What are all of you people talking about? People adjust their laptop brightness at will. I adjust mine all the time for comfort when reading. It is two buttons on the keyboard. All cell phones have easy brightness controls a swipe away and everybody knows how to use them.

Monitors have contrast and saturation adjustment, not just brightness. Since we're talking about text-on-background contrast, I'm (and I figure others are) referring to the contrast adjustment that other devices don't have.

LCD screens don't need contrast or saturation adjustment unless you are a design or photo professional. For any screen really, you set the contrast at the proper level if it isn't already there from factory. We adjust brightness because the brightness of our environment changes during the day.

If only everyone was consistent... which this post is making it clear they're not!

For a parallel, mplayer lets me adjust these and I use it often because video is just as inconsistent.

As I read the thread, the discussion is about reading text on a laptop or mobile screen. For that you need nothing else than brightness controls. And 100% black text on 100% white background is a good default and works well for all users.