[X4U] Powerbook screen too dark outside

[Anne-Marie Concepcion]

I suppose there's no fix for this, but thought I'd ask anyway.

In the summer months I like to work outside on my deck with my 
Powerbook (Alum 15"). The deck has an awning but I'm not really in 
dim shade here or anything, more like diffused shade.

Even with the screen at its brightest, it's like I'm working with 
black ink on medium-gray paper, barely any contrast. It's very hard 
to see what I'm doing especially when I'm trying to write an email 
like this, with 10 point geneva.

Inside the house, the screen brightens up and all is fine. But I 
can't tell if the screen is *actually* brightening due to ambient 
light going down (I've never actually seen it happen, even walking 
slowly inside with the PB open in my arms, staring at the screen), or 
if it's an optical illusion.  It's more like the *contrast* visually 
increases, not the brightness. And there's no contrast controls on 
the PBs as far as I can tell.

To try to resolve the problem, I purchased a thing that's like a 
"hoodie" for laptops, sized for my 15" Powerbook screen. The 
"hoodman" looked promising:
http://www.hoodmanusa.com/powerbook.asp

It's supposed to cut down on glare outside and make my LCD screen 
easy to read. It really didn't do a thing except make me feel like I 
was working through a porthole ... I have to lean left and right to 
see the dock and palettes on the sides of the monitor.

So now I'm thinking about sinking $100 into an anti-glare filter like this one:
https://www.pcmall.com/pcmall/shop/detail~dpno~441747.asp

But that's a heck of a lot of money. Does anyone have any experience 
with this issue and can proffer some advice? (I know this problem is 
trivial in the scheme of things. I was whining about it to my 
daughter the other day and she goes, "Poor baby, can't see her 
Powerbook screen on her deck, oh what a cruel world." LOL)

thx
AM