1080 screen on notebook?

[marcplante]

My wife is looking at a Sony notebook, and we're trying to figure out screen options. I used a 16" toshiba with a 1080 screen last year, and I found that it was hard to get web pages and other standard artifacts to display with reasonable font sizes etc. I was constantly fiddling with system fonts, browser fonts, etc My wife has no patience for fiddling.

She generally surfs and will use Outlook and some light work with MS office apps. No real gaming. Occasional movies for the kids in hotel rooms, though we're increasingly plugging into their 32" LCD room TVs.

We intend to hold onto this for 5 yrs or so. We're loading up a Sony quad-core, 16" notebook (F series). It'll have a 500MB video card. Yes, too much notebook for her now, but figure we'd build it for potential uses in the future.

We have 40 something eyes and do not need to see dozens of lines of code on multiple windows in clean 6 pt font.

Has anyone found settings that work well? or is there any issue with a mere 900 line screen?

 

[Rifter]

IMO you would want it to have a 20"+ screen for 1080p or text and everything will be to small. I have 2 1080P LCDs a 22" and a 24" and i think the 22" is barely large enough to not have the pixels to small. I would Settle for 720P if you want it to display HD content with no bars. Or go 1440x900.

 

[CurseTheSky]

1920x1080 on a notebook is nice for watching hi-def movies and playing some games (assuming the graphics card can handle it). For general desktop use (Internet, Word, etc.) it's a huge downfall. You have to adjust font / DPI settings just to get things to look right... maybe.

With that said, if you're looking for a machine to watch blu-ray movies on or play certain games, go for it. Otherwise I'd get a lower resolution screen and save some cash.

To me, a 1280x800 or 1376x768 resolution is perfect for a 12-13" screen; roughly 1440x900 for a 14", 1600x900 or 1680x1050 for 15-17", and 1920x1080 or 1920x1200 for 18"+. My eyesight tends to be pretty good, though, and small text doesn't really bother me. I would conversely, I would never want a 1920x1080 resolution on a sub-23" desktop monitor, which I spend most of my time looking at.

 

[ther00kie16]

Well... I moved from 17" to 24" (1920x1200) lcd and found that pixel pitch to be spot on. After buying a 17.3" 1920x1200 used VAIO, I've come to like the small font and awesome productivity in a fast, "portable" machine. but going back to the 24" LCD just makes the text on it look so big now. You can just use large icons, increase DPI setting, increase menu text size, and set browser & MS apps zoom setting to something bigger than 100%. That should take care of 99% of the tasks.

 

[Emulex]

try an hp envy 15.6" 1080p lol

i have a 17" 1920x1200 and damn it is sometimes hard on the eyes at that PPI

 

[ther00kie16]

my roommate had a 15.4" dell with 1920x1200. as far as i know, that's the smallest 1080p+ resolution screen. images were buttery smooth compared to my 17" lcd at the time.
back on topic: yes, it's difficult but my roommate just upped settings like DPI and icon size.

there's that 7" 1080p panel that Epson was supposedly going to make in 2007 (original info spread in Oct '06) but that's nowhere to be seen.