Actually Charles, the 'Cool Blue' displays take about 20-25mA to give you more than adequate illumination (as they only have a single high-intensity white LED performing the Backlight - rather than a whole bank of Yellow or Green LEDs). You can drive those directly from a PIC pin... and they've been around for about five/six years now...

See post #12 here...

http://www.picbasic.co.uk/forum/show...ight=cool+blue