U.S. Patent No. 7,036,025 - Prepared by Attorney David Tran for Intel Corporation and filed by Intel Corporation
Brief Description: In accordance with an embodiment of the present invention, a computer system may determine focus areas and non-focus areas of the display screen. The brightness of non-focus areas may then be reduced with respect to focus areas, thereby reducing power consumption of the display screen and, hence, reducing power consumption of the computer system. For example, a focus area may be an active window of the display screen and a non-focus area may be an inactive window of the display screen. As another example, a focus area may be a region of the display screen within a vicinity of a cursor (i.e. data entry point), and a non-focus area may be the region outside this vicinity. The size of the vicinity may be measured in radius or in lines of data (e.g. in a word processing or spreadsheet program) surrounding the cursor. The size and shape of the vicinity may be determined by a user. For one embodiment of the present invention, the brightness of at least a portion of the non-focus area of the display screen may be decreased to approximately zero, making the portion indiscernible. In accordance with an alternate embodiment of the present invention, the brightness of at least a portion of the non-focus area of the display screen may be merely dimmed, making the portion obscured but still discernible. In accordance with one embodiment of the present invention, the amount by which the brightness of the portion may be decreased may be defined according to a predetermined user preference setting in the computer system. For one embodiment, a screen may include two or more separate focus areas, such as two separate windows, or two or more separate non-focus areas.