XGA or SXGA on 14" 600M - Help

I'm thinking of ordering a Dell Inspiron 600M computer, and I can't decide between the standard XGA (1024 x 768) and the SXGA (1200 x ?).

I'm afraid the SXGA will have too small text for a 14" screen.

What do you think?

Thanks

Pierre

 

I prefer high res screens and would strongly recommend the SXGA. You can always bump the zoom in programs like Word to compensate. It is personal prefernce though, so I would go to a store and look at difference resolutions to see what fits you.

Editor in Chief http://www.bargainPDA.com and http://www.SPOTstop.com

 

Hi,

Does zooming mean changing resolution, like bringing it down to 1024 x 768?

Do I lose a lot of clarity when doing this?

I'll try going to stores. Unfortunately, Dell systems are not sold in stores, but I should be able to find comparable displays.

Thanks

Pierre

 

No, within Word you can zoon im on the file, just like an image.

Editor in Chief http://www.bargainPDA.com and http://www.SPOTstop.com

 

I guess I could also make the fonts bigger, like 110% or even 120%, so I would benefit from the higher resolution for displaying pictures and my text would be as big as with 1024x768 resolution?

Pierre.

 

Hi Bellavance!

Like Brian, I'd strongly encourage you to try it out for yourself before you decided on it. That is GREAT advice, in my opinion!

And remember, even if you can stand the small text that comes with the high resollution in a 15 min experience at the store, it doesn't mean you can live with it if you had to work with it for 8 hours a day.

Unlike Brian, I strongly discourage anyone working long days with text to buy anything higher than an XGA on a 14" screen.

Especially if you use the web a lot. Since many web sites do not support vairable fonts, you can zoom all you want and the text sizes would still be small. You can also set the font magnification on your windows display setting and it would still do no good.

Plus, as I mentioned before, if you set the Windows Regional setting to be defaulted on a system language other than English, that may very well shrink your windows font size already. Even when you try to increase the font size in I.E., they would not increase. More over, depending on what combination of default system language you choose for your windows and the display language you choose for your Internet Explorer, they may give you a font that you can't adjust the size of (non-variable) while browsing the web....so be careful with it.

Or if you want to run a different language version of Windows on your machine, the font size can also be too small for your comfort level!

Bottom line is try, try, and try! Try a laptop in a setting that you would normally use (do what you intend to do with it for real), for a few days, if you have such luxury. The last time I checked, Dell (at least Dell Canada) offers complete refund if you don't like your purchases, so take advantage of it to try it out.

Have fun shopping and come back and tell us what you end up buying, will ya?

[ ]

 

Hi neosynthesis,

Thank you for this advice.

I'm now looking at the new ASUS M5N (aka M5200N). It can be seen at: http://usa.asus.com/products/notebook/m5series/m5200n/m5200n_overview.htm

Pierre