Active matrix power consumption

[beachycove]

Do the greyscale active matrix screens in the PowerBook 1xx series consume significantly more power than the passive matrix displays? I know that the early colour LCDs would quickly drain a 1xx-series machine's battery, but I cannot find much to go on re. the greyscale ones, beyond the fact that Apple's spec sheets give the battery life of a 180 as the same as a 160. Well, they would say that….

If, however, the difference is indeed negligible, and given the ease with which a 1xx series machine can be re-celled, I think I'm going to begin looking for a PowerBook 180 (I notice a couple of nice examples on a certain auction site at the present moment, for instance).

My 160's passive matrix screen is awful, and though I have a nice PowerBook 150 on which the screen is surprisingly crisp, I like to have high end examples of Apple's old wares. For these purposes, the PowerBook 180 is king.

 

[beachycove]

Further digging in the "PowerBook" sections of my ever-useful old copies of The Macintosh Bible and Macintosh and Power Macintosh Secrets has revealed that the commentators du jour said that there was a significant penalty to be paid for active matrices over the old passive matrix screens. I should have known to look there before posting. No commentator, alas, quantifies the difference.

Apple's spec. sheets, however, effectively deny that there is any difference worth noting: the PowerBook 160 and 180, released at the same time and surely with an identical NiCad battery, both are said to get 2.5 to 3 hours from a charge.

 

[Osgeld]

just the basics of the 2 technologies suggest that an active matrix would use more power, but that doesnt mean that they didnt find a way around that

(and according to the post above they didnt)