Screen size decision help please

I don't have the opportunity to see thinkpads in person. Trying to decide on aT4x model between the 14' xga (1024 x 768) and 15" xga or sxga (1400 x 1050). Questions: does the 15 run the battery down that much faster? I don't have great eyes and use glasses for computer work, would the sxga make the font size too small? (I understand that is subjective, but any opinions apprciated) I will use mostly for business - email, and word. Definately some internet surfing and no doubt an occasional movie. No gaming. Does the Flexview screen automaically come on the 15 sxga? How important is the video card if you're not gaming? Is the Intel 900 OK or is the ATI x300 or higher "madatory". Sorry - lot of question. THANKS!

 

The 15" SXGA+ and UXGA+ are FlexView screens. All the other screens are not. It is a much higher quality screen. You can of course increase the DPI in display properties if you would like the text to be larger. I personally find SXGA+ to be the right size for me, but everyone is different. If you are not gaming or doing something else which requires a good graphics card like CAD or photo rendering, an integrated card will be fine. I believe the SXGAs all have the x300. A dedicated card will not take memory away from the system memory. The 15" will not have as good of battery life as the 14" due to the larger screen, but there is a nine cell battery and a modular battery. I have the nine cell and the modular battery. I get six + hours on medium settings. If you buy from Lenovo, you get a 30 day return policy if text is too small. Good Luck.

 

I use an external 19 in monitor on the desk. On the go the 14 in. WS is ideal for me.

 

If you don't have the best eyesight, I'd go with the XGA in either size. I like the thinness and lighter weight of the 14", but that is just preference. You should go down to best buy, circuit city, or wherever, and check out the laptops with the 14" and 15" xga screens and see what you think. They will be the same size as the thinkpad screen.

 

An extra monitor is a great thing to have should be using the thinkpad in a indoor location for a long time.


http://img74.imageshack.us/img74/6701/14inch7tg.jpg

This is a link to a 14inch screen shot. Hope it helps you to make your decision.
I'm surfing with IE on medium font.

I'm using the regular 14inch screen on the T43.

 

""I don't have great eyes and use glasses for computer work, would the sxga make the font size too small?""

and

""If you don't have the best eyesight, I'd go with the XGA in either size. ""

If you want to keep your eyesight, please, listen. Get 15" SXGA and run it at XGA resolution with increased fonts from 8dpi to 9or10 dpi in the screen properties. You will thank me for telling you this.

Everything is BOLDER, nicer and easier to look at than XGA straight screen. XGA is pixilated, SXGA in XGA is not, it is smoothest and easiest for eyes you can get from anything out there. If you love yourself, get SXGA and run XGA.

Cudos.

 

LCDs do not run well at non-native resolutions.

 

That is what I thought, that lcd don't do so well in non native resolutions. At least that has been my experience with all the desktop lcds I own (5). Thank you all for the great advice and opinions - what a great forum!

 

""At least that has been my experience with all the desktop lcds I own (5). ""

That's the key. Desktop are 1280x1024, not a true SXGA to begin with. Just try it out (work on it for a bit) and you will see what I mean. And one more thing, Windows XP do not display XGA on SXGA as good as Windows 2000 do. XP has a little more blur, 2k is awesome. Just find a thankpad with SXGA and see for yourself, as simple as that.

PS: 1280x1024 or 800x600 on SXGA looks kind of weird too, but XGA... you'll love it if you love your eyes.

 

Hmmm..my experience with doing running an SXGA at XGA resolution (on the three laptops I've had, including my t43) caused the screen to look bad. My last computer had a UXGA screen that I ran at SXGA for a little while (fonts too small), but I had to switch it back because it would give me a headache. The images are a little blurrier, and everything looks 'soft'. The screens are optimized for their advertized resolution.

I'm not discounting your preference, goga; but, to the OP, I recommend seeing for yourself before making a purchase based on that, I think goga might be in the minority.

 

No, this is not true. When you run any LCD at any non-native resolution, it is fuzzy. The further off from the non-native resolution you go, the worse it gets. The reasoning and logic is simple. With an LCD, there are physical pixels in the actual screen. If you run an LCD at a lower resolution than it's supposed to be run at, multiple pixels need to be used to display what one pixel normally does. However, a side-effect of this is a fuzzy "pixelated" look.

You can simply change the font size of your computer to make fonts appear larger. I just did it today for my brother.

 

Actually, the problem is due to interpolation that must be performed, when the number of physical pixels and the number of logical pixels differs by a non-integer ratio.

If you take a UXGA LCD (1600x1200) and run it at SVGA (800x600), I dare say it should look just as crisp - every four pixels become one pixel, no interpolation is performed and no fuzzyness is introduced.

 

Bingo.

 

Correct...

 

""I think goga might be in the minority.""

Yep, I am. Yet, most of people I recommend stuff to are always say "thank you" afterwards.

PS: as I've said, XP sucks.. big time (for everything).

 

Not really - there are a few problems. You are basically doing anti-aliasing of *everything*, not just the text - so text may look good (though with no anti-aliasing hints, it won't look as good as using a font of half the size). But lines, menus, window borders, etc. will be terrible. Consider - a one pixel black line on a white background will show up as a 50% grey line. A two pixel bevel will be blurry.
For example, if I take the bottom of a scroll bar on my 1920x1200 screen : and scale it by a factor of 2 to simulate a half-res screen: it loses all crispness. (here is the same thing doubled again for comparison: )

A text example - here's a 20 pixel text snippet, halved in size:

And here's the same text, rendered at 10 pixels and not halved:

It's a bit unclear with such a small sample, but basically, you are better off rendering at the native LCD resolution, and letting the system antialias your fonts, than to do the brute-force approach you are suggesting.

- Korny

 

But the question is - would native 800x600 look any better than native 1600x1200 at 800x600?

 

Here is an SXGA screen on A30 with different resolutions. As picture files they look the same on my screen. I could use an actual camera, but it is going to be the same as with all picture files taken by PrtSc. The only smadged out resolution is screen2 if used, it is like a ladder, one text line is fine bold looking, next line smadged, but still usable.

 

Another one from internet browser.

 

If you take a screen capture, you will get what is in the video memory (i.e. all the original pixels) not what is shown on the LCD (i.e. pixels interpolated down to the LCD's resolution). I'm surprised that you say they look the same on your screen - I would have thought that the largest image would look more like this: (this is the third screenshot scaled down to 1024x768)
View attachment 1582
Obviously this depends a lot on personal preference - I prefer sharp text, but I can see that others might prefer blurrier text with more virtual resolution.

By the way, do you have Windows anti-aliased fonts (or the LCD special version known as ClearType) turned on? None of the text in your samples seems to have any anti-aliasing (but this might just be because they are small fonts to start with). See http://www.microsoft.com/typography/ClearTypeInfo.mspx for more info - if you don't have this turned on, give it a try.

There is also some good discussion of font antialiasing at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Font_rasterization

 

He doesn't have WinXP, so I think he can't use Cleartype.

 

I am dual booting 2k and XP pro, yet I don't use ClearType in XP because it gives me eye strain, it does look bolder, but it is also fazzy bolder. Instead I increase font from 8 to 9 or 10 in all options and use standard DPI to have everything in order.

I wish you could see how nicer it is to read XGA res on SXGA screen on w2k when browsing and working. It seams to be ugly from what others say, but it is not, it is so soft on eyes that I don't have an eye strain even after 12 hours of working on it. (I switched XGA screen with it, because XGA 2 hours was taking my eye sight down for a while)... XGA in SXGA has a much better definition than XP's ClearType in natural res, that's one of the reasons I use 2k instead of XP mostly (I keep XP just for newer programs and some "cool" toys).

 

Well, everyone is different I guess. Your different than the majority, goga, but so am I, in a way. You see, I like to turn Cleartype on on CRT monitors as well. Most of the people who tried it on my advice said it looked terrible and gave them headaches.

 

For me.. well, I figured what is the use for SXGA if everything looks small and unnecessarily so, especially in browser on most of websites I see just half of the screen is used and have to strain my eyes to look at the "sharp" text. And in reality it is sharp, yet pixilated. I usually like to read from 3-4 feet away, so bolder and smoother text is a preferable thing to have, even though it is not a native resolution, it makes me able to work longer and my eyes stay fresh all the time .

Yes, it does look kind of odd when resolution is changed down in the beginning, and you go like "wow, what the heck is that?", but after just few minutes working in that non-native resolution you will forget about it being "bad" because everything is beautiful and not so fuzzy anymore. And the funny thing is that when after a while I go back to native SXGA it is looking sharply fuzzy and eats my eyes out. So I use SXGA only for short periods of time when working on big spreadsheets or want to see some big picture in full.

 

You can't use SXGA in XGA resolution. That's madness?!?!?! LCD displays aren't like CRT's. They are mean't to be used with their native resolution, anything other will look worse, and that's a fact. I don't say that someone wouldn't mind, people like kinky stuff...

Increase the font size!!! Uh... I've had too much wine... pardon me

 

With your permission, happogiri, I'll selectively quote you:

 

""You can't use SXGA in XGA resolution""

You are reminding me my someone's wife . That's exactly what I do all the time.

 

You should take one look at me and I'm sure you would wanna change your statement (or then I'm really sorry for that someone!)...