Screen getting duller over time??

Yes, it is getting duller. This is normal. And it's not you.

Most LCD screens use a backlight bulb, fluorescent like the lights in the ceiling of an office. They are rated in hours. If you read the spec sheet for an LCD screen, it might say something like 10,000 or 20,000 hours. Typically, that's the number of hours it takes to reach half its original brightness. If you use your laptop all day and every day, after a few years it will be dimmer. And it isn't because of the whole screen, it's only because of the light bulb back there.

Whenever a new laptop comes out, the silliest thing every review says is "The screen is brighter than the old model." Well of course it will...the new model's backlight bulb hasn't been on for 1500 hours in the year since the old model came out! (1500 hours roughly equals 6 hours of use a day for 5 working days a week in a year.)

The Titaniums haven't been produced in over 3 years. If you go by the usage above, that's around 4500 hours, enough to put a serious dent in brightness. A lot of people use them more than that.

And of course, the same applies to LCD TVs. When I get one, it's going to be a good thing I'm not the type of person to leave it on all day.

You can get a replacement backlight bulb at a place like this, but it's going to be extremely difficult to replace yourself without the right tools.

There are new LCDs with amazing improvements in color fidelity. This is made possible by getting rid of the unreliable fluorescent backlights that fade unevenly, and using LEDs as a backlight instead. They are currently expensive, but the quality is better and they maintain brightness a lot longer. These LED-backlit LCDs are starting to turn up in NEC desktop LCD monitors and Sony laptops.

Actually, the iFixit article only deals with full replacement of the display. Replacing just the backlight is a much more involved rpocedure. Once you've removed the display, you have to crack it open to get to the backlight bulb. That's why, for instance, if the bulb goes on an AppleCare warrentied machine, Apple just replaces the display - getting at the backlight sealed away inside the display housing is too much of a pain. Plus, Apple itself only sells complete replacement displays, not internal LCD parts (the backlight on the powerbooks is only about 2mm in diameter, and is a pretty delicate part to handle).

Hi, John. In order to replace a backlight tube, you must first go through all the indicated steps to remove the display, and then you must dismantle the display itself — which is designed never to be disassembled. The display assembly is glued together into a single rigid unit, and must be sliced and pried apart with the utmost delicacy. One man's procedure for doing so is documented here. This is by far the most difficult, time-consuming and risky disassembly/repair that can be attempted on a Tibook, short of resoldering components on the logic board. Apple's own repair technicians don't do it; their service manual doesn't even mention it. They replace the whole display (which includes the LCD, hinges, cables, backlight, bezel, back panel, and upper half of the display latch) rather than try to dismantle and repair it or replace any of those parts.

EDIT: Hmmm. For some reason (lots of server problems today?) Michael's and your latest posts didn't appear for me until after I'd duplicated much of what he wrote in my later post.

John: You aren't alone in taking a dim view of the Tibook's hinge design. The hinges have always been its Achilles' heel, and though Apple has never explicitly acknowledged them as flawed, one might pardonably infer from the fact that the hinge design changed radically in the succeeding Aluminum Powerbooks that Apple had recognized a weakness and moved to eliminate it. Small comfort to those whose hinges broke, to be sure.

For those who were paying close attention, though, a third-party remedy appeared soon after the Tibooks were introduced: TiGlide. It works very well to prevent the hinge breakage you've suffered, but (as you're undoubtedly muttering to yourself right now) how were you supposed to know about it? And if no one else told you about it, why didn't Apple, who knew you had a Tibook and might benefit from using TiGlide?

You might well ask. But at this late date, it will do no good (and would be contrary to the Discussions Terms of Use) to speculate on the reasons, and the indications are that Apple figures it's water over the dam now.

I'm amazed that so many parts need to be removed in
order to replace a display:

Laptops are hard to design. They have to be portable, light, powerful, yet affordable. One of the aspects that is often sacrificed is ease of service. Companies generally assume that by the time the backlight is too dim, it's probably been more than 3 to 5 years - the typical time by which most people have already moved on to a newer model. It may be possible to design a laptop where all the components are easy to service, but it may cause that laptop to not be thin, or light, or cheap.