A:
Judy, I ran into the same problem. Initially I was very disappointed in the low brightness. But I figured out it was the Auto Brightness.
Go to the Charms bar, select Settings, Change PC Settings (at the bottom), Power and Sleep, and turn off the top items that says "Adjust my screen brightness automatically. I was very pleased at how bright the screen is now.
I'm using Windows 8.1 so it is possible it is a little different if you're running Windows 8.
I've had several devices that try to select brightness for me but I've always had to turn them off because they don't suit my tastes.