San Francisco
AMERICAN computer companies have been hiding something from their customers for years: the edges of their computer screens. That is the claim of a multimillion-dollar lawsuit against dozens of computer manufacturers, due to be settled next month.
More than 50 companies, including industry leaders such as Apple, Compaq and IBM, have for years reported screen size as the diagonal of the picture tube. The problem, says Stephen White of Kronick, Moskovitz, Tiedemann & Girard, a law firm in Sacramento, California, is that the edges of the tube are hidden within the screen鈥檚 casing. 鈥淭he reason that鈥檚 so misleading is that people know that you can take a ruler to the visible part of a TV screen and it will be exactly the size quoted in an ad.鈥�
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While the distinction seems small, White and the other lawyers who took the computer makers to court found that the measurements quoted implied that the visible screen area was 17 per cent larger than it really was. And while images fill a TV screen, the image on a computer monitor can stop up to 1 centimetre from the visible edge, reducing the useful size even more.
White says that all the parties have agreed to a provisional settlement, which is expected to be approved on 30 June by a Superior Court judge in San Francisco. If the settlement holds, all companies will be required to report a second measure, called 鈥渧iewable image size鈥�. In addition, anyone who purchased one of the 40 million monitors sold in the US between 1 May 1991 and 1 May 1995 will be eligible for a $13 rebate.