Screen resolution and clarity

A friend of mine has a 15" laptop that has a high resolution of 1680x1050 (WSXGA+). He says that he is getting tired of having all of the icons and text so small. So he went to change the resolution to something else and said that anything less (like 1440x900) look terrible and isnt clear at all.

I explained to him that he is using less pixels on the same amount of surface space which is the reason why it isnt clear. However, I am not sure why that is the reason. I don't have a laptop, but I do have a 20" LCD and the resolution is 1680x1050 and when I change it to something less such as 1440x900 it also isnt near as clear. Is there an explanation or anyway to make it clear? It seems almost like there is fuzzy.

 

I think it is called something like "Native Resolution" The resolution that screen was made to be displayed at...

 

I heard only CRTs can change resolutions like this and maintain clarity. Even if the aspect ratios are the same, LCDs/LEDs will still be blurry for some reason.

1 way around it is to make your icons bigger or decrease? DPI to increase font size.

 

A pixel is a discrete object, meaning that you can't display a half of a pixel. So if you have a straight line, exactly one pixel wide, and try to display that at a lower resolution, the line will become say 1.3 pixels wide. However, since you can't have a partial pixel, the screen now has to find a way to display it, usually with a line of pure black, and a line of gray, so it becomes blurry.

 

This is one of the large downsides to LCD's. It's called scaling, or has something to do with it.

 

Yes, native resolution: That level of performance that give you the best picture (in this case) the device offers. You can change that, but you will compromise quality in the process; that's why your screen isn't as clear.

This is why there are different resolutions in the first place. You have to decide which is most important to you based of what you use your computer for. If you predominately do work involving text, then you should pick a lower resolution since you don't need a high resolution screen to do that.

 

Yes, LCD panels should always be used at native resolution, which in this case is 1680x1050. If things are too small, he can increase the DPI settings by going to the Control Panel and searching for "DPI," and choosing something like Make text and other items larger or smaller. He can increase it to 120 DPI (from the default of 96).