I HATE widescreen!!!!!!!

I hate widescreen - it distorts text and photos so that they are stretched across the screen. This makes reading text difficult. Even reading webpages is hard work!

Personally I think whoever came up with the bright idea of putting widescreen in all high spec laptops needs their head tested! It has caused me no end of inconvenience. There is an article on google search engine 'widescreen is a washout for business' which for me sums it up. After all why are all newspapers written in columns? Because it makes them easier to read! Why are all books longer than they are wide? Because it makes them easier to read! I spend 99.99% of my time reading and writing on my laptop, so having widescreen just because there are a few DVD's/games that are viewable on widescreen as well as 4:3 is pointless!

Widescreen is only being used so that manufacturers can produce screens more cheaply and to make commercial gains for Hollywood, not suit the needs of ordinary consumers. Anyway rant over! I just hope that this silly fad for widesreen dies out.

 

Widescreen does not stretch the text or pictures.

 

@KateM -

Oookaay....

 

There is nothing wrong with widescreen.

You might have been looking at a screen that some idiot did not set the resolution to native... thats why there is a stretch look.

If you are playing games, you have to set the resolution to native as well.

Don't go whining if you dont have the facts.

 

Kate, I have some very bad news for you. The International Committee on Screen Standard Specifications recently met in Luxemborg. The Committe has agreed to new super-widescreen standards for all laptops. That means, widescreens not only are here to stay, laptop screens are only going to get wider.

Here's a picture of the next-gen LCD screens Lenovo, Sony and Fujitsu will be using for their ultraportable line of notebooks:

 

Hmm you probably just need to adjust your resolution. Personally I think widescreen is pretty nice.
Tim

 

It seems that your main issue here is your ignorance. Widescreen does not do any of these things if your monitor is configured correctly, which is very easy to do. And I'd figure that you'd immediately try to solve the issue with obvious steps rather than assuming that all widescreen monitors stretched things and make them look ugly. We wouldn't use them if that were the case.

You are most likely using a standard resolution rather than a widescreen one. Check your screen rsolution to make sure. If it's just happening online or in applications, then change the application settings to be configured for widescreen.

If you got a Dell laptop, they may have configured it to scale text and images. There will be a Dell Quick Set icon in your Quick Launch bar(all the way to the right of your task bar). Change the settings for IE and your desktop so that this doesn't happen. When I got ym Dell laptop images and text were big and blurry and I had to undo the settings so that they weren't.

 

Chill out dude...if things are getting stretched it isn't the computer's fault.

 

In fact, it is something I call U.E..... User Error.

Its usually a U.E. problem when people bring their computers in for repair.

 

hmm i like widescreen, you probably just need to change your resolution.

I did hear a story about a man that once threw his widescreen television out of his 100th floor flat because the picture was so distorted. Little did he know that clicking a few buttons could have saved him alot of stress and a £1000 tv.

 

Widescreen... they could better call it low screen.

14 inch= 1400x1050 =
14 inch widescreen = 1440x900 = less pixels..

Also, for good working I need 1200 pixels vertical. So the first usuable desktop widescreen for me is a 24 inch. $$

Nah, I love my 4:3 1600x1200

It would be ok they put more pixels in a mm^2, but they dont.

The field of view isn't bigger with a widescreen. You just see less. a few pixels wider, a few hunderd lower

 

My world is all messed up! It's the world's fault! wah! wah! wah! lol

 

What everyone else said...

With regard to text however, I think she does have a point. Since most sites stretch all the way across the browser, it has to be resized to take up 3/4 of the screen or less - or else make 16" jumps from line to line. But that's a) annoying to do, b) can't be done so that the browser is perfectly in the center of the screen, and c) makes desktop or whatever is under the browser show up on the sides of the screen, which can be distracting. I wish there was a button next to x maximize minimize to make the browser "snap" to whatever size you set somewhere in options, with whatever you chose to take up the margins (just black, some kinda pattern, whatever). Yea...

Malia

 

My screen resolution is 1680x1050 and at the moment is is set at native.

 

Sorry to say I absolutely love widescreen and can never go back.

 

Your resolution comparison is a bit off...
1400x1050 is SXGA+ while 1440x900 is WXGA+, which is the wide version of XGA+, not SXGA+.

 

You might loose a few pixels, but being able to fit two word pages side-by-side and not have a lot of wasted space is priceless. Try doing that on a standard aspect screen, and it not look so pretty...

 

Yes the regular sxga+ is 1400 x 1050, wsxga+ is 1680 x 1050

widescreen is more pixels.

I love widescreen.

 

The market appears to think widescreen is a wonderful idea, since they keep making more and more widescreen notebooks. They wouldn't spend money doing that much redesigning if they didn't think the popularity wouldn't generate sales to justify it.

Fact is, a correctly configured widescreen display provides more screen area than a comparable size/resolution 4:3 aspect screen. It's also a more logical form-factor for a notebook PC, since much of the vertical/depth space needed to provide a base for the screen is wasted. It changes the dimensions of the machine to a horizontal orientation which decreases both depth and opened height, while increasing screen area. This is just more efficient.

 

Then things should not be stretched. If they are then your problem is completely unrelated to the size of the screen and definitely related to user error in setting some other setting. Check to see if maybe your windows settings and the settings for your graphics card are conflicting. They shouldn't, but stranger stuff has happened.

I love widescreen.

It allows the notebook to be shorter while retaining usable space. This is good for tight spaces especially on planes.

DVD's fit the screen better.

Since I have poor vision it allows me to scale web pages, word documents, etc to larger sizes and not have to scroll side to side.

Widescreen notebooks fit better into backpacks.

Widescreen notebooks fit better on the lap because you can spread your legs and still hold the thing up.

 

yes indeed it is the only intelligent design for notebooks especially as they get into the larger size.

Have you looked at the space around the keyboad on a 15 inch standard ratio notebook? what a waste

And yes, its going to get wider. the whole space where the touchpad is is a waste too.

 

No comments.. But I LOVE WIDESCREEN. No reason to go back to lame old standard.

 

I actually like the widescreen format better, having owned both format notebooks.

I'm going to move this discussion over to the hardware forum...

 

The text is definately stretched as webpages were designed for 4:3 ratio so when you put webpages in widescreen the text fills out to 'reach' across the page. If you want to see how to text really should appear you have to view webpages in a smaller window you have made. I suppose Microsoft is trying to address that problem by putting a left hand side tool bar in Vista, but I still think widescreen is a silly idea.

If you don't believe me about the text having to 'reach' across the screen just put a widecreen and a normal notebook side by side and view the same webpages in the same resolution and you will see what I mean!

I don't know why other people have not noticed it but maybe I just have more spatial awareness than other people.

I know that webpages are now being designed to be more 'accessible' to those with dyslexia (6% of the pop), people with meares irlen syndrome, poor sight and scopic sensitivity.....but widescreen makes the text appear 'justified' and this makes it harder to read! So I think that widescreen is a step back for 'accessibility'. I wonder how many manufacturers have considered that.

I am glad that some manufactuers are still making hight spec. laptops for those who can't use widescreen or for whom it makes life more difficult.

I have got a brand new top of the range widescreen at the moment but I am considering trading it in at a later date for the Mac Pro (only cos it does 4:3) or an IBM Leveno. Apart from that maybe I'd have to get a 4:3 second hand.

I was very dissapointed that my new laptop which I expected to be bigger all round - ie to be 15.5 inches was in fact still 14 inches with just one inch and a half tacked on at the side! What's that about? A4 documents are tall not wide.

I really can't see the point in widescreen. What purpose does it serve? Why do I need to see documents wider rather than taller? I know some people have the argument that widescreen makes it easier for bigger laptops to be used on planes but I casn't remember the last tiome I had to fly anywhere with my laptop. Plus all the DVDs I have can quite adequately be seen in 4:3. Most TV here in the UK is 4:3.

So what is the point of it exactly???

 

The point of it is to add more viewable screen area while retaining maximum portability. Take, for example, a 15 inch laptop: with a square screen, it's only barely portable, but with a widescreen it becomes an option for some travel. 17 inch machine wouldn't even be POSSIBLE unless they were widescreen...a 17 inch 4:3 aspect screen would be impossible to carry, and forget about a 19 inch.

With ultraportables it's a different deal. The keyboard determines how small you can shrink the width of a machine; beyond a certain point you can't go smaller. But cutting height/depth and making it a widescreen becomes an option for further shrinking a machine to make it even more portable.

Also, on a plane, the shorter (vertically) a screen is, the easier it is to work with on an airplane tray. Space is tight there, and a tall laptop might not be able to open to a comfortable angle...and the tray might not be deep enough to pull the machine toward you enough to open it at a greater angle.

Then there's the attempt to provide the whole "2 screens next to each other" effect in a portable, which widescreen does. Many people widen their desktop by using 2 monitors....this is a widescreen setup, just using 2 monitors. A widescreen can be used in the same way to view multiple documents side by side, and is still portable.

If it helps, don't think of it as one screen. Think of it as 2 screens. The widescreen will let you view 2 A4 documents side by side. That's what it's really meant for, rather than viewing 1 document in a wide format (which can also be done, and when using zoom, can fill the screen properly).

I'd check your browser config by the way. Widescreen shouldn't be doing that....either it'll flow the text across the screen in a natural manner or cut it off well before screen edge, kind of in a coumn (Some websites are hard-formatted like this...BestBuy.com comes to mind).

 

FormFactor, I love your post

 

Yeah, I think massacring her for her lack of knowledge on the subject is exceptionally harsh. She just needed to be informed of her error of graphics setting.

 

I bought my L100 (non-widescreen) for a few reasons:

1. It has a pretty decent IGP

2. It is not widescreen which means I don't have to fiddle with my games to get them to work under widescreen (i often play older games).

3. It was on offer at £150 under list price!

My only regret is that it only displays 1024*768 which can be mildly restrictive these days but rarely actually annoys me. I'd like just a tad more res maybe 1152*864 or 1280*960, but not widescreen.

Honestly the major buying points for me are graphics, ram, hard drive space and optical drive type. Screen type is way down the list!

 

I agree with Jess!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

 

If the text, or images, or anything being displayed is "stretched" on a widescreen LCD, meaning it looks disproportionate compared to a non-widescreen LCD, then you're simply working at the wrong resolution, there's no other reason it should be happening.

When you're not running at the native resolution, you get that stretched bloated weird look to the screen because, unless your LCD offers the option to turn off that feature (commonly called "LCD expansion" or something similarly named) the circuitry inside the LCD controller is attempting to fill the entire panel with whatever image it's given.

If you have a 1280x800 panel, and you have the resolution in Windows (or OSX, or even Linux) set for 1024x768, the LCD has to "expand" the image onscreen to fill the extra 256 pixels horizontally and 32 pixels vertically - this is where the "stretched" look comes from.

Simple solution: Set the display size in Windows (or OSX or Linux) to the proper resolution, meaning the native resolution for your LCD. If that specific native resolution is not an option on the resolution slider, that means one of two things, more likely the first:

1) Your video drivers are older and don't support the newer widescreen resolutions.

2) Your LCD is older and doesn't support full PnP standards, hence it'll show up as "Generic PnP Monitor."

Getting the proper .inf file from the LCD manufacturer to let Windows know "Hey, I'm this monitor and here's how you talk to me" which is what the .inf file does, is just part of the solution.

The other is getting the latest possible video drivers for your video card/chip/GPU. That doesn't mean whatever happens to be on Windows Update (or Linux apt-get repositories or even Software Update on Macs). It means going to the manufacturer of the video card (ok, I admit this is a much tougher thing to do with Linux and OSX, but still possible in some respects) and getting the latest available drivers.

I'd take screenshots to show how this principle works, but that simply isn't possible unless I break out a digital camera and snap off a shot or two which would end up being a complete waste of time.

The point is: if anything on your widescreen LCD looks "stretched" then something is wrong with the resolution, and that more often than not means you simply are't running at the native resolution.

If you watch a movie at 4:3 resolution (aka TV style) and watch the same movie at 16:9 or 16:10 resolution on a proper monitor with the proper resolution set the 4:3 picture doesn't just stretch itself out to fill the 16:9/16:10 resolution; you actually have more image to work with using the widescreen version on a widescreen monitor.

That's the purpose of widescreen: to get more data onscreen giving you more to work with.

You asked "What's the point of widescreen?" and there's your answer.

Hope this helps...

bb

EDIT:
As far as webpages being designed for 4:3 operation, that's utter nonsense. Go check out www.widescreengamingforum.com sometime; the whole site is designed for widescreen monitors and if you don't have one, plan on scrolling quite a bit to accomodate all that extra data into visible regions. See how that works? Widescreen = more data onscreen?

 

I disagree with Jess!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

The most important part of any PC is the screen. Yes, not the CPU, or RAM, or HDD, or anything else. Because unless you have a genetic mutation that allows you to spontaneously sprout serial and DVI cables from the back of your neck, a personal computer without a monitor is about as useful as a doorstop.

Sorry Jess!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!


P.S. I have a widescreen laptop that is 1280X800. I notice none of the things Kate Moss speaks of, and I work at a place with dozens of LCD/CRT's (we build servers). Perhaps she might consider renting a time machine to rejoin us here in the post 1995 era, or cutting down on the crack (haha can't resist).

 

After having a widescreen laptop at home and a "traditional" laptop at work, I can say from a user point of view:

GIVE ME WIDESCREEN!

I love being able to work on a spreadsheet without having to scroll horizontally. I love being able to manipulate the open windows to a workable size I use on a traditional screen while having a messenger ap on the one side.

As others suggested, the way TV's are being made, widescreen seems to be the new standard. As LCD panels are gradually converging between just pure TV/movie watching and those used for computers, I think it's a matter of time before the traditional screen format is outdated.

 

This is poor web coding, imo. I bet you notice that not all sites show this problem, only some.

 

1024 resolution would be a dealbreaker for me these days... my laptop has it and it drives me nuts! 1152 is tolerable, but nothing beats 1280x1024 (for 4:3 ratio... I don't have any widescreen monitors)

 

Personally I like both..I don't see why people have a strong preference over widescreen or 4:3...

However, Widescreen can be espcially useful in FPS Games where you could sneak up on the un suspecting player from behind..LOL

 

Cool! Don't u have widescreen though? Lol

 

Oh stop trying to be clever! You know very well what I meant! When buying a laptop what kind of screen it has is not high on my list of what to look for first. I would add or dismiss a laptop from my shortlist firstly on gpu and cpu, then hard disk size, optical drive type and amount of ram (but that's easily upgradeable). After that things like what sort of screen it has and resolutions, number and type of various ports etc.

So, low on the list for me, however a glossy screen would put me off.

 

Screen size was #1 on my list when I was looking for a laptop, but WS vs standard ratio was fairly low down. I went with the standard ratio T60 because it offered what I wanted (high quality and a 14" high res matte screen..)
Do I prefer standard screens? Not really, but I'm not particularly attracted to WS either. In the 14" category, the highest res I saw was 1440x900, which my T60 has a much nicer 1400x1050 res.

 

Hahaha there's no stopping me now Jess!

 

Yeh, screen is the 1st thing that i ll look at. Even if u stuck a Nvidia 8800 and a quadcore into a 15" laptop, i wouldn't even consider it becoz it's not a widescreen.

(gator, ur avatar looks a a rabbit, monkey, frog, dog... and lots more.. wat issit exactly.. hehe ^^)

Edit: Oh ya.. i just wanna add that u can easily make a widescreen into a standard without making the thing look smaller.( Well, standard looks smaller... what the hell m i talking), but u cant make a standard into widescreen without shrinking the height.

 

It's whatever I want it to be and lots more

 

With the occasional lack of games support, it really provides excellent room for work. I usually run several applications simultaneously with school work (eViews, SPSS, which itself requires two windows, and then the regular office applets). The extra width it gives (1680*1050, 15,4" here) is a real piece of comfort. Saves you from the trouble of constant alt tabbing, and you can easily manage two or three application windows on the same screen with no need to tab out in between. I wouldn't mind it being even a little more wider.

 

I think widescreen only make sense for screen sizes larger than 19". Below that, it's just too narrow. There is a minimum to at least how tall the screen should be. Over 19", widescreen is a very nice thing, but i don't want to carry any laptop that has that kind of screen. Widescreen for desktop, 4:3 for laptop.

 

Ok, I'm going to go build you a 17-inch 4:3 aspect "laptop" and I want to see you carry it around

 

Bring a suitcase.

 

XTRA Large!

 

Actually I'd say the other way round was better. Desktops generally afford a wider range of movement and hence the user can make more advantage with a larger screen. Due to the shape of the human eye socket we have better periferal vision at the sides than up and down so on a smaller screen widescreen seems like a better idea.

Or something...

 

1440X1080(4:3) or 1440x900(16:9) are going to display document text or this forum page identically horizontally (width/left to right/etc). You will have to scroll more to see the lower part of the document/page with the wide screen aspect. If this is not the case, then you have setup issues with your computer that need to be resolved.

On a laptop wide screen makes sense so that you can have greater screen area without having a monster 10 pound laptop.

With some applications, 16:9 makes a lot of sense and can allow you to eliminate dual monitors while others "seem" better on a traditional 4:3 monitor.

WHen I'm using Photoshop I would rather have the greater vertical screen area, but I can live with 16:9. But for most things I love 16:9.

 

But 1440x900 is not the equivalent to 1440x1080. The vertical resolution should be the same between widescreen and it's standard counterpart, only the width changes. WSXGA is SXGA, except wider.

 

In my example, it is equivalent in horizontal resolution and that is what really matters with respect to the OP's complaint and display of web pages and various text type documents.

When it comes to wide screen one can argue the screen is vertically narrower just as easily as saying it is horizontally wider. But typically you will end up with more screen real estate with wide screen for the money. But with my example resolutions, you will actually have more screen real estate (resolution wise) with the 4:3 aspect.