1920 x 1200 on a 17" screen

I just went to BB with the full intention of buying the P7811-FX. It wasn't on display, but the staff was nice enough to open one up for me.

It is a very nice looking laptop. It looks better than the snapshots on the Gateway site. (The HP dv7 looks worse than the snapshots. It almost looks tacky with all the metallics and silver.)

The LCD is also very nice. Colors are vibrant. It is a glossy, but looking around the store, glossy LCD's seem to be the norm now.

Unfortunately, the more I used it, the more the 1920 x 1200 resolution on such a small screen became an issue. Even the BB staff kept commenting on how it's just too small.

I tried a bunch of lower resolutions, but I was disappointed. I'm sure some people won't have a problem, but it loses the crispness you would expect from an LCD.

For people who have been using the 7811 for a little while, are you used to the resolution now? Is it a problem for non-gaming purposes?

 

You can increase the DPI to 120% which helps make everything larger but still crisp . with vista theres other ways of making any page your on larger by holding down control and scrolling the mouse wheel up or down from the desktop to web pages so i never have a problem with anything tbh.

 

Just increase the font size and you'll be all set.

 

as quad said control and mouse wheel or control + "+" "-" will fix that.

 

been using 1920x1200 for years on a 15" screen best resolution ever

 

I don't mind it at all using desktop applications but it is too small for gaming and you do loose detail when gaming in a non default resolution. I had personally rather had a 1600x180 resolution but I'll live.

 

I'm still fiddling with the dpi and font settings, can't get that perfect setting yet. I believe I'm at 110 DPI but I might bump up to 115. I found 120 to be too big for my tastes. I'm loving the increased screen space though. I can watch a video or two while surfing the web in a comfortable size. Couldn't do that on my old DV6000 at 1280X800

 

Do you lose the crispness if you plan to game at a lower resolution...?

 

Yes. If you use anything other then the native resolution, you'll lose some of the crispness.

 

Aah....so it would be better for me to stick to my 1440x screen.

 

If you have a 6860, don't you have a 1440x900 screen? Personally I like this screen size / resolution combo. That's one of the reasons I bought the 6860 even though I knew the 7811 was going to be out within a couple of weeks of my purchase. I'm perfectly happy with my 6860, except for the fact I have to stave off upgrade fever. I really want to get a T8300 or T9300, but I'm forcing myself to wait 6 months or so.

 

I haven't used 1920 resolution with a 17" yet, but I figure that you lose a BIT of crispness, but you're game doesn't go to looking like complete garbage. I was running around in Assassin's Creed yesterday @ 1280x800 on my 1440x900 screen and didn't notice very much "blur", and usually I'm the first to notice if something on a display is off.

I don't know if it's worth upgrading over, but if you are doing anything other than gaming, and that includes any type of work or even web-surfing, movie watching, etc etc, 1920x1200 is just awesome. Your game can usually sacrifice a tiny bit of sharpness by moving the resolution down a notch or one or two settings if you need to keep it at standard resolution.... IMHO

 

I just picked up the 7811FX last night. I was afraid I wouldn't like the 1920 screen and that it would make everything too small and be too large when gaming. I'm happy to report that it hasn't been a problem. The text looks fine and my favorite game (TrackMania) looks incredible and plays smoothly at 1920 with everything turned up. Now I'm really glad it has the 1920 and yesterday I almost didn't buy it because of it. And as others have said, in Vista you can easily change the font size in the OS and browsers.

 

I don't find a problem with using 1600x1024 res

the problem with increaseing dpi is that you can not change it on the fly without a restart.

Keeping my res and 1600x1024 i can jack it up to 1900x1200 at the push of a button when i'm about to use a program where i want all that screen space.

It's true at first you do notice a slight loss of crispness upon the change into a lower res, but after about 5 minutes it's not noticeable.

 

You can use 1440 x 900 on the Gateway screen but it is not listed as a resolution, even though it is a 16:10 ratio like the 1920 x 1200. What you can do is go to the Nvidia control panel and create a custom resolution. Then just put in 1440 x 900 into the settings and then it will allow you to set it and chose it from the windows display properties. This is how I have my resolution set and it works.

Here is a picture of the resolution set on the monitor: Custom Resolution

 

Good tip. I have personally created a few user profiles to satisfy the game and normal work environment, resolution setting inclusive. I might re-enable the nvidia control (panel) and give this a shot.

cheers ...

 

haha same thing with me.