Are Widescreen Laptops Dumb? (theverge.com) 411
"After years of phones, laptops, tablets, and TV screens converging on 16:9 as the 'right' display shape -- allowing video playback without distracting black bars -- smartphones have disturbed the universality recently by moving to even more elongated formats like 18:9, 19:9, or even 19.5:9 in the iPhone X's case," writes Amelia Holowaty Krales via The Verge. "That's prompted me to consider where else the default widescreen proportions might be a poor fit, and I've realized that laptops are the worst offenders." Krales makes the case for why a 16:9 screen of 13 to 15 inches in size is a poor fit: Practically every interface in Apple's macOS, Microsoft's Windows, and on the web is designed by stacking user controls in a vertical hierarchy. At the top of every MacBook, there's a menu bar. At the bottom, by default, is the Dock for launching your most-used apps. On Windows, you have the taskbar serving a similar purpose -- and though it may be moved around the screen like Apple's Dock, it's most commonly kept as a sliver traversing the bottom of the display. Every window in these operating systems has chrome -- the extra buttons and indicator bars that allow you to close, reshape, or move a window around -- and the components of that chrome are usually attached at the top and bottom. Look at your favorite website (hopefully this one) on the internet, and you'll again see a vertical structure.
As if all that wasn't enough, there's also the matter of tabs. Tabs are a couple of decades old now, and, like much of the rest of the desktop and web environment, they were initially thought up in an age where the predominant computer displays were close to square with a 4:3 aspect ratio. That's to say, most computer screens were the shape of an iPad when many of today's most common interface and design elements were being developed. As much of a chrome minimalist as I try to be, I still can't extricate myself from needing a menu bar in my OS and tab and address bars inside my browser. I'm still learning to live without a bookmarks bar. With all of these horizontal bars invading our vertical space, a 16:9 screen quickly starts to feel cramped, especially at the typical laptop size. You wind up spending more time scrolling through content than engaging with it. What is your preferred aspect ratio for a laptop? Do you prefer Microsoft and Google's machines that have a squarer 3:2 aspect ratio, or Apple's MacBook Pro that has a 16:10 display?
As if all that wasn't enough, there's also the matter of tabs. Tabs are a couple of decades old now, and, like much of the rest of the desktop and web environment, they were initially thought up in an age where the predominant computer displays were close to square with a 4:3 aspect ratio. That's to say, most computer screens were the shape of an iPad when many of today's most common interface and design elements were being developed. As much of a chrome minimalist as I try to be, I still can't extricate myself from needing a menu bar in my OS and tab and address bars inside my browser. I'm still learning to live without a bookmarks bar. With all of these horizontal bars invading our vertical space, a 16:9 screen quickly starts to feel cramped, especially at the typical laptop size. You wind up spending more time scrolling through content than engaging with it. What is your preferred aspect ratio for a laptop? Do you prefer Microsoft and Google's machines that have a squarer 3:2 aspect ratio, or Apple's MacBook Pro that has a 16:10 display?
Xerox Alto (Score:2)
Let's get it vertical!
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Not to mention the sickening crunch when the person in front of you on the plane reclines their seat...
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I don't think it is an issue with esthetics. But an issue of what we think a computer should look like.
A typewriter with a TV on top.
TV's have switched to wide screens, and so have Computers to keep up with the look of a typing device with a TV on top.
A vertical display laptop could be designed to look just as futuristic and objectivity beautiful as our current laptops. The real issue is that people will not like it, because Monitors have copied the display of TV's, TV's copied what Movies show, Movies have
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Most phones I have seen can record in Portrait mode, you just need to hold the phone horizontally. The answer why, people normally record on their phone vertically, it is because that is how you normally hold a phone, and the design of the phone it is easy to cover the camera with your hand if you hold it vertically.
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Hey, I have (very occasionally) seen, and even recorded, video where portrait mode is appropriate. It looks a little ridiculous being played back, but if your subject matter is vertical, why would you want to waste precious pixel data recording irrelevant background?
Great for Multitasking (Score:5, Insightful)
I've thought the same. Most content is designed in a portrait orientation, including good 'ole paper. The benefit of widescreen formats though is in multitasking. I can easily keep a document open with a web page on the other side or any other application. On phones and tablets, typically you aren't multitasking so the portrait orientation generally works better.
Re: Great for Multitasking (Score:2)
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move to the side (Score:4, Insightful)
If you can move the taskbar/start menu to the right side in a widescreen laptop like on XFCE, it's great. That being said for creating content like programs or a LaTeX document, it's actually better to have a longer screen so you can have two windows (code/results) side by side.
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It works great on my 27" 2560x1440 desktop monitor. Most of the time, I use it as two virtual 1280x1440 monitors, which is a very comfortable size.
On laptops, I figure you would need a 15" model with at least 2560x1440 to make it work equally well. Personally, I don't mind the 1366x768 panel in my X220. It does what I need it to do, and if I need more space, I'm probably at my desktop anyway.
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I find that a 5:2 split works well on a 16:9 screen. I might have a terminal window and a PDF viewer side-by-side, with the terminal being the narrower one.
The ideal size is 27", because then you really can get two good size documents side-by-side on a 16:9 monitor. It helps if you have 5k resolution, but the standard 2560x1440 is okay.
The benefits of high DPI shouldn't be underestimated. While everything may appear the same size, you can more easily read small fonts and thus zoom out slightly more. It migh
A lot of things are dumb nowadays! (Score:2)
A 15" laptop is made mostly by empty space.
A 15" screen should be no less than 2K. Most of them is instead less than FHD.
Re:A lot of things are dumb nowadays! (Score:5, Interesting)
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Empty space? Are you talking about the palm rest, where you can't actually put anything because you'd constantly be hitting it as you type? Or are you advocating for wildly inconsistent keyboard layouts with super odd key spacing or many keys that require special drivers and become a compatibility nightmare, to say nothing of the cost of manufacturing snowflake components?
Maybe moving the keyboard down the palm rest, displacing the trackpad and making carpal tunnel even more likely due to the wrist angle
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(snip)
As it turns out, people that design laptops actually think about these things.
Well, sometimes not. Style sells even if it isn't logical :/
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You have obviously never opened a 15" laptop. There are some designs with some free space - often a model with an optional 2.5" HDD. But even then the variant without the HDD will often have a larger battery.
But sure if you search for the cheapest design you can find and go for the lowest specifications yes there may be some free space. Even then it will mostly _not_ be empty space.
I don't fell that way (Score:3)
Compromise (Score:3)
16:9 is a compromise.
Phones just expanded the screen to cover the bezels because that looks good, they didn't really think about the aspect ratio.
Laptops are often used for watching video, so 16:9 makes sense for consumer ones. The real issue with documents is that the screens are too small to have two pages side-by-side like you can have on desktop. The text is too small to read if you do that.
Many apps are badly designed and fail to take advantage of wider screens. Web sites are the obvious example, but things like office apps could learn a lot from image editors where the toolbars are traditionally on the sides.
Re: Compromise (Score:2)
Laptops are often used for watching video, so 16:9 makes sense for consumer ones.
16:9 also works well for spreadsheets.
The real issue with documents is that the screens are too small to have two pages side-by-side like you can have on desktop. The text is too small to read if you do that.
The issue you are having is that you are displaying two printed pages side-by-side, with four side margins taking up way too much screen space, forcing the text to be very small. Try the other view options for reading two pages side-by-side.
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I'd prefer the compromise to be a 3:2 ratio. I'm just afraid the last laptop sold with that ratio was a Macintosh fifteen years ago.
4:3 is too high (for a laptop), 16:10 is passable, but 3:2 (15:10) would be about right.
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16:9 is a compromise.
Phones just expanded the screen to cover the bezels because that looks good,
No, they didn't. They actively made the phones both narrower, and taller. Not just filling the bezel areas. There's only one reason I've been able to find for the current trend of 2:1 aspect ratio phones (or worse), and that's simple marketing. A phone that now brags a 6 inch screen can have fewer square inches of actual screen than one that bragged a 5.7 inch screen before. It's win-win for the manufacturer, they get to claim a bigger number in marketing, while paying for a smaller one in manufacturing. Of
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Lenovo and Apple removing the F-keys for some contraption that is mostly useless? Lenovo removing touchpad buttons to look more modern? Changing keyboard layout just because?
There's plenty of that crap going on.
Huh? (Score:5, Insightful)
You wind up spending more time scrolling through content than engaging with it.
Engaging with content? That sounds awful, no thanks Farmville. I'll stick with scrolling through as I read it.
Re: Huh? (Score:2)
While we're at it - let's change the way books are made, I am wasting countless hours endlessly flipping pages - pages should be much, much taller than they are wide, fitting two or three old pages on a new page. Who cares if it looks like I'm reading a restaurant menu, and it makes shelving books almost impossible, think of the time savings!
Re: Huh? (Score:5, Funny)
16:9 is Not quite 'right' (Score:5, Interesting)
It should be 16:10
golden ratio is about 1.61803
It's a matter of opinion, for any device (Score:2)
I prefer a 16:9 phone over an 18:9 phone. I think the 18:9 (or taller) on a phone is a poor fit, and really want to have phone manufacturers start to bring out 16:9 premium phone. I really really really really really hate the screen on my Samsung S8+, and the only reason I have is because there was no other screen choice available with the phone features I wanted (the Samsung won out because it had a headphone port).
Anyway, I rant -- the question here is relating to 16:9 on a laptop. Personally, I'm happ
1:1 would be good (Score:2)
Just a square would be fine, and would allow for a decent palm rest as well as whatever bar at the top/bottom while leaving room for work.
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cheap TV Parts (Score:5, Insightful)
Yes, in theory ratios less wide than 16:9 (like the 16:10 the used to be popular back during the first wide screen LCD pannels for computer : 1280x800, 1600x1000, 1920x1200) give more screen estate for tool bars, etc.
(And despite all the criticism Ubuntu's Unity is otherwise taking, at least their idea of a side dock is definitely a good one to conserve screen estate in the vertical direction.
And why KDE-based linux distro tend nowadays to reduce the taskbar to a much thinner size.
And why "tabs and menus in the title bar" (like chromium and some firefox versions) are getting popular.)
The problem is that, for manufacturers, these resolutions are weird and unusual.
TV world has standardized on 16:9 a long time ago as the ratio for wide screen.
Keeping the same 16:9 ratio on computer monitors enables flat-screen panel makers to use the same parts in both TVs and computer screens, instead of needing to produce smaller separate runs of panels with "weird" resolutions just for the computer screen line of products.
That's why most of the common mass produced cheap computer screen use the same ratio as TV screen : reusing cheap TV parts.
Which is also the reason why most of those cheap computer screens also stick to common TV resolutions : 720p, 1080p, etc. and why until the recent "4k" TV resolution fad these computer screen were stuck at sucky low resolutions that CRTs had already surpassed a decade ago.
a.k.a the quest ion"Why are we stuck qith 1080p ? My CRT from early 2000s did already 1600x1200 !"
(you used to need to fork a significant amount for more expensive pro models to get beyond 1080p - simply because these used custom parts and not mass-produced TV pannels).
also, ob. xkcd [xkcd.com] ref.
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So if that's truly the case, why is it that about the smallest TVs are in the 42" range, meanwhile the largest monitors are in the 32" range? If they're using the same display panels, you'd think the overlap between TV sizes, and monitor sizes, would be quite prevalent.
I'd love it if that were actually the case though, because I can buy any TV at about half the price of a similar sized monitor, so I'd love to find a good 4K TV in the 30-40" range to replace my dying 32" QHD monitor.
4:3 for single-app use, 16:9/10 for development. (Score:2)
for my clients i always always made sure that they ordered 19in 4:3 aspect ratio screens, because they do document editing (invoices) full-screen, and run a web browser full screen as well, switching between the two.
not even 16:9 or 16:10 aspect ratio screens make *any* sense - laptop or no laptop - when all you are doing is a single *BUSINESS* related activity.
the exception to that rule as i've discovered when using an Aorus X3 Plus V6 is: 3000 x 1800 resolution laptop LCDs when running fvwm2 with a 6x4 vi
Micro$oft (Score:2)
The only real choice for a tall/square Windows laptop is a Microsoft Surface.
Seriously? (Score:5, Insightful)
The current "wider than it is tall" format for laptops is based on the physical size/shape requirements of that human interface below it, the keyboard.
The default orientation for a tablet is "taller than it is wide", because it has no keyboard - add a keyboard and you'll typically find yourself turning the tablet on it's side.
It's not unusual for a developer to turn a large, high-res second display 90 degrees to have a two foot+ tall screen sitting on their desk like a tower, to allow for seeing huge swaths of traces, logs, or source code without having to scroll.
Please, explain to me the benefit for the average computer user of a display that is "taller than it is wide" - don't forget, many 'average users' do a lot of work in spreadsheets, an application that lends itself to a "wider than it is tall" display.
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> turn a large, high-res second display 90 degrees to have a two foot+ tall screen
Yup! The monitor in portrait mode (90 degrees) has a few, sweet, advantages:
1. You can see LOTS of code -- since code tends to be WAY more vertical more then horizontal. (80 - 132 columns.) You can even vertically split the view to see multiple locations WHILE maintaining a nice big (or tiny) programming font.
2. Makes reading PDFs enjoyable -- you can zoom the page to "page width" or have a page take up the *entire* scree
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As for why smartphones are the way they are also has to do with trying to ensure you can reach every part of the screen with the thumb of the hand you're holding the device in. When you turn the device on it's side to view video you also stop fiddling with the screen (you're watching video, not scrolling up and down a web page) so not being able to reach the other end of th
Certainly suboptimal (Score:5, Insightful)
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16:10 (Score:2)
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16:10 long predates Apple and was the widescreen monitor standard before HDTV came along. 16:9 replaced it for economies of scale, not for function. Apple simply retained the better format, it did not pioneer it.
3:2 is largely the same as 16:10, so it's not as though Apple stands alone here. 16:9 is an inferior format for computer display, although for the desktop it is now moot due to 4K and huge monitor sizes. For laptops there's really no question.
Widescreen laptops rule for one simple reason (Score:4, Funny)
With a widescreen laptop, you get a numeric keypad. With a numeric keypad, you can play Nethack efficiently. What more can be said?
Stop calling them widescreens! (Score:2, Insightful)
If we called them shortscreens instead of widescreens, we'd see that the answer is obvious.
I personally think that the 16x9 ratio is for one thing....movies. People seem to have forgotten that to get work done, taller screens are typically better. Granted Word benefits from a tall screen while Excel might be best off on a widescreen.
matters on your use case.
I personally prefer LARGE laptops when I but them. I almost always go after a 1080p 17" widescreen.
Keyboard... (Score:2)
There are a variety of reasons for widescreen laptops, here are just a few of them:
Keyboards - a laptop with a tall and narrow screen will have a tall and narrow keyboard, which will feel cramped... A wider keyboard is better for typing on.
Availability of screens - widescreen format panels are mass produced for tv use, they're cheaper and more widely available.
This is an easy one (Score:2)
If you're writing a lot and/or reading a lot you want vertical space, because long lines are much harder to read than lots of shorter lines. If you're working with video or photos or with complex apps with lots of panes and tools around, a wider screen is better, since you can arrange your tools horizontally and if your tools involve lots of lists of things it's hard to stack them vertically anyway.
Since less and less people read and write a lot and instead consuming video content seems to be what people li
It really doesn't matter much (Score:2)
With all of these horizontal bars invading our vertical space, a 16:9 screen quickly starts to feel cramped, especially at the typical laptop size. You wind up spending more time scrolling through content than engaging with it.
I have a different take in that it doesn't really matter. Basically, who cares? Most of my work is done at my desks at work or at home so I have desktop PCs with 2 or 3 large monitors on each one. I also rotate one of the monitors 90 degrees so I can view an entire page of a printed document without scrolling. I lose a TON of efficiency trying to work on a single small laptop screen. Not saying laptops are bad tools (they're great) but worrying about whether 16:9 or 4:3 is marginally better kind of mis
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Fussing over the insignificant (Score:2)
You are right. Since you do your work at home on a desktop PC with 2 to 3 large monitors, it doesn't matter. Lets go on to the next article.
No lets continue to fuss and argue over an insignificant design detail with no clear right answer which makes no discernable difference in our work flow and over which we have no influence. Much better use of our time.
Or did you think that laptop makers are eagerly awaiting a verdict about what to do from slashdot readers?
Congrats on finally noticing (Score:2)
You'll want to remember why 16:10 existed in the first place. Movies were 16:9, and there needed to be room for professional controls.
16:9 didn't enter the computer space until computers were mostly used as entertainment devices instead of as tools.
Welcome back.
All the same stuff was argued when MS switched to (Score:3)
the "ribbon" format for menus in Office many years ago. It was dumb back then and it's still dumb.
But who uses a computer to do any work anymore? Computers are media consumption devices, or more correctly, advertising consumption and surveillance/data gathering devices. Who cares where the users think the tabs and chrome should be located?
Thurrott article on the same thing (Score:2)
Paul Thurrott wrote an article about his love of 3:2 displays a few weeks back: https://www.thurrott.com/hardw... [thurrott.com] (Premium, requires membership to read the full article)
Definitely one of my pet peeves. (Score:3)
Some years back I had a very nice laptop computer with a screen resolution of 1920x1200. But technology advances and I eventually needed to replace that laptop. So I started searching for something with the same or better screen resolution. And discovered that they simply did not exist anymore and the best that could be obtained at a reasonable price was 1920x1080. WTF!?!?! Only thing I could imagine was economies of scale and that all too many laptop manufacturers think that the only thing people use their laptops for was watching videos and actual productivity use was non-existent. And with that mindset, It becomes easy to imagine those brain dead idiots purchasing lots of 1920x1080 panels since "that's the resolution used for hi def video and no one needs anything more than that. Besides, they're cheaper."
I really miss the vertical space for dealing with text.
i am opting out of that trend (Score:2)
For watching movies, but not for productivity (Score:2)
Sigh. (Score:2)
Yes.
If you're talking about 13" "laptops" then they are dumb to have widescreen.
15" is... pfft.. maybe acceptable. But 15" was small even under 4:3.
17" or higher or just forget about it, especially with modern stupendous resolutions.
The first ever ThinkPad had roughly a 10" screen. At 4:3 that gives you the same height as a 12.2" widescreen. Pathetic. But then that was the 90's and those things were new and expensive.
Selling something not-much-bigger nowadays is a con. Just advertise it as a tablet and
Wide screen is for video, Tall screens for Text. (Score:2)
It was Hollywood movies that started with a wider format, and it reached the 70 mm film format and went for this wider format.
It's the keyboards that really matter. (Score:2)
All the wide-screen laptops which I've tried had really stupid keyboards. The manufacturers seem to figure that as they've got extra width they'll shove lots of extra keys in at the side, and move standard keys around. I'm reduced to hunt-and-peck typing because as soon as I stop looking at the keyboard I start typing nonsense.
Give me a decent keyboard like on my Lenovo T420 and you can make the screen as wide as you like.
Just STAHP! (Score:2)
"Tabs are a couple of decades old now,"
What? How is this a criticism?
Explain to me why this sentence has any meaning in a criticism of screen formats? The age of a UI element has NOTHING to do with its utility (except, perhaps as a second-order validation: older UI elements must be doing something RIGHT to have been kept around).
Shoes are a millennia-old concept, yet we happily keep using them.
Amelia Holowaty Krales - whoever that is - is a dumbfuck. There are lots, and lots and lots of people who use ev
There's a simple solution (Score:2)
Simple solution: Turn your laptop sideways.
Now, I'm joking, but honestly, that's an option with phones, and it's frequently an option with desktop monitors (the one I'm looking at now does this). This seems like a great option, as wide screens are (or at least seem to be) really good for gaming and watching video, but tall screens are better for reading or editing documents.
The only problem, of course, is that on a laptop, you have a keyboard attached to your screen, and one of those orientations is going
The ratio is fine, the GUI design is crap (Score:2)
I put my app bar on the left, and I don't run every window full screen. For this, the ratio is fine. I see no reason for a laptop to go over 16:9 however. The HD ratio is a practical standard to settle on. Mobile devices arguably should extend that to account for their notches, and I imagine that's what we're mostly seeing there.
You people are really dumb (Score:2)
Just put your laptop sideways and BOOM! You have a 9:16 display that's a much better fit for websites.
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Damn, lazlo beat me to it and right before my post too.
Re:Too much whining (Score:5, Insightful)
Do they like it, or do they have no choice?
If you want a 3:2 laptop it has to be a Chromebook. You can run Linux, but they are not for everyone.
Everything else is 16:9, or 16:10 for Apple but then you have to put up with Apple hardware just to get that slightly taller screen.
Should be A4 portrait (Score:2, Insightful)
People buy tablets instead of laptops.
It's long been known that if you make pages too wide the eye skips from line to line instead of reading across. That's why pages are portrait, it's why newspapers put text in columns.
They should be A4 portrait for work and reading, because that's the format people read in.
Video viewing is obviously a second use, and that needs to be HD landscape. Longer formats just creates black bars.
So the screen needs to rotate depending on use case.
The reason they're wide in laptops
Re:Should be A4 portrait (Score:5, Insightful)
The reason they are wide in laptops is because idiot marketing droids decided that video on portable devices was the next big thing and all laptops became widescreen. The manufacturers stopped making the lower ratio displays because widescreen gave a higher production yield at the time. As numerous people are pointing out text is optimally read in A4 form as determined by at least two thousand years of empirical experience. It would probably benefit civilisation somewhat if we let the marketing department go and started using electronic devices suited to reading and writing again. It may be a moot point as humans are about to be superceeded by AI.
Re: Should be A4 portrait (Score:5, Insightful)
You realize a screen isn't a static place to print text, right? You can have multiple windows open at once? A4 is almost never the right viewing size on a screen, because the right viewing size depends on the content, other things you are viewing, your workflow, etc. My terminal windows are never going to be A4; they would be unusable. Webpage references are never going to be usable at A4, because I'm using them with other windows open, with parts of the window I don't need right now (e.g. file manager sidebar) occluded by the useful material from other windows.
If you think everything should be A4, my guess is you are on Windows or you have no idea how to use your window manager to use multiple apps at once.
Re: Should be A4 portrait (Score:5, Insightful)
No, no, the world is a cellphone, you get one window at a time, and it's always maximized. Thinking about supporting anything else is really, really hard.
What about keyboards (Score:3)
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It's long been known that if you make pages too wide the eye skips from line to line instead of reading across. That's why pages are portrait, it's why newspapers put text in columns.
They should be A4 portrait for work and reading, because that's the format people read in.
The presumptions that (a) everybody use A4, and (b) everybody blow windows up full screen are both wrong.
For (b), the ability to have multiple windows on the screen, each with the geometry you like, not what the manufacturer gave you, is very useful. If you want A4, nothing prevents you from having A4. Even combined with a correct DPI setting, so what you see on-screen will be the exact same size as when printed out. Others might want smaller overlapping windows with Z-order management to increase their
Re:Should be A4 portrait (Score:5, Informative)
It's long been known that if you make pages too wide the eye skips from line to line instead of reading across. That's why pages are portrait, it's why newspapers put text in columns.
Wide screens aren't stupid, it's using Windows in full-screen mode all the time on a wide screen that is stupid, especially with web browsers. I love my 17" MacBook Pro, but my web browser is normally set to 60% of the width, about 1024x1024 in the content area. On the left half of the screen I have room for a Finder window, a video window, or a text editor window. The 16:10 FHD resolution is roughly equivalent to what used to be called a "two-page" monitor back in the days when they weighed 30 kilos or more. And it works very well when reading PDFs in two-page mode.
Also stupid is stacking a bunch of horizontal strips with a wide monitor: task bar, window title bar, menu bar, the Windows ribbon, and web browsers with a billion toolbars installed. My Dock is on the right side, where it belongs, and is also set to half the default size because I'm not trying to impress people with hi-res icons in advertising photos.
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You can also get a Surface.
Re:Too much whining (Score:4, Informative)
I have a 16:10 display for my stationary computer and it's actually a lot nicer to work on than that darn letterbox opening wide screen that a 16:9 offers. It doesn't seem like it's that much of a difference but it really is.
It all depends on what you use the display for when it comes to what aspect ratio is best.
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Considering that the 16:10 I have is a 1920x1200 it's better than a 16:9.
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First modern laptop to have a different aspect ratio gets my money without question. They don't exist!
Re: Too much whining (Score:3)
Re:Too much whining (Score:5, Insightful)
If you don't want that, don't get it. If someone wants it, good for them let them buy it. They are not wrong and probably not dumb. They just like something you don't.
If someone's preferred aspect ratio is 4:3, your solution is hardly feasible due to the lack of supply. That was kind of the entire point being made here, every damn thing has seemingly been infected with a 16:9 display. You're not exactly left with a lot of choices these days. Will someone out there make it? Likely.
You'll just be paying a premium for a "custom" design.
Comment removed (Score:5, Interesting)
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Give me a modern version of the late 2011/early 2012 Macbook pro, with the high resolution screen and a reasonable compliment of ports, and I'd buy one in a heartbeat. I know that will never happen, so I keep on trucking with my 7 year old laptop that still meets my needs.
Re:Too much whining (Score:5, Insightful)
I don't want it. I don't really have the option not to get it.
Same with the screens which are so glossy they cannot be used outdoors. It's very hard (if not impossible) to find a laptop with a usable mat screen.
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+1 for both of your points.
The entire laptop design world is focused on the "Oooh, shiny!" crowd and it sucks.
These are NOT TV sets.
Re:Too much whining (Score:5, Funny)
Though I loved it when my (arrogant and self-absorbed) boss showed off his (literally) shiny new monitor about a decade ago, bragging how wonderful it is.
The inside joke in the company was that what he liked most about it was that all he could see in it was his own reflection.
Re:Too much whining (Score:5, Funny)
The matte screen option is often available for free. You just need to find a toddler who will do the work for you.
Outdoors? (Score:2)
Same with the screens which are so glossy they cannot be used outdoors.
Is this a big problem for you? Not being snide. I honestly cannot remember the last time I used my laptop outdoors for any meaningful period of time. I understand the problem if you wanted to but this just isn't a use case most people have most of the time.
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I almost never use it outdoors, however I do have both lights and windows in my house, both of which are extremely problematic on most "oooh shiny" screens.
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I do. I've got a proper desktop computer with a 40" screen for use indoors. One of the main reasons I like having a laptop as well is so that I can spend time outside on a beautiful day, even if I want to be working/playing on the computer.
As it is, I pretty much have to sit under a dark canopy of some sort, out of direct sunlight, if I want to be able to see the screen.
Man I wish those Pixel Qi transflective screens had caught on.
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You want a matte screen laptop? Two options: go professional or go gaming.
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Couldn't agree more about the glossy screens. I'm currently using a 2011 Macbook Pro, one of the last models available with a mat screen. Not sure what I'm going to do when it becomes no longer viable. There doesn't seem to be a decent aftermarket material you can apply to "de-gloss" a screen, at least not that I've been able to find.
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If you don't want that, don't get it.
How the fuck did this get modded "insightful"? Have you even been in a computer shop in the last decade?
-1 Ignorant is more like it.
Re:Too much whining (Score:5, Insightful)
This is why us widescreen detractors like to call them "shortscreens."
Re:Too much whining (Score:5, Insightful)
4:3 was a sort of "golden ratio" for computing.
Golden for the manufacturers of screens who were able to sell you the two you needed side by side for multitasking.
ask anyone that does a lot of work in Excel or with databases or anything in a terminal where more viewable vertical lines makes life a lot easier
Can I add an opinion? Word-wrap sucks for code, and the vast majority of my excel tables are wider than taller. The only time I've pined for vertical space in Excel is when idiots use word wrap and write a frigging thesis in a cell causing the one row to take up the entire vertical space. The beauty of complaining about excel is that it really doesn't matter how your data is laid out, if you prefer more space one direction or the other, then transpose it.
Honestly I don't miss 4:3.
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4:3 is better if you have two monitors, but widescreen is better if you are stuck with one monitor and trying to edit two documents side-by-side, diffing, etc. Essentially I'm saying that 8:3 is the ideal monitor, I guess ;p
Now why browsers put tabs across the top rather than down the side...
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Mostly empty for you, maybe. For me I always have a ton of tabs and can't read the text. Need to go by icon. There used to be an extension for Firefox called Tree Style Tabs that did the trick, but it doesn't work as well with the new extension framework.
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I wonder if the rectangular-pixel monitors were meant for video production, where standards used to include rectangular "pixels"?
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Nope, if you displayed a 4:3 video, it would be stretched to a wide screen with rectangular pixels and looked distorted.
I was thinking of of anamorphic DVD, which stored at 720x576 pixels (PAL) or 720x480 (NTSC) - even when they are meant to be played back widescreen... they call this an "anamorphic DVD". If you were doing video production of anamorphic DVDs, you would want a video screen with rectangular pixels so that you could see "native" resolution at the correct aspect ratio. It's also possible that the panels were made for DVD playback and then repurposed when the expected demand didn't materialize.
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You know you can have more than one window open at a time, right?
Put your code editor on the left, and the browser you ultimately use to look things up on StackExchange on the right.
Hey, look - both are useable because you have a widescreen! How about that?!
Hard to find 16:10 monitors these days (Score:2)
The choices for 16:10 desktop monitors is rapidly dwindling. I've always prefered 1600:1200 and 2560:1600 monitors to options like 1680:1050 and 2560:1440. Dell still makes some 1600:1200 and 2560:1600 monitors, but not many others do.
The advantage lining up a 2560:1600 and a 1600:1200 (oriented vertically) is that the screens align perfectly and you get a lot of real estate.
Re: Widescreen is great (Score:3)
I have seen the vertical monitors used to great effect in certain applications - for example, I used to work in telecom, and the engineers tasked with reading call setup/takedown logs looking for problems benefitted greatly from having the entire call log on the display at the same time, no scrolling... but that is a special use case, most programmers I know work with two side-by-side windows on a widescreen display.
That's true about code (Score:3)
> keep seeing people say that vertical monitors are better for coding. I say bullshit. If your function is exceeding 1080 points high, write shorter more self contained functions.
Agreed. A six-line function will very rarely have any bugs, and if there are any they'll be easy to find in code review and testing. A 12-line function is almost as reliable. A 200-line function normally has multiple bugs.
The reason is that human short-term memory can't hold and process more than about 6-12 items at once. Once