This is why I bought it. I currently use a Dell Axim X5 almost every night if I can't sleep, or while I'm falling asleep. The lowest setting on the n800 is certainly the most eye-straining and has the most "shimmery" viewing angle problem. However, the overall zooming and setting for each website is not for me. To each his/her own.

Then, the sooner you return it the better.

Buy.co Return Policy