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Editors Note: Backstage Technicians are here to help and in this ongoing series, they’ll offer me their favorite tips and provide answers to some of the most common service related questions they hear at both the call center and in Sony Style Stores.

When sitting at the computer, it’s important to optimize our comfort level since we’re often in the same position for hours on end.  Things to consider include how our chairs are adjusted, the position of our hands, head and legs.  The comfort of our eyes though is just as important and often overlooked.  In fact, a few minor adjustments to the brightness of your screen can help reduce eye strain and enhance your overall viewing experience.

Keep in mind not every situation calls for your screen to be at its maximum brightness.  For example, if you’re watching a movie – by all means max your display brightness out and enjoy.  On the other hand, if the light around you is dim a bright screen could be hard on your eyes, whether you realize it at first or not.

Your display also consumes a lot of battery power – the brighter the display setting, the more power it draws.  So if you’re watching that same movie on a long flight, you may want to consider dimming your screen to ensure you get to finish it with plenty of time to spare for other things.

That said, adjusting the brightness of your screen is simple.  In just a few quick steps, you can easily adjust the brightness of your display, improving both the quality of your viewing experience and the life of your battery.

You may already know how to adjust the brightness of your display through Windows, by selecting Control Panel => System and Security => Power Options, then adjusting the slider from left to right.

But did you know your VAIO PC makes this process even easier?  Your VAIO is designed to give you quick access to some of the most common function shortcuts.  You can find these shortcuts on the Function keys along the top row of your keyboard.  Simply select and hold the Function key (“Fn”) and F6 to make the screen brighter or F5 to dim the screen.  You can make changes to your screen’s brightness on-the-fly as you watch a video, browse the web, read a document or look at pictures, without disrupting your onscreen experience or PC’s performance.

You can also create brightness and power presets for the various situations you might find yourself in.  Let’s go back to the in-flight movie example.  Instead of manually making adjustments to your VAIO each time your on a flight and wanting to watch a movie, you can tweak a pre-existing power preset.  That way, when your VAIO determines you’re running on batteries but watching a movie it will automatically make all the necessary adjustments for you.  Here’s how:

1. Select Control Control Panel => System and Security => Power Options

2. Select the present you want to tweak.

• 1. For the in-flight movie example, select Interevideo WinDVD (this preset correlates with the use of the WinDVD application)
• 2. Select Change plan settings

2. Tweak the power and brightness settings as you see fit under the On battery column.

Even better, select VAIO PCs include an ambient light sensor, which detects the ambient light around your computer and adjust the screen’s brightness accordingly – taking the guess work out of setting the optimal screen brightness for your situation.

For even more tips on preserving battery life, jump over to Backstage Quick Tip #2:  5 Ways to Maximize Battery Life.