screen resolution vs text size

Still researching getting the D630. I went to Best Buy and CompUSA today in hopes of finding a 14.1" notebook any brand that had a native 1440X900 resolution. I'm really trying to figure out if the text would be too small for me.

I looked at the 12.1" models with 1280X800 resolution and those were easy to read on. The 14.1" models with 1280X800 were comfortable but it seemed I could maybe go with slightly smaller text size comfortably.

The only 1440X900 resolution screen I could find was on 17" laptops and on the 15.4" mac. It was definitely not too small on the mac...so I'm thinking that with only 1" less screen I should be able to handle the 1440X900 on the D630. What have you guys experienced with this?

 

I have a 15" laptop and the resolution is set to the highest which is 1280x800. I think this might be the perfect size for me. I used to have a 17" and the native resolution was 1900x1200. That was a bit too high for me and when you reduce the resolution to lets say 1650 the picture quality loses its features. So I suggest a 15" (somewhat light yet big enough to see the words on the screen without going blind).

 

This may be helpful:
http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=124093

WXGA is 107 DPI and WXGA+ is 120 DPI.

 

Thanks. I actually looked at that earlier but I'm having a hard time understanding how to correlate it. The 12.1 inch in the store with 1280x800 in the store was easy to read and that's a dpi of 125. However, if I turn my 19" CRT monitor up to 1600x1200 resolution it's really hard for me to read and that's a way lower dpi than a 12.1" at 1280x800 according to the chart. What gives? I'm even sitting really close to the screen on my CRT and it would take me about a half hour before I started pulling my hair out if I left it like this. I wonder if there is some other factor to consider when using a CRT compared to an LCD.

 

Are you really sitting as close to the 19" CRT as you were to the 12" laptop? I think as the screen gets larger in physical size, you tend to sit farther back so you can see it all at once.

Also, the 19" CRT may not really be 19". Because with a CRT you need to leave a margin around the actual picture because the edges of the monitor get too distorted. Get a ruler and measure the size of the actual picture in the CRT.

 

Thanks for the advice. I think you're right. It is a flat screen CRT so all the glass is covered by the picture, however, now that I think about it, CRT 19" = 17" viewable I think. Don't have a ruler with me but using an 8.5x11 paper seems to approximately confirm this.

I changed the dpi setting in the display properties to 120 from 96 and it seems much more readable....

Is that something you should do? Should the DPI in the display properties setting approximately equal the actual DPI that you calculate you're seeing? Or will that mess some visuals up? Thanks again.

 

There isn't a right answer here... if you want to make the text bigger, increase the DPI. If you want to cram more stuff on the screen, decrease it.

Some apps may not be designed to handle non-default DPIs... they'll still work, but a few things may not look quite right. I don't know all the details, since my screen is pretty low-res I don't really mess around with it.

Since high-resolution screens are becoming more common, I think we'll gradually see more applications designed to handle DPI scaling. I hear that not all web pages scale so well... but again, I don't really know firsthand. Web browsers usually let you adjust the text size separately, and IE 7 also has a page zoom feature.

Edit: In an ideal world, all apps and web pages would do DPI scaling perfectly, so you should just get the highest res screen you can. But right now, I'd just get the resolution which gets things to about the size you want at Windows' default DPI setting (96 dpi), and then tweak the Windows DPI setting for fine-tuning. That way nothing should be too majorly off, hopefully.

 

I appreciate all your advice. I'm thinking just to make sure everything works right I'd prefer a default DPI. I think I'll stick with the 1280x800 screen. If I really end up needing more viewable space I can get an external LCD and hook it up and boost the resolution on that screen a little. Thanks again.