I can understand reasoning for laptops, most of the 4:3 laptops had a higher pixel density than most widescreen ones today. But for desktops especially 5:4 screens, you don't lose anything, most if not all 5:4 are 1280x1024 while most widescreens are larger 1050-1080 at the same physical height from what I've seen. 4:3's can have larger resolutions vertically than widescreens, and do seem to be dying out though. For me it's widescreen, if I was a coder I'd buy a rotating screen as previously suggested(I have one, but Samsung was stupid and made it so you can't by default, yet gave instructions to, which I have since lost).

Sorry, I switched gears without signaling. That part of the post wasn't directed to you--we seem to be on the same page.

Hehe, no problem

My other bug bear is the desire for really reflective screens. Ok, the desire is for image quality, but for anyone who's tried to work on the train while commuting, some of those reflective screens can have so much sun reflection that they're really hard to work on. Oh for matt finish laptop screens!

At my high school, I remember they had these screens that you could rotate 90° in either direction. Windows also had a keyboard command (I think ctrl-alt-arrow?) that would rotate the display. I remember quite a few people, including me, liked to rotate the screens 90° so that we had more vertical height than horizontal.

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Each of us woke up one moment and here we were in the darkness.
We're nameless things with no memory; no knowledge of what went before,
No understanding of what is now, no knowledge of what will be.

You can still get monitors like that. I don't know if they are among the better monitors, but both Windows and Mac OS X support it.

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See, this just reminds me of people who changed settings and turned their TVs on the side when playing Ikaruga, so they have more vertical space (useful for the game).

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It is amazing how fast something can look totally outdated. I picked up an old laptop with a 3 x 4 screen and it looked like an antique. I am so used to widescreens now, I don't know how I could go back. I am with you.

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www.goldenrule.com

My biggest gripe with current LCD displays is that there are resolutions that you can get for laptops that are not available for desktops at any price.

Over a decade ago, I got a Dell laptop with a 1600x1200 display in 15". More recently, I spec'd a laptop for my father with 1920x1080 in 15".

The closest I can get to these in a desktop monitor is 1920x1080 (rarely 1920x1200) in 22". My current 19" CRT is running 1920x1440 and I am going to miss this when it finally fails. (And before I get the "nose to the screen" comments, I am sitting at least three feet back form the front of the display.

There are days when I feel I should just buy a laptop with the best display I can find and harvest the panel and toss the rest of the laptop. I could do this for money and sell the high dpi displays for a very pretty penny, but I know I would be clobbered by the big boys before I could recoup my initial costs after I had demonstrated that there was money to be made.

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Clark B. Wierda
Ann Arbor, MI, USA
AGA 20k, OGS 14k, DGS 16k, KGS ?

Apple does offer higher-res displays.

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Higher resolution for me means 1920x1200 in a display smaller than 22".

The closest I found from Apple was an iMac that has 1920x1080 in 21.5" and not as a separate device. 27" to get more pixels is not what I'm looking for. For starters, it will not fit on my desk.

Am I missing something else that Apple makes?

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Traveller
Clark B. Wierda
Ann Arbor, MI, USA
AGA 20k, OGS 14k, DGS 16k, KGS ?

Apple used to have a 24", but they discontinued it. You might be able to get one as a refurb.

One comment regarding Apple displays. For a couple of years, I was using a Dell display (the more expensive model; around $600 for a 24"). Then I got an Apple 24" on loan, and was totally blown away by the quality of the colors and the font display. It's a fair amount more expensive, but definitely worth it. So when the 27" came out, I bought that, and it's really great. It's the same amount of pixels as their previous 30" (2560 x 1440) and the font display is great, because of the pitch (108 dpi). It's not that big, at least the base isn't, so I find it's great on my desk.

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This won't help laptop users any, but several people at my workplace (myself included) use widescreen monitors tilted 90 degrees for maximum code viewage...

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I tried that once, and it was just too weird. I guess people might get used to it, but it freaked me out.

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I have given up on trying to find a good display for my PC. Aren't desktop devices supposed to be better than mobile devices? My laptop has ~130 dpi, my mobile phone has ~260 dpi, but my desktop has just 85 dpi. But it has HD support! *argh*

http://xkcd.com/732/

That is exactly how I feel!

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Traveller
Clark B. Wierda
Ann Arbor, MI, USA
AGA 20k, OGS 14k, DGS 16k, KGS ?

Yea, HD is a huge scam...

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My blog about Macs and more: Kirkville

Why are you guys saying HD is a ripoff? Is it because the resolution is too low? If so, isn't it relevant that TVs are huge, therefore costly, and generally sit several feet away from the viewer (making the necessary resolution smaller?

Please be gentle: I probably know less about video and displays than everyone here, so these are probably dumb questions.

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Because, at least in the US, there has been such a Big Deal made about HD as if it were really a big deal. Sure, you sit far from a TV, but 1080 lines is not that "high" definition, especially as people buy humungous TVs now. Then you get everything that displays 1080 pixels high being called HD - portable devices, and the like, such as the xkcd comic points out.

Also, there's HD and HD; in fact, anything over 480 px is called HD in the US, so you get 720 px HD being called HD just like 1080 px. Most streaming "HD" movies are only in 720 px; compare that to PAL, which is already in 576 px, and there's really very little difference. While I can see the difference between 1080 and DVDs here in France, 720 doesn't look much different from regular broadcasts or DVDs.

In short, consumers got snookered - especially in the US - with the first wave of "HD" TVs that were in 720. It's a bit difference in Europe, where widescreen TVs in standard resolution were already available.

And, no matter what, 1080 px is not very high resolution...

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Also relevant that CRT Monitors, pre LCD era, were capable of some simply mind boggling resolutions. Yes, you sit closer to monitors, so their higher resolutions are necessary, but many of the larger size big screen tvs, with 1080p, still have visible 'granularity'. Over 50 inches and you have to have a room quite large to sit far enough away, and no matter what you do, a 40 inch 1080p will never be as sharp or clear as a much cheaper 24 inch monitor, even running at similar resolutions.

1080p isn't 'bad' by any stretch of the imagination. However, if you have a keen eye for graphics, shading, and gradients, it's likely the least you can accept as an 'improvement' over standard def TV.

1080p is pretty good for an average TV screen. But for bigger screens or closer sitting users, it's a joke.

Don't get me wrong: For TV, HD is a big improvement over PAL/NTSC. The problem is that lately practically *every* display has to be HD. And in the case of computer monitors, that's actually worse than what we had before.

Add to that the stupid notion (coming from the windows world) that a higher resolution neccessarily means a smaller and therefore harder to read font size, and suddenly people *want* lower resolution monitors! That's not a problem, it's a great feature!