Windows 8 and Screen Resolution: WXGA Still Most Popular 382
jones_supa writes "The Building Windows 8 blog comes up with a detailed post explaining the improved support of Windows 8 regarding different screen sizes, resolutions and pixel densities. Early on, the Windows team explored an inch-based scaling system, but found out that bitmaps would look blurry when scaled to unpredictable sizes. They ended up choosing three predefined scale percentages: 100%/140%/180%. The article goes on pondering the best solutions to make each app look good on different screens. Also shown: the distribution of resolutions being used today with Windows 7, 1366x768 having a huge lead at 42%."
Re:1366x768 (Score:5, Informative)
I was shopping around a few months ago. ALL laptops have that resolution. Because it can be marketed as "HD". Either that, ir "FULL HD" 1920x1080.
So it's not "cheap". It's just what it is.
And it's not any better in the "affordable" desktop monitor realm either. I'm still sticking to a 17" 1280x1024 because i think it's stupid to get a 23"-27" with "only" 1920x1080.
Re:1366x768 (Score:1, Informative)
I'm still sticking to a 17" 1280x1024 because i think it's stupid to get a 23"-27" with "only" 1920x1080.
There are plenty of affordable 1920 x 1200, 2560 x 1440, and 2560 x 1600 flat panel monitors.
Re:1366x768 (Score:5, Informative)
Re:1366x768 (Score:5, Informative)
plenty of affordable
I have to assume that your definition of affordable is different from mine, or prices have dropped drastically in the last few months since I was shopping for a new screen. (just checked google shopping, the prices haven't changed. )
All of the monitors that see I with with higher resolutions are almost twice the price of the "1080p" units.
An extra $100 for 200 more rows of pixels? Not interested.
Additionally, I can't even FIND a 19-22inch monitor with anything higher than 1200p vertical resolution without shopping at medical supply shops. I can get the resolutions I want on screens designed for use on an MRI, but I'm not even going to consider a $2300 monitor. (especially since I need 4 of them...)
Re:Stop 16:9 displays! (Score:2, Informative)
Pedantic: 6" / 9 * 16 = about 1' not 2.
My way around this at work was to rotate the displays -90 degrees (into portrait instead of landscape, so to speak). It's not idiotproof, but I've got both windows and linux supporting this (a bit of trouble getting the welcome screen to rotate) and I get 4 screens of real estate in a large square. For sourcecode or long docs, stretching things to huge vertical rectangles makes all the hassles worthwhile.
Re:1366x768 (Score:5, Informative)
3840×2400 pixels on a 22.2 inch widescreen. Discontinued c.2005
Re:1366x768 (Score:5, Informative)
Actually 1366x768 is bad for almost everything except watching video. I had a nice dell laptop that I sold cheap because everything about it was great except the damn screen size. I actually went back to an older one because new laptops with decent screens are expensive. I'd actually love to have a new version of the D630 laptop with an i5 processor and a newer discrete nvidia graphics chip. Even the old T7500 in this one runs well with Mepis Linux but encoding video takes a while.
Re:1366x768 (Score:5, Informative)
Re:1366x768 (Score:5, Informative)
Because Windows and OS X have spotty support for high dpi modes right now (both slated to improve enormously in next release), so while your images, video, scaled up vector fonts etc all look fantastic, the UI elements tend to be tiny. You can scale the UI, but this sometimes breaks some apps.
Re:WTF is WXGA?! (Score:4, Informative)
Oh for god's sake. Are you trolling?
VGA = 640x480 ...
SVGA = 800x600
XGA = 1024x768
Go look it up for yourself: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Graphic_display_resolutions [wikipedia.org]
It's not a marketing term as much as it is a name for a numeric expression indicating a rectangular range of pixels. Those terms have been around longer than 1080p (which just means 1080 progressive scan lines).
And to the commenter above mine "I wish all TV manufacturers would..." Why? While 1080p TVs normally mean 1920x1080p, the ONLY thing they are really guaranteeing is 1080 progressive scan lines. From the days of analog TV, the contents of each line has effectively been analog variations in signal. In the days before color, it was merely an analog variable signal indicating brightness. So there was no effective pixel width as you understand it today. The density of phosphor was as close as you could get early on and actual pixel count could only be approximated in early color displays. Only Sony's Trinitron display tubes could really claim a true horizontal pixel count in CRTs as the arrangement of color bits were more hexagonal (or triangular depending on how you looked at it) in nature. Of course today's digital TV sources do account for horizontal pixel count as well as vertical, but the habit of referring only to the vertical count comes from the analog scaling of the horizontal scan line which still exists in today's TVs and signals. Technically, if someone were to make a 1280x1080 display and made the horizontal pixels wide enough to create a 16x9 aspect ratio, they might still be able to call it "1080p" even though most assert that it should mean 1920x1080.
We're still living with some legacy standards in our "modern age."
Re:1366x768 (Score:2, Informative)
this. I have twin 1920x1200 screens, which I bought a few years ago when they were abundant. They're a *lot* harder to find now, and typically are more expensive higher end models, e.g. IPS. On the chart labelled "Windows 7 screen Resolutions" it shows 1920x1200 is ~1-2% of Win7 installs, reflective of this. Relative to 1920x1080, I feel 120 pixels is a lot to give up. Surprisingly 1920x1080 is only 8%, which speaks to the broader trend of how more than 50% of installs are on cripplingly low resolutions. I think this is a combination of factors: fewer desktops/more laptops, and work environments that won't ever spring for more than bottom of the barrel monitors. I checked my work monitor, and even though I use medical apps to view radiology/echos etc, the resolution is a meager 1280x1024.
No not so much (Score:5, Informative)
Windows has flawless high DPI support since Vista. It scales everything properly vector based to any level you like. You can try it on a system if you want, crank up the scaling and watch it go.
All MS apps do it as well. IE, Notepad, the calculator, all the things that come with windows properly listen to the size requests for them OS. Even thing like images, IE will upscale images properly. They don't gain resolution, of course, but they are the right size and the resampling algorithm is quite good.
The problem is apps. Some flat out don't listen, Steam is one of those, it just won't scale at all. Some want to do their own thing. FF is one of those, it can scale, but won't listen to Windows for scaling. However there worst is some scale some things. They'll scale their text (because they use the Windows text renderer) but not the boxes the text is in (because they use their own pixel based controls).
So that's the issue. Developers have to start following the spec. If they use the provided Windows controls, it is no problem they scale themselves. If they make their own also no problem, they just have to write in the scaling logic. Problem is they don't, they are lazy about it.
Re:I'm surprised so many people have widescreen (Score:4, Informative)
Which really means they will ship the screens to China (thus burning oil), where the item will be recycled by workers not wearing masks, breathing dangerous fumes or dust, and the toxic components like mercury just dumped to the ground.
BESIDES most of the toxicity actually comes from the manufacture of the new item: Digging-up the materials, or strip-mining the ground, plus shipping them from who-knows-where to the factory (more oil burned), plus side effects like pollution caused by the workers and their living quarters or cars. The longer you use an item the more you postpone the damage which manufacturing causes.
Re:I'm surprised so many people have widescreen (Score:5, Informative)
Yeah I've thought about that, but I measured my CRT at only 50 watts. Ditto the P4 (I turned-on the laptop low power mode a few years ago). The manufacturing energy & strip-mining of new materials & toxic chemicals plus shipping from the other side of the planet would far-exceed anything I would save by switching to LCD or a new iCore CPU. (Same principle applies to why I use US-manufactured incandescent bulbs not CFLs imported from non-environment-friendly China.)
Forgot to mention my phone which many of my coworkers call "ancient". I bought it in 2006 so I guess that is pretty old, but it still makes phone calls and accepts text messages, so why toss it in the trash? No reason I can think of.
Buy a Mac (Score:4, Informative)
And I have a laptop from 2004 with a 17" 1920x1200 resolution LCD built-in. A replacement with similar resolution is nigh on impossible to find
The 17" Macbook Pro for a while now has had a 1920x1200 display. In fact all MacBooks eschew the HD fad and use a more realistic aspect ratio for display. You can even choose glossy or matte.
The system is due for an update later this year possibly to an ever higher DPI display...
Re:1366x768 (Score:4, Informative)
For the desktop it's pretty simple. I turn the monitor on end.
Re:1366x768 (Score:5, Informative)
Apple took the plunge several years ago. The 27" iMac has been shipping with a 2560 by 1440 screen since its introduction in late 2009. I wouldn't be surprised to see them ship a 32" iMac sporting even higher resolutions at some point in the not-too-distant future.
It's sad and kind of shocking the degree to which Apple drives innovation in the PC market. Just what the hell do the thousands of employees and overpaid executives at Dell and HP do all day long? Play Angry Birds on their iPhones?