# My eyes STING!



## andrewset (Sep 17, 2007)

Hello,

My eyes sting from what I'm supposing is monitor use. If you're also a computer superuser who's dealt with this problem and found any wisdom as to the cure, please share. I've tried everything I've heard of. I'm a novelist, and working on the computer for at least several hours a day is absolutely necessary for me to get any progress done in an efficient enough way. I take 5-minute shut-eye breaks every hour, without fail, but still I get days like today where my eyes sting from pain. I've seen my eye doctor and done everything else I've heard of, done a lot of research on the subject, but just can't shake the pain. It's so horrible and frequent that it's dangerously endangering my occupation! I need to get rid of the pain.

Additionally, if anyone knows of an LCD monitor or brand that's known to be really soft on the eyes, please suggest it to me, unless mine should pretty much be fine already. I currently use a 24" Acer AL2423W LCD.

Thank you
Soreyes


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## koala (Mar 27, 2005)

LCD monitors look best when they're set to use the native resolution. For a 24" monitor this will be high, meaning the icons, text, etc will look very small. What resolution is it currently set to?

You can go into Control Panel > Display > Appearance tab > Advanced button to increase the font sizes for various items, or Settings tab > Advanced button to change the DPI from Normal (96dpi) to Large (120dpi). This should help make small text more readable while still using the high native resolution. Still in Display, go to Appearance tab > Effects button and change from Standard to ClearType in the 'smooth fonts' dropdown box. This reduces the pixellation of fonts, making them much clearer, almost as good as on a Mac.

Most word processors have an option to change from black text on a white background to white text on a blue background, which is supposed to be better for the eyes.

Reducing the brightness will help. My monitor has a button for switching between Picture, Text and Economy modes. Picture is standard brightness/contrast. Text mode is 50% brightness and a noticeable improvement on the eye strain. The monitor should be at least 15" away from you, set to 60hz refresh rate, and your eye level should be in line with the top half of the screen.

Make sure there's plenty of ambient light in the room, but not too bright. Staring at a bright screen in a dark room will be painful after a few hours. Try and take more frequent breaks, every 20 minutes, and focus alternately on far away and close up objects to exercise the eye muscles.

You can buy polarized filters for monitor screens, but they can be very expensive, especially for a 24" monitor, and they get mixed reviews from users. Let me know if you're interested in looking into this and I'll see what I can find.


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## andrewset (Sep 17, 2007)

It's at native resolution. 1920x1600. to make up for the smallness of everything, i custom-tweaked the appearance of everything in detail to my liking

as for microsoft word, i have it set to black text on a light gray background

everything you mentioned is already taken care of, but still my eyes get painful on some days

i've seen two different ophthalmologists for this, the last visit being yesterday, and still i always end up with nothing conclusive about what's causing the pain nor especially what to do about it. i'm as detailed as possible in my explanations of everything, but it's like even the eye doctors don't know what the heck i'm supposed to do


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## speedster123 (Oct 18, 2006)

20 - 20- 20 rule
every 20 minutes, look at an object 20 feet away - for 20 seconds

i would get _ever so_ tinted glasses, but also check with a different eye doctor.


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## bad_mouse (Nov 20, 2007)

I am on a monitor all day and have been for about twenty years. (Sad I know but don't laugh, it could be you one day!).

Anyway, what I have found to be the best for sore eyes, are drops from the chemist which are meant for contact lens users, The soreness in the eyes is really from them drying out - get a few drops of these in each eye and they are good for hours more. Don't get the drops with any chemicals in them to whiten eyes, just plain saline solution.


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