16:10 Sadness

Post of the year.

 

It was funny.

 

You have to forgive me for not recognizing such a "hobby".

 

Well, you could question people whom buys > 1000 dollars digital camera and how photography could be a hobby.

 

Some of us like to tinker with different stuff...

Thirty years ago, I used to rebuild and customize tube (valve) amps, then went into Classic Cars during late 80s and early 90s, and more recently ThinkPads...

If one knows what they're doing, FrankenPadding can be a decent source of extra income, but is definitely not for everyone...

 

So, it’s been about four months since I started this thread and it appears Lenovo still can’t be bothered. It doesn’t appear the “X3” is going to do 16:10 and I don’t see anything in the T series either. Am I missing something? Does anyone know anything about a 16:10 from Lenovo in the near future? Any ThinkPad enthusiasts jump ship for a 16:10 elsewhere (not to Apple, but they do make better hardware)? If so, please share.

Cheers and happy holidays.

 

Panasonic makes a 16:10 Toughbook with 1920x1200. Since it's semi-rugged it's still quite portable.

 

Huh?
Why exactly would Lenovo care about 16:10 whilst they never listened to our complaints about 4:3 disappearance, and they're currently too busy butchering the keyboard/trackpoint?

 

Toughbooks are nice in that they are great for construction sites or they can readily be used to beat someone to death, but since I don’t plan on using my notebook for either of those scenarios, and Toughbooks tend to be underperformers, they are not part of my consideration.

 

Why would Lenovo make 16:10 when all other competitors products are 16:9 or 3K/4K?


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

 

Apple has 3k with 16:10, so I don't see why lenovo shouldn't as well. Lenovo said themselves they want to compete with Apple. Switching back to 16:10 would be a good start.

 

Under-performers when compared to which ThinkPad, and in what type of application?

Gaming rigs they're not - but neither are ThinkPads - and for any type of business application the latest generation of CF-52 will do just fine. And then some.

 

Lenovo business end and Apple have no equal comparison so that analogy doesn't fit.

 

I know, and yet lenovo wants to compete with them. Sometimes I wonder if they are just playing some sort of giant prank on us...

 

I really don't get why anybody would referring FHD and above resolutions for portable notebooks competing lower res. but 16:10.
It's pointless having more than, let say 1600x1000 in 12-13" device. Well, unless it is done like Apple's retinas, where space available for apps is divided by four.

What's the point in bigger res. when you can't see a without without squinting and bending your neck or zooming everything which is additional effort. Not to mention that not everything can be zoomed or scaled even with OS DPI setting.
I'm not against small devices with big res or even not against 16:9 on its own. But where the hell is consumer's choice even for a higher price? Where the competition? Come on it's a joke, not a free market.

I'm truly missing 16:10, those 100 vertical pixels against 1600x900 would make a difference.
Even the most popular 1366x768 is a step back comparing to 1280x800.

 

the only thing they seem to be trying to keep up with apple is the price

people always want more than they have even when they don't need it, especially with technology, probably most people don't even use their computer to its 100% capacity, of course there are going to be a lot more on these forums that do, considering computer forums attract these kind of people, but in the real world when looking at things from everyone's perspective

things like 3k displays are unnecessary for most and that is why 720p displays are so popular still, 1600 x 900 in my opinion is the sweet spot, things aren't so tiny and it's decent quality and productivity space for most.

 

That's a software vendors' issue, especially Microsoft establishing a flawed practice of fixed size fonts everywhere. On Linux I have absolutely no issues you're describing, whether it's a standard 96 dpi or the W540's 212 dpi. I just set dpi in system to match the physical dpi of my screen and then set font sizes to my preferences, and then everything looks nice and crisp and I have absolutely no need to squint or bend my neck or zoom.

That said, in Windows Vista and above even if program is not dpi-aware you'll have it properly scaled so long as you don't use XP-style UI scaling, the only drawback being a bit blurry text for dpi not sufficiently high.

 

My laptop is 1600x900. The MacAir is 1440x900. As far as I can tell, my screen is just like a MBA plus an extra 160 pixels on the side. A pessimist would whine that my laptop should be 1600x1000. An optimist like me would be pleased with my extra pixels. I can't really see the difference.

 

What screen size is your laptop?

 

Got a t500 and have been enjoying it for half a year now, landed a t60p for only $30 the other day just for giggles and yes it has the ips.

 

Nice of you to give him/her $30...

 

Just lurking around, though at least for desktops, why not just buy a 16:9 monitor (or several) and just flip them around to portrait mode? 1080x1920 sounds pretty nice.

 

I haven't really missed 16:10 displays that much, and I do a lot of programming and CAM.

Most of the new displays are higher resolution than the older 16:10 displays, and the size matches the keyboard/trackpad. Stop thinking about it as losing vertical pixels, and think about it as gaining horizontal pixels.

IMO a second monitor is a million times more useful than an extra two lines of code on the screen. I've started walking around with an asus mb168+ and its quite nice.

 

Well, maybe if Lenovo was using 16:10 display in latest ThinkPads it wouldn't feel compelled to butcher the keyboard layout and remove separate physical TrackPoint buttons to get few extra millimeters to increase the size of touchpad.

 

Because of tearing and because 1080 is not enough horizontally. You can partly* solve the latter by going 1920x1200... but then again there's a lot less reasons to tilt it in the first place. Also: it creates a giant settings mess when using docking stations with a notebook: last time I checked; it doesn't remember the portrait mode settings.
(*)because 1200 is really not enough either; you really want 1280

The first really usable 16:9 is 2560x1440... but then you have to use DL DVI or Displayport.

As for the keyboard butchering: that has nothing to do with the switch from 16:10 to 16:9; the only thing that changed with going to 16:9 was that we ended up with a smaller screen and a bigger bezel around the screen; maybe they should include some chalk...

Haha; where did you gain horizontal pixels? 1680x1050 went down to 1600x900, 1920x1200 went down to 1920x1080, 1440x900 went smaller pixels to 1600x900. Just thinking about it differently and fooling yourself won't make it more usable. That "most" displays have higher resolution is not that interesting: that the dumb majority didn't pay attention in the past and is now hooked on the "Full HD" craze has nothing to do with the purchasing decisions of smarter people.

Yes, a 2nd monitor might be more useful than two lines of code... a 2nd 16:10 is even more useful. While we're at it.

Matching screen aspect ratio (I assume you don't mean "size" as you wrote) with keyboard / touchpad is also complete nonsense. Instead of cutting the screen vertically you can always expand the touchpad horizontally. Keyboard aspect ratio has absolutely no relation whatsoever to displays aspect ratio. And for size: with 12" 4:3 the Thinkpad X61 fitted a full 7-row qwerty keyboard with just some big keys on the right side trimmed a bit. There is absolutely zero lack of horizontal space for keyboard / touchpad on anything wider than 12" 4:3.

And when we go back a bit further (to 4:3) instead of 16:10 we get to the time were batteries didn't stick out as often. If you look at the 16:10 screen introduced with the T61 series the only thing that brought was protruding 6-cell batteries on the 14" wide: the overall footprint (vertically) increased from 10" (14" 4:3 with 6-cell) to 10.26" (14" 16:10 with 6-cell). Now I happen to be a huge fan of protruding batteries; but the way a 9-cell sticks out on a 14" 4:3 T61 is still better than the way a 9-cell sticks out on a 16:10 14" T61. In the latter it actually decreases the maximum angle you can open lid...

There is a lot to hate about Apple's computers but the one thing they did right (not going 16:9) seems to be also one of the few points that isn't copied, unfortunately.

 

You joke about that, but I've seen one or two of my peers using their MBPs as "chalk boards" with their pencils and erasers. Pretty interesting use of a laptop, imo.

Anyway, I don't do a lot of work with 16:10 displays, with the only one I've had was a 1440x900 display (and a few 800p MB and MBP laptops back in my high school days), so I never really got the point of "16:10 vs 16:9". If anything, why not drop the demand for 16:10 and ask for 4:3 instead? To me at least, that's a hell of a lot more noticeable difference than 16:10 vs 16:9 (at least comparing my X61t to my W520). Still sort of amazes me that I can get near-1080p on such a small laptop, though I suppose today everyone's going QHD+ (a good thing in my book... now to murder 768p displays from existence...).

 

They still do sell some 16:10 displays, just professional grade. If you need beyond 1080p, they do sell 1440p monitors.

Also a semi-good thing about 16:9, it is giving laptops which never offered "FullHD" the ability to get it. Thus it makes it cheaper vs paying 200-300 dollars or more for a screen upgrade. Also 3-4k screens are coming..

 

11" Air is 16:9. Yet Apple still managed to put a real, full size, normal layout (as in Apple-normal, same as on 15" MBP or external) keyboard into it.

Just simple rule really: do whatever, and aspect ratio is a matter of preference (I much prefer 16:10 to 4:3 in laptops, for example), but do NOT put idiots in charge of keyboard layouts. Lenovo's management just missed the "NOT" word in this rule.

 

The Apple copycats probably don't want to invest money in 16:10 displays since not many of those are made (and therefore it would be more expensive).

Another case of many laptop manufactures being too cheap.

 

Indeed. Even though I prefer 16:10 over 16:9 I'd rather have old T61p-style layout with 16:9 screen than W530/540 layout with 16:10 screen.

 

+ 1 and then some...

 

Don't get me wrong, I loved the good "ol'" days of 4:3 and 16:10. Heck my old office I still had a 5:4 1280x1024 Samsung monitor. I loved the X61t I had with a X60t SXGA+ swapped screen. I also had a SXGA+ swapped T60. But new laptops, you don't really have a choice. So for me, it'll be me buying newer 16:9 gaming laptops and using older 4:3/16:10 ultraportables from Lenovo. But unless there is a massive boycott of laptops until 16:10 comes back, things won't change.

 

We could just buy Apple laptops if we want 16:10.

 

The MBA 11 is the only Apple laptop that interests me (just the sheer thinness and light weight still boggles the mind), and that is 16:9, though every other Apple laptop is 16:10. But some people don't want to spend 1k+ for a computer, (I say you get what you pay for) or have specific Windows needs, and the only 2 companies I can think of that still produce 4:3/16:10 are Panasonic with their Toughbook lineup and Fujitsu.

 

Well, it's been a while since somewhere here got the figures on that. As far as I remember it broke down to about $14 for 15.6" 16:9 to 15.4" 16:10.

 

...Which is about how much Wintel OEMs make as profit, per laptop. So, if a 15.4" display is about $14 more than a 15.6" display, that's the difference between "Making some sort of profit" and "No profit, and/or selling at a loss".

It could be still profitable for a high-margin Wintel, like business-class laptops, though from the business' point of view: why accept less profit with their cream-of-the-crop product?

 

Getac also offers 4:3.

 

Linux is main OS I'm using, I wasn't aware of that though. But that just because I haven't needed scaling yet. I'm hesitate to buy a notebook with an unnecessarily high resolution and then scale it. What's the point?

Anyway, is your opinion 100% valid even when running non-native software, let say java GUI applications under linux?

It's not the matter of attitude but kind of marketing bullsh!t, aka product downsizing. You are paying the same and getting smaller screen. That's it.

MacAir may seem to be a humble exception of the downsizing itself, but the truth is the valid comparison of resolutions lays between 1600x900 resolution and 1600x1050.

I'm doing that man! On every workspace I've been using since 16:9 takeover I have a setup which includes one 90 degree rotated monitor and one placed in default position. It was the case in my previous job, it is in my current job and in my home's desk as well.

The problem here is that such approach doesn't improve crappy screen ratio of notebooks, does it?

I do a lot of programming as well and thus having enough vertical space while still being able to read comfortably without zooming or scaling is mandatory, period.
The same applies to really basic things as let say reading www.

Yea like FullHD in 13" notebook. Come on, man...
Who does need such anyway?

Was 16:10 matching it worse? I don't see how the proper fitting of keyboard could be affected when we considering the same screen width. Just the height is bigger with 16:10.

That could be possibly true when desktop monitors are under consideration.
Almost any activity on a portable device, except maybe watching HD movies, doesn't bring any improvement with more vertical pixels. On the other hand shortage of verticals is pain with everything involving text (but not limited to).

I have additional big screens on my desks and there is no complaints about that. But the advantage of a portable device is that it is... portable. Do such obvious things really have to be explained?

That's not apply to the notebooks screens, I suppose, does it?

Yea, mostly "semi" than "good". I'm really willing to pay 200-300$ more for not having FullHD, just being able to get the 16:10.
The problem is no matter how big load of money I would like to throw on a notebook, there is no such product on the market

The most important thing is not pointless discussion what resolution is better/more efficient/money-saving, as that's clearly the matter of preference. The major issue, which most of discussants lacks to notice, is the fact that there is no choice. no choice.

Why people for which 16:10 fits better can't just walk in to a shop and choose what they like? Even if that means paying more. What's wrong with that?
Where is the free market, competition, wide selection of products and so on?
I mean, what the hell?

 

There are no mainstream computers besides Apple that are 16:10 that are notebooks. Like I said, random Fujitsu convertible tablets should be 1280x800 (not that it's a huge upgrade from 1368x768) and I know Toughbooks should still be 16:10.

16:10 died because average joe consumers indirectly asked for it. People screamed for cheaper laptops, and well inferior hardware doesn't suit well, so what gives? Cheap HDDs, terrible screens, cheapo plastic and general shoddy build quality. The unfortunate part is, it affects everybody. Also large government agencies and large Fortune 500 companies also bid on huge contracts and always try to save money.

Honestly I don't care my E6430 Latitude has 1368x768 screen, it's docked to 2 x 22" Lenovo ThinkVision WSXGA+ 1680x1050 screens. It's also government issued property, so not like I can do much about it.

 

The point is that fonts look much better on higher resolution screens. Icons too. Overal all elements of UI are much sharper. It's not just taking the low-res version of the screen and paints it on the high-res display, it actually draws for the high-res display. So does Windows. That approach is what both makes it worthwhile upgrading screen to higher resolution and makes it troublesome to use many older (and still plenty brand-new on Windows) applications that are not DPI-aware. Thanks to high DPI of my screen I can completely disable hinting to prevent any distortion to font shapes and use only gray-scale smoothing to get rid of noticeable discoloration on font edges and still have everything perfectly legible and readable at 6 points size (6/72 of an inch) or even 5 points. As far as font rendering systems are concerned it's not render and scale, it's just render to whatever DPI is set in the system, similar to how 3D games just render a scene to whatever the available resolution they have.

That said, if you run Java GUI applications or Windows applications through Wine on Linux then it's hit and miss. Wine (for now at least) uses only XP-style GUI scaling, the one that causes non-DPI-aware applications to get all jacked up. I don't use anything Java on my machine so I can't say for sure, but there situation appears to be similar - some applications reportedly appear to scale properly (like Eclipse, according to some), while others (Netbeans, I heard) simply ignore the system DPI and use some hardcoded value. With Java Windows actually seems to have an advantage, because couple Java apps I occasionally use at work appear to be scaled up by Windows NT 6.x "DPI virtualization" thingy.

 

Have you used any Getac laptops before?

 

I have renewed the domain for website: Sixteen By Ten | Because wider is not better…

 

That $14 might very well be $8; I honestly don't remember it for 100%. Well, you can make it an "upgrade", like the $40-50 upgrade to IPS on the Thinkpad X220 / X230; a lot of people took that... The space is already there since they only put more plastic around the LCD.

Well, accepting less profit for "cream of the crop" machine.... it's not the latter if it has a 16:9 screen.

If the Dell's of this world can let people pay 200% on RAM upgrades, then can sell a $5 more expensive display. Marketing could point out that Apple has 16:10 too....

 

I haven't, but a good friend of mine sells Getac laptops so I might check them out one day.

 

Amen to the above. Perhaps with a new generation of portable touch displays coming our way to complement notebooks, we are more likely to see a return to 16:10 (eg., Wacom DTU-1031). If Wacom replaces their Cintiq 13HD (on AC power) with a DTU-1331 (4:3 or 16:10 but non-crazy DPI), then it's automatically a winner in my book. And I'll make sure it's a winner to my colleagues, too.

Ditto Lenovo to its LT1423p - the bezel on that thing is so wide that it's a real pity it's not 1050p.

I am pretty sure the new toughbook notebooks since IVB have been 16:9. Panny does have an odd tablet here and there that is 16:10 (even 4:3 running Android, which seem to be common everywhere). In fact their flagship 10" Windows tablet is 1900x1200 I believe (I looked at it with some interest but then the DPI that exceeds the SP2 would just make my legacy app unusable).

It was a real shame when the grand-daddy of tablet PC, i.e., Fujitsu, sold out to the 16:9 trend.

Speaking of Apple, it may very well have gotten rich by selling s#x - but it sells "functional" s#x. One of the largest academic hospitals in Canada ported their EHR to iPads and people there love it. I haven't use it on iPads myself (as an extramural user I access it through Citrix, which is nowhere as fast or slick as the intramural iPad access).

Even the retina iPads run on an effective resolution of 1024x768, which gives a respectable DPI for our legacy apps (in the medical world "legacy" is not the exception, but the rule). When iPad pro arrives in a few months, it might even be at an effective resolution of 5:4 (1280x1024) for all we know because Apple is aware of the difference between marketing ("retina") and function ("pixel doubling" - not the Windows fuzzy "interpolation").

It's debatable whether consumers truly clamoured for 16:9 in any meaningful sense. Just as Meryl Streep stated in "The Devil Wears Prada": a woman doesn't choose fashion in a store - it was chosen for her 2 seasons ago in Paris/Milan. Stevie chose i-something for joe consumer year-in, year-out and every year a winner (heck even 2 or 3 winners in a year). The Birkenstock-wearing "devils" in Redmond insisted on this dysfunctional 16:9 for consumers. Just like always, they chose poorly, except that the damage was disproportionate IMO.

Why else would an old guard like Fujitsu cave in to this insensible 16:9?

The end of last year saw Japan Display Inc. unleashing QHD++++++ on the long-suffering mass chained to Windows, who are still reeling from vanilla HD/FHD 16:9. On my recently purchased T440p, I would've paid extra (above and beyond the 3K) for a 900p IPS (and double extra for a 1050p IPS but we all know that's dreaming in technicolor for a unicorn), but can only settle for a 900p TN.

It just seems that for those of us for whom laptops and legacy software are tools of trade things have gone from bad to worse in the display arena, folks who are smart and resourceful enough to move on to Linux notwithstanding.

Is it any wonder that virtually all of my colleagues have a macbook and iPad + iPhone? Many have multiple iPads and I know I am the only one who bought a Windows laptop in my department in the past 6 months (possibly the whole year). And the only reason I bought it was to pair it with an LT1423p, whose 16:9 ratio still bothers me to no end.

But will things change? Big "O" says "yes we can". I hope we can.

 

Yeah, they had iPhone4, 16:10 was the best aspect ratio for a smartphone. Until iPhone 5 arrived, and apparently 16:9 was really the aspect ratio they always wanted.

 

You have a point there. Cupertino can do no wrong in the eyes of some i-fan boys and girls, among whom a certain number of my colleagues do belong.

Having said that, I will make the following points:

1. I would have preferred myself a phone that's 21:9 with lesser width because it is more ergonomic to hold. Furthermore, despite falling head over heels with their iPhones, most Apple fanboys don't create content on their iPhones beyond texting and composing brief emails. My colleagues are no exceptions. Content creation and consumption are 2 very different beasts. Again Cupertino demonstrates understanding in this subject and Redmond is epic fail (yeah, go on "uniting" your Windows phone and Desktop in glorious 16:9 in 2015 and we'll see how you fare)

2. If this year's iPad Pro turns out to be 16:9, I will come back here and eat every word of praise I ever lauded on Cupertino and ask the mod to change my screen name to ax_r_a_fool (while Stevie's ghost will surely haunt Timmie).



P.S., for what it's worth, I use a 5y-old Nokia E71 and d@man proud of it. I don't have i-anything although I did buy a 2011 MBA for wife, which I have re-appropriated on many an occasion for myself.

 

^^^ I think you're allowed to say "damn" on NBR

 

I must chalk the above statement of mine to transient hypoglycemia now that I had dinner and pondered it over. It was widely off the mark.

It's patently false that MS doesn't understand what it takes to "create content". To the contrary it does extremely well or it wouldn't be where it is today. If I am not mistaken, Billy was the original champion behind Pen & Touch in the 1990s and may very well be credited with midwiving Tablet PC as a category. If anything, Stevie's insistence that fingers were the ultimate navigational tool flew in the face of 6000 years of civilization and was laughable irrespective of the sale volume of iPads.

In fact iPads are the the ultimate "content consumption" tools. The colleagues of mine using iPads mostly use them to check results but cannot input things in any meaningful way without a "folio". Even then it is awkward. I am interested to see if the upcoming iPad Pro changes things. Since Stevie had passed on, who else in Cupertino would stand in the way of a pen? If the iPad pro comes with a digitizer, and if Apples improves voice recognition substantially, wow ... just think.

Now back to the thread. It's perhaps doubly disappointing to see a company with otherwise a sound grasp of what it takes to create content dictate a 16:9 law to its OEM serfs.

Apparently somebody at Apple was let go for messing up a map. And Redmond itself did some housecleaning over a little "Start" button (I don't miss Start button on W8).

But for the far-reaching damage of insisting upon 16:9 for an entire generation of hardware while roughshodding over user experience?

I guess it's the Redmond way or the highway.

 

I too miss 16:10 screens. Had they not been dropped for the most part, their resolutions would have continued to improve. Apple is the only real show left in town using them.

I still hold out hope that we will eventually circle back around to 4:3 and 16:10 screens -- I think there's a market for both. Yes, we have 1920x1080 everywhere these days and it's great for video consumption, but we had 1920x1200 years ago and it was great for virtually everything else, giving lots of desktop space and still readable fonts.

Ultimately, the 16:10 panels were expensive and harder to make when they were more common, and with TVs and movies sticking with 16:9, it made sense for laptops to match. However, abandoning the old formats isn't ideal for consumer choice. As a developer, I loathe 16:9 screens.