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Widescreen on Laptops is teh suck!

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Originally posted by: loic2003
I like widescreen on larger monitors ( >20"... my 24" 2407WFP is sweet!) but yeah, I know what you mean about the smaller laptops. Marketing-wise it's awesome being ale to brag that it's a widescreen, despite being smaller than a regular aspect ratio monitor. True, it fits a movie to the edges, but surely a 1280 x 1024 would just have some black bars when playing a movie, yet would have more realestate when you want to do something useful.

I agree with your sentiment, fustrateduser.
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Stop raving about how awesome 1280x1024 is. A 5:4 aspect never had any place in the computer world and it's ridiculous that it exists.
 
Originally posted by: mercanucaribe
Originally posted by: loic2003
I like widescreen on larger monitors ( >20"... my 24" 2407WFP is sweet!) but yeah, I know what you mean about the smaller laptops. Marketing-wise it's awesome being ale to brag that it's a widescreen, despite being smaller than a regular aspect ratio monitor. True, it fits a movie to the edges, but surely a 1280 x 1024 would just have some black bars when playing a movie, yet would have more realestate when you want to do something useful.

I agree with your sentiment, fustrateduser.
Click to expand...

Stop raving about how awesome 1280x1024 is. A 5:4 aspect never had any place in the computer world and it's ridiculous that it exists.
Click to expand...
Let's see, 1280x960 or 1280x1024. Yeah, I'll take the second.

 
Originally posted by: archcommus
Originally posted by: mercanucaribe
Originally posted by: loic2003
I like widescreen on larger monitors ( >20"... my 24" 2407WFP is sweet!) but yeah, I know what you mean about the smaller laptops. Marketing-wise it's awesome being ale to brag that it's a widescreen, despite being smaller than a regular aspect ratio monitor. True, it fits a movie to the edges, but surely a 1280 x 1024 would just have some black bars when playing a movie, yet would have more realestate when you want to do something useful.

I agree with your sentiment, fustrateduser.
Click to expand...

Stop raving about how awesome 1280x1024 is. A 5:4 aspect never had any place in the computer world and it's ridiculous that it exists.
Click to expand...
Let's see, 1280x960 or 1280x1024. Yeah, I'll take the second.
Click to expand...

😀
QFFT
 
I love widescreen, it makes so much more sense. I'll take 1280 x 800 over 1024 x 768 any day (with reference to the iBook -> Macbook upgrade).
 
Originally posted by: speg
I love widescreen, it makes so much more sense. I'll take 1280 x 800 over 1024 x 768 any day (with reference to the iBook -> Macbook upgrade).
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*Smack forehead*
Another one who didn't get it.
 
Huh? Are you kidding me? I recently went widescreen and I don't want to go back. So much more room... your arguement that there is less room doesn't make sense.
 
Originally posted by: Blazin Trav
Huh? Are you kidding me? I recently went widescreen and I don't want to go back. So much more room... your arguement that there is less room doesn't make sense.
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there is less room if you have less pixels. if you went from 1024x768 to 1200x800 then you've increased both dimensions and gained room. but if you go from a 14" notebook with a 1400x1050 screen to a 14" notebook with a 1440x900 display (or, god forbid, a 1280x800 display) you've LOST room. and for most WORK, the vertical space is more important than the horizontal. fscking around on the internet, playing games, or watching movies might be ok or even better, but for WORK the widescreen just isn't as good.

i still haven't gotten quite used to changing from 1600x1200 to 1680x1050 on my desktop. sure, the combination of an extra 2" diagonal and a larger % of the screen being used while watching a movie is great, but i downgraded in space, especially vertically. as i pointed out earlier, at least with the desktop i can rotate into portrait mode for any drafting that needs to be done. with a notebook, once you've got the menus at the top, the crap at the bottom, etc. etc., you've not much room left for the document itself.
 
As someone else pointed out, it's not widescreen that's the problem but rather the overall resolution that most laptops are shipped with today. Widescreen should not sacrifice resolution, which is what is happening for many users with the cheaper variety of LCD screens. I'd have no problem with a 1920x1200 widescreen laptop. OTOH, 1280x800 is a downgrade for most here.


 
Originally posted by: FrustratedUser
Originally posted by: speg
I love widescreen, it makes so much more sense. I'll take 1280 x 800 over 1024 x 768 any day (with reference to the iBook -> Macbook upgrade).
Click to expand...

*Smack forehead*
Another one who didn't get it.
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Why smack yourself? You should be smacknig them! LOL!

Anyways I hate widescreen lappys, but am fine with widescreen TVs and maybe desktop monitors. Also really really hate those glazed/glass type LCD screen that reflect the background and your face (heck, just about everything). At Best Buy all I did was see the store lights off of it which annoyed the heck out of me.
 
That's how they get these fantastic battery life on laptops. Chop off 1/3 of the screen, call it WS, and you cut 1/3 the power used for the LCD!
 
Originally posted by: FelixDeKat
Originally posted by: FelixDeKat
widescreen TVs :thumbsdown:

widescreen PDAs :thumbsdown::thumbsdown:

widescreen Laptops :thumbsdown::thumbsdown::thumbsdown:
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basically widescreen in general :thumbsdown:
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Yeah having almost 2/3 of a widescreen frame cut off to fit my 4:3 TV is the ONLY way to watch.
 
Originally posted by: eits
widescreen rules ALWAYS.

anyone who thinks different is either a redneck or dumb and/or both.
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Or have their own opinion based on their likes/dislikes....wait, that can't be. Nevermind.
 
I'll try to make my opinion a bit clearer. Widescreen is great for games, the disadvantage is you need to keep a more powerful system to be able to run them at native res. Widescreen is also great for movies, again, though, a disadvantage exists that you still have to see letterboxes at all. However for anything on the desktop, widescreen just feels stupid to me. Every website I go to or document I have open has inches upon inches of blank space to the left and right of it. And because desktop stuff is probably half to two-thirds of my computer usage, I'm not in a big rush to get a widescreen desktop monitor.

For notebooks, all the same rules apply, unless they're going to make the screen tiny and seriously decrease your vertical resolution just to make it widescreen, in which case it sucks even more, as FrustratedUser pointed out.
 
Originally posted by: archcommus
I'll try to make my opinion a bit clearer. Widescreen is great for games, the disadvantage is you need to keep a more powerful system to be able to run them at native res. Widescreen is also great for movies, again, though, a disadvantage exists that you still have to see letterboxes at all. However for anything on the desktop, widescreen just feels stupid to me. Every website I go to or document I have open has inches upon inches of blank space to the left and right of it. And because desktop stuff is probably half to two-thirds of my computer usage, I'm not in a big rush to get a widescreen desktop monitor.

For notebooks, all the same rules apply, unless they're going to make the screen tiny and seriously decrease your vertical resolution just to make it widescreen, in which case it sucks even more, as FrustratedUser pointed out.
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it's not necessarily harder to run a game at a widescreen resolution than a standard resolution. a 14" widescreen at 1440x900 has LESS pixels than a 14" 1400x1050 resolution monitor. a 20" 1680x1050 has LESS pixels than a 20" 1600x1200 monitor. it should be easier for the graphics hardware to push those resolutions. in fact, 1440x900 is a lower resolution than 1280x1024, which is considered somewhat low resolution nowadays.

for a given diagonal, widescreens are better for movies than standard or 5:4 displays. there is a smaller % of the screen for letter boxes, which means that the movie is larger on a 16:10 20" widescreen than a 4:3 20" normal monitor. in

the only reason you've got wasted inches of black space to the left and right of something is because you're full screening. i haven't full screened anything except games and movies since i stuck the old 17" 1024x768 CRT in the closet 6 years ago.
 
Originally posted by: OREOSpeedwagon
I guess I'm one of the few that really don't care. 1280x800 is fine on my Macbook, I love it 🙂
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I feel the same way. I have 1280x768 on my W3J and I feel that it is a good resolution for the screen size. I used to use a 17" monitor with its 1280x1024 display, but it took no time to adjust to the WS resolution of my notebook, which I enjoy a lot.
 
I have a widescreen lappy and its 1920x1200. I love the extra space on teh side for AIM or tool bars in Flash and Photoshop.
 
Originally posted by: Neurorelay
Originally posted by: Aimster
17" Dell Laptop..

1920x1200 here
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Me too, I game at that resolution; but adjusted desktop to 1440x900 to be able to read.
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I also have a 17" Dell at 1920x1200 with the glossy screen. I had to enable clear type and use 1:1 pixel. I also connect a second 19" 1280x1025 on the DVI port. Sometimes I want a 3rd monitor.
 
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