I HATE widescreen!!!!!!!

the question of availability comes to mind though. SXGA is common and cheap nowadays. WSXGA cannot be found in 19" LCD monitors, I've only ever found SXGA or WXGA. For that reason, if you're going for a 19" monitor (which is the sweet spot for me on my budget), normal aspect ratio is going to give you more real estate than a widescreen in this size of monitor, at least for now.

 

You are absolutely INCORRECT.

I am legally blind; I have a condition called ocular albanism. Widescreen is BY FAR the best choice for the visually impaired. With widescreen displays when I scale up the text the way firefox does or zoom the page the way IE7 and Opera 9 do the page is rendered to fill the otherwise negative space on the screen. This allows me to make text and/or images larger without constantly needing to scroll side to side. Sure I have to scroll top to bottom a little more, but I've been scrolling top to bottom more than other people all my life so that's not an issue.

I <3 Widescreen

 

wow, all this "talk" about widescreen vs standard, and not one person has tried to see if there is a problem with her settings. right click on the desktop and go to properties, then the settings tab. what resolution are you at right now?

after that, go to one of the web sites that looks all wrong, hit the print screen button. then hit the start button in the lower left/all programs/acessories/paint. after you open MS paint go to edit near the top and then hit paste. save the file in a JPEG format. now all you need to do it host the pic and link it here so we can see whats going on with your screen. if you cannot host it email it to me. just click my name to the left for the email option.

 

This may be totally unrelated to the op's problem, but on my brother-in-law's toshiba a100, if you push fn+spacebar it rescales the screen funkily. However, in the Windows display settings the resolution still displays as 1200x800. I'm not sure what it's doing but that may be somehow related to somebody's problem.

 

This is most likely her problem. She either needs to set it at native resolution or uncheck the full screen option.

 

I think 4:3 in a 15.4 laptop (mine is 15:4) does not make the laptop too big. If I wanted more space I would just get a laptop with a higher resolution or a desktop with a bigger screen. I would rather have more hight in proportion to width than just width.
As for the arguement about trains, the UK is different from the US in that there is very little seat space on trains - the seats are tiny! People sit elbow to elbow. Therefore if you have a wider laptop you are more likely to incur into someone elses personal space.
As for the arguement about widescreen 'real estate' (a rather capitalist term) I think widescreen laptops look tasteless and tacky.

 

Widescreen rocks and that's all I have to say!

 

i prefer the 4:3 instead of 16:9 but all i really care about is the high res on the screen. Indead the 16:9 is much better for movies and viewing things but the 4:3 is better for playing games because not all games are designed for widescreen.

 

Tasteless and tacky? haha, welcome to the 21st century. Honestly though, some of the classiest notebooks are widescreen (Macbook Pro and Asus W3j come to mind) What converted me was being able to view two webpages or documents side by side. It practically doubles my productivity.

P.S are you trying to badmouth Widescreen or are you trying to fix the problem you are having? take a look at what these guys and gals are saying, most of them know what they are talking about and could probably help you if you want to actually fix your web page stretching problems.

 

KateM - Is being a "capitalist" supposed to be a negative thing? Is this where we start arguing over the positvies and negatives of the verious economic systems?

By the way, are you here to get help with your issues? Some folks have offered up some good advice. Distorted text and images is not normal on a wide screen.

 

Some people prefer to complain that the world doesn't mold itself to their wishes instead of trying to get along and go along.

 

Through the thread name and what KateM is saying, she doesn't want any help and wants to say that she hates widescreen. If you really hate widescreen, then don't buy it.

 

Ah whatever. Some people always dislike something for some reason that some of us can't understand sometimes. Or somesuch.

 

this thread is obviously untrue hahaha..maybe if you don't install a graphics driver then yeah of course the screen is stretched. muwahaha made my day.

 

everyone on this thread is raving about widescreen, but go down to your local dealer and compare widescreen LCD monitors with standard ones, and you'll see that widescreen looks a lot smaller for the same number of inches.

Am I just imagining things?!

 

I got bored so I put my maths hat on and worked this out. I had read on wikipedia that widescreens had slightly less screen area than a standard screen with the same diagonal size.

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v79/willcross61/screencompare.png

Feel free to tell me if I worked something out wrong but what I discovered is that a 15.4" standard screen has roughly 2 square inches bigger than 15.4" widescreen.

 

Lol appreciate the effort, but uh I'm not sure you need a math hat to realize a rectangular screen with a 15.4" diagonal is smaller in area than a square screen with the same diagonal.

 

Click on the picture below to see the difference.

 

I agree with u there. It seems like she's badmouthing Widescreens rather than attempting to find an adequate solution to the problem.

In any case, there's always the 'other' solution.
You could always attempt to sell your notebook and purchase one with Standard Screen.
It's a matter of personal preference. If you don't like it, don't use it and change it.

And don't bother trying to convince people of the cons of Widescreens as it's based off personal preference.
Also, don't bother argueing that there is a lack of Standard Size Screens productions on notebooks, as a popular notebook model named Thinkpad T60 provides Standard Size Screens for customization for both 15.0" and 14.1".

There is a difference between widescreens and standard screens. The size of the screens measured in inches are counted by the diagonal length. If you were to measure both a W XGA and an XGA screen of the similar size, let's say 15.4" and 15.0" respectively. You would find the W XGA model having 0.4" greater length.

And also, for others who are argueing that widescreens have lower amount of resolutions than standard size, they are comparing wrong screen categories.
Given the same category of XGA models.
A comparison between the widescreen version, W XGA, and the standard size (hence the name), XGA, shows that the WXGA model having an extra amount of resolutions on the length size, difference between 1024 and 1280.
You'll notice that both of the screens have the same Width of 768.
Thus, if you compared the widescreen models vs. the standard size models, you will see that there is a definitive difference between 1280 x 768 and 1024 x 768 respectively.

Your math should be logically correct, if not for the false information perceived.

Let's look at a quick comparison between Widescreen Diagonal Viewing Lengths with a Standard Screen Diagonal Viewing Length.

As you can see, you have a difference of 0.4" diagonal viewing length.
Thus, your calculations were wrong caused by your false information.

Also, according to "Pythagoras' Theorem", c^2 = a^2 + b^2, shouldn't 8.8^2 + 6.6^2 = 15.4^2 ? But it equals up to 121, which squ root of 121 is 11" :S


In the end, like I stated previously, it's a matter of personal preference. If you don't like it, don't use it and change it for one that suits your taste better.

 

This person is just a troll. They came here to bash widescreens. Leave them alone and the topic will go away.

 

Znender, you look like you're randomly plucking numbers out of thin air Where did you get 8.8 and 6.6 from?

Even given the extra 0.1 of an inch, the difference between a 20" standard ratio and a 20.1 widescreen ratio is huge, and the standard ratio compares favourably with larger fonts for text. Here's an extract from trusted reviews on the 20.1" widescreen Viewsonic VX2025wm (page 2):

Finally, as has been said on wikipedia, the field of human vision is 135 degrees vertically by 180 degrees horizontally, which is exactly the 4:3 standard ratio:

furthermore:

So there are a few arguments in favour of standard 4:3 ratio monitors.

 

People with glasses have better peripheral vision than vertical. If you wear glasses, try and see if you notice it by wearing glasses vs. wearing contacts.

 

surely it would depend on the shape and size of your lenses!

point taken though, my glasses are wider than tall, although that hasn't always been the fashion

 

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POSTAGE STAMP PICTURES PRESENTS ...................

I hate widescreen, I have a Sony Vaio PCG-GRT360 ZG, 4:3 format at 16".

My old 17" widescreen Fujitsu Amilo M3438G was 2 inches wider across but one inch shorter in height than the Sony. I reckon some images were distorted on the Fujitsu and movies sure do play better on the Sony. Widescreen may be OK for movies, but the old 4:3 is fine for general internet surfing.

 

I would call it a consumer error. He knew he needed to read and write on his laptop, but he didn't buy the right laptop suitable for it.