RIP Non-Widescreens

[Redbeard]

[By the way, did it ever occur to you that they may have switched to widescreen because that's what the majority of people actually want?

Actually, LCD manufacturers have found that they can get more screens out of an LCD sheet by making the screens rectangular. There is less waste in the manufacturing process and therefore more profit. It has nothing to do with what the majority wants or what sells best.

Besides, if what was good for the majority was good for everyone, we would all be playing chess. Vive la différence! .

[topazg]

I work with text, and the biggest advantage for me is having multiple windows horizontally. For example, I have a browser and email window taking up the width of my screen. When I work on text, I have my text editor at 80 character width, which leaves me plenty of room for a preview window (a lot of my writing is in HTML), and a third window, such as for a dictionary or other tool. I have poor eyesight, and use large fonts, and this works fine for me, at least with a 27" monitor. On my laptop it's obviously different, but I don't do much serious work there.

For desktops I agree. I only use a 24" at work, but I love having it widescreen because I can get two very reasonable working areas. However, I also have to do a lot of serious work on a 14" laptop, and they really don't benefit from being widescreen. I'd much rather have something with the same horizontal width, a bit more bulk (physical weight), but enough extra height to make a 4:3 aspect ratio.

[topazg]

My biggest frustration with widescreens is the apparent desire to replace vertical space with horizontal space. Like the OP, much of my work is with code, or documents, which are all basically more height than width (kinda like books and, you know, letters written and paper, that kind of thing!).

Sure, I could have two windows with 4:3, or, more desirably, 3:4 aspect ratios, but then all the text gets too itsy bitsy for my comfort. I would like more vertical space, and I do know that thisn't a particularly rare position to hold

Of course, to each his own.

While our vision is wider than it is tall, as Fwiffo says, that does not mean wider is always better. For code and for documents, the wider lines get, the hard they are to follow. For watching movies and gaming (and I'm sure other applications), I won't deny that widescreen is better. But for the work I do (e.g, drafting/editing documents), widescreens add useless bulk to my laptop.

As for opening multiple windows... I want my laptop to be small. Using multiple windows makes no sense when drafting documents for which attention to detail is important (is that comma italicized? are those straight quotes or curly quotes? is that an en-dash, or em-dash?).

Do you turn e-book readers sideways? If so, you're the first person I've ever heard of doing so.

Am I missing something here? I thought I pretty much agreed with everything you said in your OP??

[nagano]

By the way, did it ever occur to you that they may have switched to widescreen because that's what the majority of people actually want?

Actually, LCD manufacturers have found that they can get more screens out of an LCD sheet by making the screens rectangular. There is less waste in the manufacturing process and therefore more profit. It has nothing to do with what the majority wants or what sells best.

Besides, if what was good for the majority was good for everyone, we would all be playing chess. Vive la différence! .

Really? Get back to me in a hundred years and tell me how much more popular chess is. But seriously, I understand. My tastes and views are almost always in the minority, if not obscurity.

[hyperpape]

1. I often had two windows side by side on my old 13" laptop--one for my text editor, one for material that I was referencing. These were usually academic papers: I can see how you might want a taller screen for coding.

2. I read in landscape on my iPad, but perhaps that's comfort and the design of the case that I use.

[ZeroKun]

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).

[judicata]

Am I missing something here? I thought I pretty much agreed with everything you said in your OP??

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

[topazg]

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!

[Dusk Eagle]

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.

[kirkmc]

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.

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.

[Chew Terr]

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.

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).

[martyd9906]

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.

[Traveller]

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.

[nagano]

Apple does offer higher-res displays.

[Traveller]

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?