HDX 1080p Screen

Yesterday I received my HDX16 with the 1900x1080 screen. I love the laptop so far, except if I use it for more than 30 minutes at a time I start to get painful eyestrain/headaches from looking at the tiny size of everything. I tried scaling up the DPI, but then 90% of the pages I looked at on the internet looked disjointed and a lot of text was running together or cut off.

I realized the screen was going to be small because of the resolution, but I guess I didn't comprehend exactly how small everything would be. (I'm normally the person at work who gets all the comments about how small my screen is). Is there anything I can do to make things larger, that won't disrupt my use of explorer or other browsers? I have a small window of time here, because if there is nothing I can do I'd like to return it and order another HDX with the standard 720p screen. (And I need to do this before the current rebates and upgrade offer is over!)

 

Well, I don't know what you mean by disrupt the use of explorer, but you can always increase the text size by using using the shortcut (hold ctrl button down and scroll up or down with the mouse wheel) or go into IE's toolbar under view/text size/ and just increase the text.

I have the same laptop screen and I'm thinking about returning it as well, but I love the amount of real estate I have on my screen.

 

That's funny - I never realized that!

 

You can use that short cut on most programs, I happen to use it allot in excel. There's only a few programs that I have come across that won't allow it.

 

I did try that, and it was a definite improvement, but I'm just not sure it gives me enough reason to keep the screen. Although 90% of my time is spent surfing the internet or using MS Office, which I can probably use the zoom to fix, I'm not sure I want to spend the next 3 years looking at miniature menus, taskbars, etc.

The part that frustrates me is about 5 minutes after I placed the order I called and tried to move down to the standard monitor, but they offered me more money off to stick with the high one. I should have just listened to my instincts then.

 

I am going to call them tomorrow and ask to exchange it too, but if they offer me money back, I'll definately keep it. I just dont' think it's worth the 175 upgrade I paid for.

 

Maybe it helps if you take a look at the whole screen and think about how much you can actually see on-screen

My 17" laptop has the standard 1440x900 resolution, and I've been thinking of upgrading it to a 1920x1200 one... It's like a $200+ upgrade though to buy it on Ebay.

 

Well what you have to realize is that 1920x1200 on a 17" isn't that bad. 1920x1080 on a 16" however is a different story! It's an inch smaller and yet has a similar resolution.

 

I think it might be pretty similar... Isn't it called 16" because it's adjusting to the regular HDTV aspect ratio of 16:9 instead of the default computer ratio of 16:10? In any case, that resolution is usually used on a 24" monitor, so shrinking that down 5 inches will make it look smaller no matter what. I just want all that real estate for Photoshop/Dreamweaver work

 

I think you're right. Notice the width is the same but the height increases the equivalent of an inch.

The monitor would definitely be useful if I was still doing a lot of photoshop and dreamweaver work, but my job keeps me too busy for that...and although the real-estate would be nice for viewing my gigantic excel spreadsheets side-by-side, I usually keep my intense excel work on my work laptop for security purposes

 

Yeah, for work the high resolution is great... but if you're using it casually and don't need to see entire web pages, then I can see how the high resolution could get tiring on the eyes. But hey... that's a media-type laptop, correct? I think the 1080p is basically made for Blu-Ray watching. Anyways, if I had the choice and the money I would definitely go with the 1080p... just because whatever resolution the next one down is, if it's the HDTV resolution, it'll be like 1366x768... that's pretty darn small, everything will look BIG

 

I am coming from a DV6500T with the basic resolution and switching to this was a BIG adjustment.

 

Is it not possible to go into display settings and upsize the default font?

 

Capella, you can upsize the font. However, even the "large" scaled font without upscaling it even further causes problems viewing webpages. Not all webpages, but as an example if I just go to a site like yahoo sports everything starts to run together....links get cut off, some links move, pictures move to places where they shouldn't be, etc which makes it very hard to navigate. I did notice that Mozilla and Safari were much better in this respect though, they must handle the scaling better.

 

That's funny, I'm coming from a DV6500Z myself. I guess staring at that resolution for a few years ruined our eyes!

 

That an old age! LOL.

 

MPrice,

Don't know if this will help you or not, but the new Internet Explorer 8 Beta 2 has a "compatibility view" setting that may rectify what you are describing.

Have to say I'm more than a bit curious about this problem as my eyes are not what they once were either - just started wearing reading glasses this year - and my HDX16t is to be delivered this coming Teusday. As you guys say, have been reading monitors far too long (my first PC's were an Apple II and then IBM XT). I think I still have green monochrome burned into my retina's! Where's my batch file!!!

I hope there is some combination of default font size and IE view size that will work.

 

From the Microsoft site:

[Compatibility View

Internet Explorer 8’s built-in Compatibility View button enables you to display websites that were designed for older browsers. Simply press the Compatibility View button if you see display problems on a website like misaligned text, images, or text boxes. It’s located next to the Refresh button on the Address Bar.]

 

Hmm,

I just went to yahoo sports, uped the view size to largest and hit compatibility view in IE8.

Correction: On second look I see what you mean.

View/Zoom in seems to work though.

 

Capella, that's very useful information. I'll have to check it out sometime. I'd do it now but my job refuses to let us upgrade from IE 6, which is why I've resorted to using Firefox. Once you go tab, you never go back.

Haha, I second that motion about the green monochrome. I'll never forget my excitement upon actually buying a monitor which had colors. (That also makes me think about how a Mac laptop I've had 1988 still boots up, while none of my PC's that reach 4 years do...but that's a different story! )

I think in the end I decided to cancel because even if I'm able to fiddle around with everything to come up with a good enough solution, the higher resolution isn't worth the money for me. I don't want to pay $175 for something I'm not going to take advantage of.

I'm just hoping this thread is informative for people who are on the fence regarding the upgrade. In my opinion it is truly an upgrade which you should only get if you have a real need for it or are very big on using your laptop for multimedia entertainment. I can't imagine it helps with gaming much either, you'd have to really kill all the settings to get one to run smoothly on that resolution.

 

BTW though,

I was able to duplicate the overlap text problem at yahoo sports on my old square desktop monitor at 1024x768 and 1152x864 resolution when viewing with larger fonts, so I'm not sure it is the laptop displays 1080p that is the problem.

It did not cause text overlap when I used the browsers zoom function to make it easier to read though.

 

Lower the resolution by a little. You can always get a lower resolution, but you can never add more pixels to your screen.

 

Lowering the resolution makes everything look fuzzy....

 

i'm having the same problem, love the laptop but after about 30 minutes my head was hurting all night. We don't even have the choice between resolutions in the UK - 1080p only for HDX.

I've got the 16" model, and am seriously considering taking it back. Websites are too small and zooming in makes everything look fuzzy and distorted

 

Ctrl + makes it look fuzzy? I can see it getting that way if you're making it smaller, but bigger shouldn't affect it like that really....

 

Well i use firefox and it zooms in the images aswell when you press ctrl and +. Meaning the images are stretched which makes them look less sharp.

I'm getting eye strain from the laptop but i'm going to see how it goes for now.

 

I notice that when I zoom (enlarge) this site it no longer scrolls smoothly. Scrolls slowly with larger than 96dpi fonts also - which is why I went back to 96dpi and started zooming instead in the first place. Have not had the scrolling problem with zooming or larger fonts elsewhere, however. Might be a problem my IE8Beta browser but have not tried anything else. Anybody else having the scrolling problem?