Who told people wide screen was a good idea?

I ordered a x220 a few weeks ago just got it on a slickdeal and cant' stand 16:9. 16:10 was bad enough but when you have to scroll even more it's worse. I remember my T60 was 1600x1200 or 4:3 and was just perfect. Currently they are not even using 1/5 of bezel... it's just plastic which could be screen real estate instead.

Reasons why 16:9 sux.
-The human eye sees an oval. Closest thing to an oval with right angles is a square not a wide rectangle.
-Pages are more perpendicular than horizontal e.g 8 1/2 x11, so why are we looking at screens which you can't even fit half a page on?
-Web pages like this one and others just wasting massive space left and right with blanks/adverts and again scrolling.

So WTH are we using widescreens?

 

The manufacturers for the LCD panels did, because they are cheaper to manufacture.

 

How is a square closer to an oval than a rectangle?

For the record, I think 16:10 was the sweet spot.

 

Well, i think that is more of a LCD manufacturer drive for more profitability.

 

I'm thinking I need to investigate tablets where screen rotates to perpendicular. I use my 20" desktop wide screen monitor in portrait mode..just awesome.. full pages and full web pages on one screen no scrolling..easy layout. But I don't think you can use KB then with tablet right?

 

Sweet spot for what? It's still crap on anything to do with productivity and I could make an argument for gaming too. Try starcraft 2 on a 1600x1200 and you'll see way more of the lay of the land as opposed to Widescreen which feels chopped top and bottom. Especially with information, units bar, mini map sucking up a lot of perpendicular space.

Movies mainly is better but if you watch movies on laptop you better be traveling otherwise it's a poor idea (sound quality, mini screen, etc)

 

We should all complain about this in our after-purchase feedback requested by Lenovo. They may not look at these forums, but that's a feedback they ask for.

 

I don't know what kind of productivity you're talking about, but I mean spreadsheets, word processing, web browsing... 4:3 is horrendous for use with spreadsheets, which represents a pretty big proportion of my computer time. Besides, on a 16:10 display (or, to a lesser degree, 16:9), one can edit a 4:3 digital camera image, and still have room on the sides for the toolbars.

 

Think you might be seeing what you want to... SC2 shows the most information on 16:9. 16:10 and 4:3 just chop off the sides.

 

They do read these forums, and it wouldn't make a difference. It's not Lenovo that's at fault, it's the panel makers. Lenovo and the other computer makers just sell what's available.
My personal opinion is, 16:9 is just a fad (that's stuck) because people love the widescreen experience found in theatres, and someone got the bright idea to replicate that experience at home. Perhaps it is cheaper to manufacture than 16:10 or 4:3 screens, I really don't know. But unfortunately it's here to stay.
I prefer 16:10 myself by the way.

 

It sucks that they took away options, but I'm one of "those people" that like 16:9 better than 4:3. I'd like 16:10 even better though.

 

You're wrong. I'll post a screenshots when I get to my office monday and compare 20" NEC WS vs 20" NEC 4:3 huge difference in lay of the land.

PS it should be obvious closer you get to a straight line e.g. 16:9 less pixel you have over same diagonal. Maybe you'd like 19x1" that's better in your eyes. 20" of glorious widescreen.

 

My opinion: for larger screens (>15"), wide is ok: I think even those who prefer 4:3 (like myself) will be OK with that. But for small, portable machines, like 12.5", "wide" simply means smaller in vertical dimension, which is absurd for an already-small screen. There is not much to see.

Many who prefer wide screens like to watch movies on their computers, and larger screens are good for that. So large+wide is OK. But small+wide=pain in the eyes.

 

Whether they read forums or not I already have a RMA with stated reason(s) so I think it'll register.

 

Well, good luck with that, but surely you must have known before ordering the screen was 16:9.

 

Agreed. 16:10/4:3 > 16:9. But who said it was the LCD manufacturers that initiated the trend? If there's a demand for 16:10 screens, it just doesn't make economic sense for them not to produce them.

 

Marketing and cost cutting played the biggest factor in the transition from non widescreen format to current 16:9.

Hey how do we make a computer cheaper? Make it slower? Nope. Cut features? Nope. Reduce screen resolution? Ding ding ding. Most average consumers who go into a retail store and buys a computer do NOT care about screen resolution. (Yes I work in a retail store, and 98% of people who come in just want the i5/i7, 6 GB RAM and a big hard drive, they do not care about screen resolution). They want to buy a laptop that suits their needs, for XX budget (or more if they so have it). This also plays into #2, marketing. People didn't understand WXGA, WXGA+, WSXGA+, WUXGA. People understand HD, HD+, and Full HD. So marketing partially played into the current 3 screen resolutions for normal computers.

Unfortunately for business users, they do care about resolution as that directly affects productivity, ease of use. As an example, going from WUXGA (1920x1200) to "Full HD" (1920x1080) you lose 120 vertical pixels. Excel cells are about 20 pixels a cell, so that is 6 Excel cells you are losing just from resolution standpoint. Over hours and hours of scrolling, adds up to alot. The 16:9 worries me to the point where I for now are only buying older 4:3 and 16:10 models. My needs do not require the latest and greatest for my work laptops.

The transition from 4:3 to 16:10 does benefit certain laptops, such as ultra-portables. 4:3 X61 has a funky keyboard layout as it is non-widescreen, the backspace is cut short. 16:10 x series (x200, x201) have normal sized keyboards because of the wider screen (wider chassis, allows for a normal proportioned keyboard).

 

In return, the palm rest of the X series is getting cut short because of the wider screen. That's even worse than the short backspace keys.

You may be right that most consumers don't really notice the difference between 16:9 and 16:10 when they first buy the laptop because of all the marketing gimmick. But when they use if for a longer period of time they'll notice that something is wrong with the screen, and many (including myself) will eventually realize that the culprit is the screen ratio.


Business users buy a lot of computers, so they do command a lot of demand in the market. I just don't understand why LCD makers/ Lenovo wouldn't cater to their needs.

 

I think Tsunade hit the nail on the head here. People started demanding wide screen TV's to watch their movies on, even though at the time all cable programing was 4:3, so the manufacturers started making wide screen TV's. Then the magic "720p/i" and "1080p/i" numbers started popping up, most people had no idea what they meant just that the 1080 was the best.

My theories.

The reason 4:3 turned into 16:9.

1)People got it into their head that 1080 was the best so now computers screens are being designed to the same aspect ratio so that they can sell it as "HD", "HD+" or "full HD". The average consumer doesn't understand (nor do they care to) what this stuff means or that you can display and utilize much higher resolutions on a computer, just that the closer to "full HD" you get the better, because 1080 is the best. Its much cheaper for a factory to produce screens in two or three different resolution sets than it is to produce 10, so since the AVERAGE consumer drives industry the price of 16x9 screens drops. Since everyone wants what they want as cheap as they can get it, laptop manufacturers are driven to start building more and more laptops/monitors around the cheaper 16x9 screens until the rest eventually get phased out.

Possibly contributing to #1, but more likely just a positive side effect.

2)This one mostly pertains to desktop monitors. With CRT monitors increased screen size meant an exponential increase in the size and weight of the monitor which limited the size of screens produced. With LCD's adding a couple inches to the screen size doesn't really change the footprint of the monitor so larger monitors were able to fit on a home desk and become mainstream, which results in lower manufacturing costs and lower sales prices, thus further driving larger monitors into our homes.

What does this have to do with aspect ratio? Well on a 15"-17" monitor (standard LCD sizes) a 4:3 aspect ratio displays a website perfectly. If you have a 22"-24" monitor (standard LCD sizes) a 16:9 aspect ratio will display two web pages side by side nicely. Its almost like having two 4:3 monitors side by side.

 

I mean it is what consumers that drives the market. People screamed for cheaper laptops, and this is the result. HP possibly selling off their PC division. Unfortunately this is what the computing world has turned into, who can build the cheapest crap and sell the most of it. There's just no profit in it.

Lenovo didn't cater because it's rivals; Dell and HP didn't cater either. All went with the flow and all shoved 16:9 down our throats. Had everyone else kept up 16:10, well everyone else would have too.

Don't get me wrong, I love 4:3. My D600 and my T60 have SXGA+ screens, which is sweet for a 14" laptop. What 16:9 did offers more horizontal real estate compared to XGA.

 

Most business users are part of large organizations who buy laptops by the hundreds if not thousands. When your buying that many laptops for faceless employees you don't look at screen resolution or aspect ratio, you look at cost. Primary consumers have already driven down the price of producing 16:9 screens with their insatiable love for "1080" so guess what? Those go into the cheap laptops.

For a laptop manufacturer to have a couple thousand special sized screen produced would cost an enormous amount of money when compared to buying one of the millions of already commonly produced millions of 16:9. You say you would be willing to pay, but would even you pay an extra $700 for your special aspect ratio?

Because of how manufacturing unit costs work, producing a small number of one item makes that item seem astronomically expensive compared to something mass produced in the hundreds of thousands/millions of units.

 

Yup, and this is perpetuated by the exponential rate of current technological progression. Who wants to spend $1000 on a machine that will be half as fast as next years $500 model. Most people would prefer to just buy a new crappy unit every couple years.

 

I disagree. Businesses command a much larger market than a few thousand laptops, and their demands commensurate that of the average consumer, so it really isn't about economies of scale. Moreover, as you can see here (and in other parts of the forum as well - it's not just an issue with thinkpad snobbery), many consumers actually prefer 16:10 over 16:9. Why wouldn't Lenovo just keep one line of production - which is the 16:10?

 

Business is a huge, no doubt but remember, Dell, HP, Lenovo exist to make money, not sell computers. If it saves them XX dollars to utilize the same consumer 16:9 screens from their consumer lines, they will force that decision onto the end users. That's why all the last generation 16:10 laptops you see are always sold out on Dell and Lenovo's outlet.

Where did you get the information that average joe schmoe customer wants 16:10? Again literally most people do not care about screen resolution, they just want a fast computer. That's how manufacturers have gotten away with HD, HD+, and Full HD.

 

But these forums don't even come close to representing the average user, I would say we represent the heavy minority of laptop connoisseurs. Sure many would prefer 16:10, but I think many many more would be easily sold on "1080p" and not even notice the difference in actual aspect ratio. Most people (I would assume including large business orders) are more interested in its i count, ram and HDD space then how many pixels it has.

Even if your talking about small production runs of tens/hundreds of thousands for a different aspect ratio vs millions for 16:9, the unit cost would still be much higher. Nearly every piece of a 16:9 laptop is different from a 4:3, so to get a special made 4:3 laptop, lenovo would have to pay engineers and designers to redesign the case and likely many internal components. Then the factories they are made in would have to make special equipment to produce the different cases and pay for installation and all other production startup costs. This isn't even including the actual LCD panels.

Once the engineering/designing is done and the equipment is up and running making another 10,000 laptops is cheap, its the initial costs associated with the beginning of a production run that are expensive.

 

I bought a 23" 2048x1142 computer monitor a few years ago before computer companies started using "HD, HD+ and Full HD" and at the time higher screen resolutions were a selling feature. Now I look and they have all reverted back to the lower but "standard and acceptable for most" 1920x1080. I could not even find a higher resolution panel until I hit the super expensive 27" 2560x1440 apple displays and just a few years ago there were many higher resolution options available.

Damn you movie people for taking over the world with your "(not so)high def"!!!!

 

I share the same sentiments but I doubt if we are alone. This thread has 150 pages of protests against the 16:9 ratio, and there are parts 2 and 3

And anyway, what point are you guys trying to make? That there's no hope to bring back the 16:10? Shouldn't we be more focused on how to effect changes instead of lamenting over the dystopian future?

 

From conversation with friends and colleagues, as well as reading threads like this. Now may I ask on what evidence do you base your populist argument on? Can you find a '16:9 fans' thread? I don't think your observations while working at a consumer electronics shop are that valid. Many people regret after buying products. They wouldn't notice the difference between 16:10 and 16:9 in the store because it isn't explicitly noted on the product sheets (unlike the i7 vs i3, 1TB vs 500GB stats) but after using the crappy screen for a while they'll notice. For myself, my first few laptops were from HP and Asus, and I only switched to Lenovo after a few years or so after I got tired looking at the reflection of half of my face (because it's not tall enough) on the glossy screen.

 

I think most people whom walks into the computer store wouldn't know the difference of 16:10 versus 16:9, they will be more interested in the price, brand and specifications like CPU, RAM, GPU, etc.

They would probably start to loath the transition once they become more interested in screen technology, but for the average joe this is not a deciding factor for the purchase.

Most people regret the purchase when the software stops working, quality issues began to crawl up, etc.

Many of the complaints people have about screen are about poor colour reproduction, contrasts, viewing angle, resolution. Those whom complains about form factors and such, are usually those moderate to advanced users and most likely they would have used a few different generations of laptops before.

 

How does the move from 16:10 to 16:9 reduce screen resolution? From 1440x900 -> 1600x900, that's 11.1% more resolution. From 1280x800 -> 1366x768, that's 2.5% more resolution.

16:9 reduces resolution when moving from 1920x1200 to full-HD, but that's not really a common screen size for laptops.

 

Let me tell you that the x220t is unusable in portrait mode, way too narrow.

 

The screens are cleaper to make because, for a given diagonal, they are smaller: 14.1" 16:10 has 94% of the area of 14.1" 4:3 and 14" 16:9 has 94% of the area of 14.1" 16:10. The wider display may have a greater pixel count but it's difficult to make effective use of the greater width. I put the windows task bar on the left side but there's still a space at the right side which is only beneficial when using wide spreadsheets.

Last time I looked, Apple was still using 16:10 displays. I assume that's because the company gives priority to overall usability and knows that if it costs the costumers a few dollars extra then they will pay. The other manufacturers are competing with each other on price.

I hope that manufacturers will reverse the trend before we reach this point:

(I used to use one of those and it involved a lot of vertical scrolling).

John

 

16:9 is indeed awkwardly narrow in portrait mode. 16:10 also, but not as bad.

What is ironic in this is that movie theatres are actually something wider than 16:9 (2:1, 32:9 come to mind).

 

16:10 is very close to the Golden Ratio, so it's more pleasant than 16:9

 

You might gain more absolute pixels, but the loss of vertical pixels far offsets the gain of horizontal pixels. Most websites only go up to like 1024 pixels in width, so unless you have more than 2048 horizontal pixels (tile 2 windows beside each other without losing horizontal estate), the extra horizontal pixels are wasted anyways. Also, for the 1440x900 -> 1600x900 transition, you are fitting more pixels in less area, which brings up the PPI. The 16:10 screens had it right on with the PPI's. a 15.4" at 1680x1050 is what I perceive as like the perfect resolution as 1080p on a 15.6" is just too much for my eyes.

 

^ it only decreases resolution if the pixel density remains constant.
When you go to a wider ratio, eg. from 16:10 to 16:9, and keep the screen diagonal the same, your screen area reduces. This of course means there is less screen to manufacture!
Of course if you increase the pixel density, you can still maintain overall resolution (albeit in a different ratio), but you are still getting a smaller screen. this all happened around the time our chip packets and food packing sizes mysteriously shrunk....

 

I know that 16:9 screens are cheaper to make, but that can't be the reason for the shift. If excessive size - and material utilized - was what mattered then manufacturers won't be pumping out larger and larger displays like 27 and 30 inch ones that were virtually unheard of in the consumer marker previously. What they're doing is just shifting people who would buy 13 inch screens to 15 inch screens, so on and so forth. Given that screens don't cost less then lass these days, I don't see how they can make a profit just by shrinking screen ratios.

 

I was watching a movie on my new 16:9 widescreen TV the other day and I noticed that the top and bottom black bars were present. I looked at the movies case and it was "Super wide screen" as if that was a selling point. I don't have a wrap around I-max screen in my house so really wider is not better, and for that matter they aren't making the picture any wider just narrower.

 

I'd take the 16:9 X220 IPS LCD over the junky ones offered up in the 4:3 ThinkPads.

 

The problem is not every laptop offers 1600x900 from 1440x900. Many consumer grade laptops in 13-16" are stuck at 1368x768. Also you lose TONS of space going from a popular 15" resolution of WSXGA+ (1680x1050) to HD+ (1600x900) 80 pixels x 150 is ALOT. Also WUXGA to Full HD results in a loss of 120 vertical pixels, alot in a 17" laptop. The biggest thing is vertical resolution, when you are viewing webpages, vertical is more important than horizontal. That is unless of course all you do is watch movies on your laptop, then I applaud you and 16:9, but not everyone does, and I do work on my laptops so all my work laptops are 16:10 or 4:3

 

No, the majority of current businesses do not care about screen resolution. Many people have an external monitor that they dock their laptop with when they're at work, anyway. For businesses, laptops are just a simple tool: they need to be affordable and not break down (and be easily serviceable in the inevitability that they do). A little extra scrolling isn't going to destroy productivity.

Personally, I do like 16:10 best, but 16:9 is the way of the near future. The one plus side is that 1920x1080 screens are far more common than 1920x1200 screens ever were on laptops smaller than 17", and 1600x900 screens do offer more screen real estate than 1440x900 screens... although they're not very common. Frankly, having used my 1366x768 X120e for half a year, I can say it's really not that bad. For all intents and purposes, it's identical to 1280x800.

 

but 1920x1080 isn't the 16:9 replacement for 1920x1200, it's a replacement for 1680x1050.

1024x768 -> 1280x800 -> 1366x768
--------- -> 1440x900 -> 1600x900
--------- -> --------- -> 1680x945 (coincidentally has the same horizontal resolution as 1680x1050. Used in some 18.4" screens.)
1400x1050 -> 1680x1050 -> 1920x1080 (coincidentally has the same horizontal resolution as 1920x1200)
1600x1200 -> 1920x1200 -> 2048x1152 (coincidentally has the same horizontal resolution as 2048x1536. Used in some 23" desktop monitors.)
---------- -> ---------- -> 2560x1440 (has the same horizontal resolution as 2560x1600 because 2560x1600 is the maximum resolution supported by many video cards.)
2048x1536 -> 2560x1600 -> THE VOID (arguably 2560x1440, but not really. The proper 16:9 replacement would be 2732x1536)

 

That's true, which makes the most unfortunate group users of 17"+ DTRs, where the maximum resolution has shrunk from 1920x1200 to 1920x1080. But that group is small compared to users of 15" laptops, in which the standard high-end resolution is now 1920x1080 rather than 1680x1050 (yes, I know some laptops did offer 1920x1200 15.4" panels, but they were relatively rare). I 100% agree in that I'd love to see some 2560x1440 displays in high-end 17-18" DTRs.

On a side note, 1920x1080 has also made the Vaio Z's FHD 13" screen possible: 1920x1200 would have been far too excessive, DPI-wise. I'd love to see some 14" 1920x1080 screens.

 

Were there actually any production laptops that came with QXGA? I thought the T4_p series laptops was a mod to get QXGA...?

Ya that I agree with, only business and maybe certain extreme gaming laptops offered WUXGA for 15.4" laptops. WSXGA+ was the highest most consumer laptops went for 15.4"

 

I largely disagree. Think of the market placement, not the similarity in resolution. The 1680*1050 was not the top 16:10 laptop display, but the 1920*1080 now is (with a few exceptions such as the 17" MBP, where the... *ahem* 1920*1200 remains). That said, I would absolutely adore higher-res (i.e. DPI) displays on notebooks.

1920*1200 -> 1920*1080
1680*1050 -> 1600*900
1440*900 -> No direct substitute. Blurred between 1600*900 and 1366*768, depending on screen size and target market
1280*800 -> 1366*768

 

I wouldn't have anything but a 15" laptop.

Renee

 

The Thinkpad R50p offered it as a CTO option from what I've heard, and I think some Clevo notebooks offered it too. I don't remember where I found this info though.

 

It's not just about pixels either. As someone pointed out 16:10 is more pleasant to look at because it is closer to the golden ratio. Put simply, 16:9 is disproportionate to our visual field (too wide, with insufficient height) which the 16:10 can fully utilize.

And yes, you can fix a 16:9 screen with more pixels in a smaller frame, but that comes with the cost of having smaller text which is generally more difficult to read or glance through. Either way it hampers productivity with dubious benefit on 'entertainment' - I don't see how pleasant it could be to watch a movie on a X220.

 

Can move taskbar to the left/"combine labels when full", and the remaining working area will be about 16:10, golden ratio, pi^2/(2*pi) etc.

 

Or use something like MaxMax and have it restrict a maximized window to be around 4:3. I'm doing that on my T400 and it's pretty nice. I have a Rainmeter sidebar in the extra space now too.

π²/2π = π/2 = arccos(0)
Not sure where that's going.