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I recently ran into an issue I had with an acer AL1714. At first I thought it was what they call ‘dead pixels’.

I was seeing a burned in image of my email client. It looks similar to the problem that used to occur in CRT’s. I found that to be odd, as I understood LCD’s don’t have this problem.

I first contacted Acer about the problem. This monitor has a 3 year waranty, and I only had it for 3 months. The good news is that they could repair it in 7-10 days. Cool. The bad news is that they wouldn’t send out aImage Persist Cleaner replacement in the mean time. Not even with a credit card to secure it. I asked them how they proposed I continued to do any work. I’m paraphrasing their response as, “that’s for you to figure out”. Nice warranty….. so much for support.

At this point I decided to investigate further. After much googling, I discovered that my problem was not uncommon. Hmmm. It’s called Image Persistence.

It turns out that pixels in an LCD have a memory. If an image is on the pixels for an extended amount of time, the pixels will remember the image. The amount of time is unknown to me. I’m suspecting that it hase something to do with response time? As you can see in the upper portion of the screen, you can make out the ‘box’ of my outlook email client.

The good news is that it’s not permanent. Here are a few steps you can take to remove it (suggested by an article at dslwebserver.com);

1. Create a 1200 x 1600 100% white .gif to use as a screen saver. (In windows you can add it to “My Pictures Slideshow”). You can just download this one if you like. (Right click->save as)
2. Set that to run after 2 minutes of non-use.
3. Set the monitor to power off in a short amount of non-use. Say 15 minutes.

In a few days your monitor shouldn’t remember those open application borders anymore. Then you can return the settings to a more tolerable time setting, and set your old favorite screensaver etc.

Rinse, and repeat as needed.

Update 1/05/2006:You can do the same with apple LCD’s as described here.

Have you had something similar happen to you? If you have any other suggested comments or educational tips on image persistence, please leave a comment.

LCD, LCD, burn-in, Image Persistence