The official 16:9 screen protest thread

nice. i personally don't buy lenovo, but it's at least an option. but more of a "look, boss, i've found another big box with old 12" 4:3 screens we have to build in and sell" .

that's why it's in the outlet. it's not something going to last for long

 

They're just the remaining units left after they discontinued the X61/X61s- and replaced them with the 16:10 X200/X200s.

 

jup.

and essentially, that means no notebook released this year has 4:3. and close to no consumer notebook has 16:10 anymore. business some more.

 

What's the big deal, it's not much of a change.

Anyway;
Pros:
-Theoretically cheaper
-More space for a decent keyboard w. numberpad
-Even better for gaming
-Generalization of TV and PC monitors

Cons:
-Harder to browse long horizontal websites

The pro's outweigh the con's if you ask me

 

cons:

• less usable space in word
• less usable space when programming
• less usable space in every program that displays list (most excel tables, most stuff in sap, itunes, explorer)
• less usable space on most webpages including that one.

want more?

• oh, less contacts visible at the same time in live messenger, less text to see per chat in topdown.

humans can read best if the text is not wide, but topdown mostly. like in books, like in newspapers (very small width, all topdown designed).

it's completely against the way you want to read/write trough a lot of data.

• oh, and less space for print media, like pdfs, or printpreview layouts, etc.

I do agree with your pros, btw. Espencially the keyboard thing. Then again, for smaller notebooks, having a keyboard of certain size and a less wide aspect ratio would mean bigger screen => while it is a pro, it's not all the time.

 

yes a rectangle has less area than a square, so what. I just connect an external monitor when I need to program, better with two external.

Edit: I spelled rectangle like rectange. lol

 

@daveperman, sorry about the "plenty of 4:3" post, i had in mind the 16:10 sold out there.i ll try eternally to to find a 3:5 laptop as punishment. fair enough?

P.s. in new windows 7 you can try using a new feature they have. when you grab a window and drag it to the side edge of the screen it automatically resizes to take half screen, and docks on the side.it's handy as you can have 2 windows open left and right auto alligned and resized. this feature may make things a bit easier for you

@allfired up
no, maybe i pushed it a bit with the nazi word, but the starter of this post had a "if you buy a 16:9 you are a fool" signature...

 

i don't like widescreen myself.... i currently have a dell xps m1330 16:10, but i dock it with a 4:3 19" Dell at home, and a 4:3 15" HP in school.... dual screens take a little hurt out..

 

Why? If, for instance, you have a WUXGA as opposed to UXGA screen, you get 320 more horizontal pixel lines (a 20% increase). If you are a proponent of dual monitors, why would you not like a single, wider monitor with the same vertical resolution?

 

not everyone uses their laptops for only media and gaming...

 

because if i'm dual screening, i usually set both screens to be horizontally next to another... vertical space is more useful... if i want to get WUXGA on a 16:9/10, it usually means i pay more because you get that only on a 20/22"

not to mention that the desk in my dorm room is small and limited...i'd rather have a squarish monitor than a rectangle monitor that takes more horizontal space

 

But we are talking about laptop monitors here, not desktop monitors.

 

well, for laptop monitors, what do most laptop users do on the go?

-probably not gaming
-maybe watching movie
-most likely multitasking (eg web browsing, word document)

for the last point, non-widescreen is the best....

 

Not in my opinion. Having a word doc open next to the website or other doc your are trying to use as a source is much better than having some 4:3 aspect thing where everything only fits stacked on top of everything else.

 

not when people post 1920 pixel wide images on the forums

horizontal scrolling is much worst than vert scrolling. as you have to scroll back and forth to read every line of text rather than just scroll down after a post or two.

 

16:9 FTW!!

Sorry, just had to show my love for wider screens

 

Why not complain about 16:10 screens have less area than 4:3 screens? or 5:4?

LOL... After all, you lose more area going from 5:4 or 4:3 to 16:10 than 16:10 to 16:9

 

16:10 is already set.. u can't go back to 4:3 ..

16:10->16:9 is just rubbing salt on the wound.. it's worse...

 

But as I mentioned, my (and I think most others') main concern is number of pixels. When they went from 4:3 to 16:10, we largely gained pixel count. Going from 16:10 to 16:9 though, we are losing 10% of screen realestate. Vicious and others from that side of the debate were talking about pixel density and claming that 17" diag is the same at every aspect ratio, I was simply refuting that claim.

 

It could always be worse...what if those godawful 1024x576 and 1024x600 resolution netbook displays started showing up in larger display sizes than the 10.2" they're currently limited to. That would truly suck!

 

There's a 12.1" netbook on the market already.

 

Yes, the "it could be worse" argument. Because yeah you shot yourself in the foot, but at least it wasn't through an artery.

 

The 12.1" netbooks are all 1280x800, to my knowledge (surprisingly that's 16:10)! 11.6" are also available, but they're all 1366x768.

 

Yep....it can ALWAYS be worse.....what if you shot yourself in the crotch instead of the foot?

Considering how bad a situation could be, worst case scenario, can put things in perspective. Suddenly, things seem quite a bit better!

 

Look, since we know the manufacturers are going to produce 16:9 screens, why not look at the alternative? Since the mountain won't come to mohammed, (manufacturers making 4:3), then start a new revolution to bring mohammed to the mountain!

What needs to happen now, is to get off the standard of having menus and headers at the top of the screen, and start coding applications and web pages so they will utilize all that "extra" space on the sides of the active work area. CAD apps have been doing this for years, so why can't everybody else? Time to beat up the programmers!!!!

 

I will add my support to this noble cause. For too long we have stood by and watched as the tops and bottoms of our screens are slowly pulled from our fingers! Sacrificed in the name of profit margins and banal entertainment! This is unacceptable! At the same time unnecessary toolbars and status bars multiply like rabbits, reducing useable browser space like the closing lids of a dieing mans eyes!

AND THE ANSWER... SILENCE... FROM THE SOULLESS CORPORATIONS.

BROTHERS, THIS CALLS FOR A HOLY WAR! YES. JIHAAAAAD!!! THE AREAL INEFFICIENCY OF HIGH ASPECT RATIOS CRIES OUT AGAINST THE MANUFACTURERS! THE EAR OF THE ALMIGHTY HAS HEARD THE SOBS OF A MILLION SMALL VOICES, YEARNING FOR MORE PIXELS PER DIAGONAL MEASUREMENT! WE WILL BE THE INSTRUMENT OF CHANGE! WE WILL TAKE ADVANTAGE OF THESE HIGHLY ORTHOGONAL, STICK SHAPED MONSTROSITIES AND SMITE THE OEMS WITH A MIGHTY BLOW!

(hushed whisper)*is he serious?*

ABSOLUTELY!

 

ahem......off your meds?

 

No but having a brief moment of lucidity

 

first: haha for the spelling.

second, yep, but that's no solution, that's just a hack. as a programmer, you know the difference. the fix would be having a useful screen by default on the laptop.

oh, and, i do have external screens (i have pc's.. ). they have 1920x1200 (16:10) and 1920x1080 (16:9). having a huge old crt layout would allow me to have 2048x1536 (4:3) which would be more than 50% more screen estate than "full hd". and most of that in height.

so yes, i can add an external screen to reduce the issue. but i still can't get around the issue that screen height got reduced in general. on the notebook, i lost 250 pixels. on the desktop, i lose >500 pixels.

where's the gain, again?

 

problem is, it's still more comfortable to have it all topdown. better for the brain to orient on it. that's why since thousands of years, most anything goes mainly topdown.

but yes, we see the trend. check outlook 2003, then outlook 2007. more and more sideways. visual studio follows that trend, too. but as text, and thus labels are horizontal, vertical menues are not really way to go.

people work on "solving" this since years. it's actually quite hard to find a good design that is useful and comfortable for users. there are interesting studies about that.

 

If I won't be able to get a non 16:9 Latitude in the future...you'll have to pry my D630 out of my cold dead hands.

There's no reason a laptop that was previously 15 inches and fairly manageable to put in a bag, now be the size of a model that would previously be considered 17 inches, just because it's freaking 16:9

 

That's true....in another life I was a photographer and TV producer, and although I can't remember the details or the outcome, I remember at least one study, where they reflected lasers off of a subject's eyes, and tracked the movement around a fixed visual display. I believe that was where the theory about weighted visual information came from, where I learned about composing, framing, and displaying photographs. The theory stated that the lower 1/3 of the viewed image was the most powerful, so composition and framing should reflect that.

Some of this is conditioned, too. If we had been brought up with paper that was 11x8.5, books that were wider horizontally than vertically, and television that was "widescreen", the 4:3 ratio would seem uncomfortable.

 

but maybe it's not conditioned really. there may be a reason why paper isn't widescreen. and that reason may be that widescreen never was considered nice to read automatically.

if you open a todays books it's very thin actually. a random book besides me has a 2:5 ratio for the text. the problem is, horizontal control of where i'm reading is something we're quite bad at, long lines thus get irritating.

but the most hurting thing about this is, it shows how much power the industry has, and how we don't have any.

i mean, i'm aranging myself with 16:9. i can even see uses for the 22:9 or what ever it is (if it's multitouch, it would be great for a dj booth, really great ). one can always arange and adapt.

but on one side i can see that less-widescreen options are more useful to me in anything i do (including gaming and movies actually. imax isn't widescreen btw, just as an example), and on the other side i see how the industry does not bother about usability and i can't change it.

 

The sad thing about this is that the majority of consumers don't have a single clue about aspect ratio. Thus, it's easier for manufacturers to do whatever they want, as long as they have good advertising.

 

it would be amazing if all notebooks became tablets, or if they somehow included rotating-displays

that way if you were reading something, or programming, you could just rotate your screen

 

It all depends on the media that you play on your computer screen. If the media is in widescreen, then it's best that your monitor be in widescreen. And most movies and TV shows are being released with that aspect ratio.

 

16:9 makes me sad. I for one will NOT buy a 16:9 notebook while 16:10 and 4:3 options are still out there.

 

I know, this probably goes on in electronics stores across the country:

Salesperson: "And this one has an HD aspect ratio, just like your flat screen TV"

Person buying: "Cool, I'll take it!"

*sigh*

 

Eerrrrrrr....nobody watches stupid movies or TV on a laptop screen.

 

I watch stupid movies and TV shows on a laptop screen.

 

That's what you think. However, that's not always the case. A lot of people use their laptop to watch'TV'.

 

I watch lots of movies and TV on mine, too.


But I agree that it says a lot about who has the power, and how consumers will accept anything that is shoved down their throats. I used to have a Beta VCR. How many people out there had VHS, even though Beta was WAY superior picture quality. 8-track tapes had a wider fidelity range than cassettes, too.

But it's not just electronics. We, as consumers, are being manipulated by the Wal-marts, Home Depots, Costcos, (insert retailer name here), and every other major marketer of "lifestyle" products. We are being forced into accepting mediocrity at premium prices simply because there is no viable alternative.

(Dave bandages his raw nerve and steps down off his soapbox)

 

I don't have TV. I don't have DVD Player or Blu-ray Player. I would rather replace all of that with my laptop because it saves space in my room.

 

16x9 screens are perfect, when run as 9x16

 

The thing is, you can watch movies on a 16:10 screen in 16:9 format. Black bars at top and bottom, problem solved. Or just use a media bar at the bottom of the screen and shift the video up, problem solved.

I hate 16:9 as well. I'm not a fan of 4:3 or 5:4, but 16:10 seems perfect. Wide enough to put two windows side by side and still tall enough not to scroll all the time. I'm fine if they make 16:9 screens, just don't force it as the new standard. Allow us the option to use 16:10. A PC's sole purpose for 99% of people is not to use it just to watch movies. Don't cater to the few, please. But since it's cheaper, they will.

 

wow the first two things that came to my mind was Apple(iPod) and Microsoft(Windows)...

 

Nobody said that you can't watch 16:9 movies with a 16:10 screen or even a 4:3 screen. But the thing is more screen real estate will be wasted as black bars when you watch wide screen movies with a 16:10 screen than a 16:9 screen.

 

Are you people serious??? Am I the only one that actually uses a laptop for they they are meant to be used for? Running Apps! Am I surrounded by teenagers that can't afford to buy a TV or something??? This is madness. Watching movies/TV on a laptop sucks.

 

I am not a teenager and I can afford to buy a TV if I want to. I just don't like to put a TV, a DVD/BD Player, a boom-box, a pile of newspaper and magazines, a pile of bills or even an iPod. It becomes an eyesore. I can watch TV, read newspaper, pay my bills, listen to music etc with my laptop.

 

I join in the struggle against 16:9 resolution!!!!

Say NO to 16:9!

I already feel that 16:10 is a bit too wide, might be better for video playback, but it's not like laptops are video players all the time. I have my HDTV at 16:9 and I am not liking it but I have to live with it. Even at 16:9 I still get black bars and most TV programs are not 16:9. I don't want the same to happen to my future lappy and be forced to live with a 16:9 !