For the past few weeks, I've had tiny black insects (thrips a.k.a. 'thunderflies') walking across my screen. I usually gently get them with my thumb and waft them away (they usually die). Today I saw the same thing, but wiping the screen had no effect. Turns out the insect was in the space between the backlight and the TFT panel! Wikipedia claims this is actually a defect, since the gap between the panels should be sealed.

In similar news, my PowerBook TFT has also sustained damage today. Somehow I have a tiny 'bright point' in the backlight with a dark smudge of about 2mm to the south west. It looks like a smushed up insect or something. This is on a PowerBook.. where the screen doesn't even have any vents at all. It's not a major impediment, but that's the resale value of the PowerBook destroyed (as if x86 Macs hadn't already seen to that ;-)).

So.. it's not my lucky day when it comes to screens.