Is 1920x1200 insane?

I've been using a T42 for the past two years everyday for at least 8 hours. When I first got it I was definitely not happy with the 1024x768 res on the 14.1 inch LCD. Unfortunately, it seems I've gotten used to it!

I have really great vision and don't need to wear glasses, but thinking about 1920x1200 on a 15.4 inch widescreen laptop just seems insane when I think about comparing it to my 24" dell monitor running at the same resolution.

Do any of yall use a laptop with the resolution or close to it? Do you have to take breaks from it? While I would love to have a high resolution(one of the reasons I'm upgrading), 1920x1200 just seems like too much.

I am waiting till the 61p comes out till I order, but I wondering what resolution I should pick. I still have to stare at the thing all day every day.

Any advice would be much appreciated!

 

That is a pretty high res for a 15.4" notebook ... I run a sxga+ (1440x1050) on my T60 14.1" and it's just the right size. It did take a little getting used to the higher resolution, but I'm happy with it now. The best thing to do, I think, would be to try and see if you can find a laptop with that kind of resolution to try before you buy.

 

I think WSXGA+ on a 15.4" laptop is the sweet spot. WUXGA is too high.

 

yeah its way too high for normal use, i bet it would be insane for gaming though

 

Well yes and no. One of Vista's new features is that it meant to be able to scale everything in Aero really well.

So you could have your 1900x1200 screen, and in Vista bump up the DPI until everything is readable and looks about right. Once you do that then everything will be really sharp and clear looking.

However, when I played around with DPI scaling in Vista I had a lot of problems with websites etc. So it's just a theory.

But yes on a standard system 1900x1200 on 15.4in screen seem excessive. Like Vespoli I think around 1400 sounds pretty good. And in general you will be a lot closer to your laptop screen, so things can be a little smaller.

The best thing though, would be to goto a store and compare them, see which you feel comfortable with.

 

You can turn the dpi to 120. Just beware, not every program will look right. Although I have a friend who has a d830 with WUXGA and they have the DPI set to 120 under vista. It looked pretty good actually. I think Vista handles a DPI change better then XP did.

Also you can configure a t61p now on lenovo's site. Just go "Thinkpad Mobile Workstation" under the t series page. It is grouped with the t60p.

 

I've been tempted, but ~130DPI is a sweet spot for pixel density imo. WSXGA+ is nice.

Obviously not too insane for some, but overkill for me. Check out the size of the icons in wuxga vs wsxga+ vs wxga:

http://www.dell.com/content/products/productdetails.aspx/latit_d830?c=us&l=en&s=bsd&cs=04

 

Correct me if I am wrong. But when you change the DPI setting in Vista it should resize all the icons so they look normal size even on high density monitors. That's the whole point isn't it?

 

DPI scaling won't scale images. It will just scale fonts and the containers of those fonts. You can try it now on whatever computer you have. If you go to a website, you will notice that the text is larger but the images are the same size regardless of the DPI scaling.

Point is. I don't think WUXGA with 120 dpi scaling was that bad. But you would really have to see it in person. Some Dell kiosks will have a 15 in set up with WUXGA. I do agree that 130DPI is a pretty good sweet spot that doesn't require messing around with Windows DPI settings.

 

i have the same Dell 24" at 1920x1200.

i've purchased my t61p already, and while i think it'll be insane at first, i think i will get used to it.

or just change the resolution if need be.

 

After looking at the specs, I have to say they don't kid around when they make a notebook as a workstation. I think they should offer WSXGA+ at least, I'm not sure how powerful the 570M is but I would think any graphic card made for notebooks would struggle at WUXGA.

I mostly think about games when it comes to graphics but maybe 3D rendering would work alright with that high res. Also how would the 570M compare to regular Geforce cards?

 

Yeah I think so. I just wouldn't get anything higher than the dpi I intended to use, without having to resize or scale. Because even when it does work, some objects might not be perfectly clean. Only time I'd do something like that is if I were going entirely from say uxga -> svga, or qxga->xga (that'd be awesome!), where an even number of pixels maps to one (then you would get your images bigger). But sounds like you already discovered vista's resizing doesn't always work too well in practice...

So what was wrong? Just images, or fuzzy/distorted text?


Imo resolution is all relative, until you get too high. Because while lower res is definitely a burn after you get used to higher, when you go back to it, after a while it no longer feels like a handicap (except that too low res on too big a display can have less focused text). OTOH if you get too small, and have problems with resizing certain objects, your eyesight isn't all of a sudden going to improve in to the same extent you get used to less real estate.

Though considering the jump from wxga to wsxga+ is more than twice the % step as the jump from wsxga+ to wuxga, it shouldn't be that bad.

 

I have a 24" WUXGA display, and a 15" UXGA thinkpad. I've for the last 6 years been envious of others with cheapo Dell Inspirons equipped with 15.4" WUXGA displays.

The resolution is definitely high, but even without considering resolution independence, things won't be hard to see because they'll still be razor-sharp. The pixel pitch is tiny on a 15" display and there is almost no "screen-door" grid effect like you'll see on nearly any XGA display.

So long as you're not reading fine print in a moving car, most people who work with computers extensively (programmers, creative designers, etc.) all crave more real estate, and if your eyesight is fine (or correctable) you can see WUXGA just fine on a 15.4" display.

 

You can play with resolution scaling in IE7. Just click the magnifying glass in the lower right and choose a custom resolution. Text and HTML rendering elements will scale fine, but images will get blocky and fuzzy. Part of this is because the scaling engine is simply poor in IE, but even good scaling methods have their limits, especially when extrapolating beyond the image's true resolution.

Another problem with this is precision. Almost all UI representations (toolbars, buttons, sliders, etc.) are raster images, which don't scale. Others (text in some cases) are vector-based. When you start to make them bigger or smaller, they often become "unaligned" with the controllable bounding boxes they represent, leading to buttons and controls that look funky and don't work right. You can see a form of this by changing the font size in XP and seeing what it does to the "minimize, maximize, close" buttons at the top right of a window--they start scaling weird and their positions shift from where they should be.

This kind of thing makes true resolution independence difficult to do well, and why it's always been an imperfect solution. Vista and MacOS have it easier with native 3D rendering on the desktop, but then you have to deal with vectorizing UI elements and art assets to make things look good when you scale UP. Big headache.

 

All over my head, but sounds like you're supporting my position that it's best to stick with whatever resolution you won't have to scale down.

 

Just to restate my observation. I think WUXGA with the DPI set at 120 is as comfortable as my 14in WXGA+ set with a DPI of 96.

 

Well when I changed the DPI the text got bigger and was easier to read, but the graphics all stayed the same size. So obviously that messed up the sites layout and design and just did not look right.

After I saw that I new I could not keep it on, that would bug me too much. So I turned it back down to default.

 

I have been using 1920x1200 on my Dell 15in wide screen for 4 years and it is the only way to go. One of the main reasons I ordered a T61p was for the screen res. All you need to adjust is the Font size to "Large Fonts" and you are golden. You do not want to adjust the DPI; makes everything goofy in my experience.