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The End of Non-Widescreen Laptops?
Santi Onta writes "Today Lenovo retired the last NON-widescreen laptop they offered (the T61 14.1) from the market, and Lenovo is just an example (Apple, Sony, HP, etc. are the same). I understand the motivation behind all the laptop manufacturers to move to widescreen: they can still advertise that they offer 14.1 or 15.4 screens, but the screen area is smaller, and thus they save more money. Some people might like widescreens (they are useful for some tasks), but any developer knows that vertical space matters! Less vertical space = less lines of code in the screen = more scrolling = less productivity. How can laptop manufacturers still claim that they look after their customers when the move to widescreens is clearly a selfish one? I just wish they offered non-widescreen laptops, even if it were for a plus (that I'd be more than happy to pay)." I've always preferred the widescreen aspect ratio -- vertical matters, but having two nice wide columns always mattered more to me. Until this reader's submission, I hadn't realized that it was such a contested issue. Does this matter?
I suppose there are developers out there who develop primarily on a laptop. Shoot, I'm even one of them, since we only get laptops at my job.
But I have a docking station hooked up to a 19-inch LCD that I do almost all of my work on, and the laptop display is my secondary display I use to keep my documentation, watch windows, etc. on.
I would think that most developers either have this kind of setup or do most of their development on desktops, which are generally more powerful anyway.
My suppliers got problems getting the normal LCD screens ; they are all widescreen.
I've been forced to buy 2 widescreen LCD's because none of my suppliers could get me decent 20/22" non-widescreen LCDs.
Pretty annoying when coding overnight through a secure shell session, I must say...
--- I am known for the ones who want to find me on the net. Is that a privacy risk or a privilege? One might wonder..
they were the same aspect ratio as an HDTV.
One of our competitors trademarked the term "hypothesis". From now on, we will call them "boneheaded ideas".
I would much rather have a wider screen. Most coders have multiple windows open, and additional width proves more easy for me to use in that case. In addition, long code statements won't fit on a narrow screen and having to scroll sideways to read your code PLUS scroll vertically is a major annoyance. By going wide you removing ever having to scroll sideways - unless you're in excel. It's a big plus for me.
How many people actually write code, or for that matter, any long documents? It mostly about media now days where the ability to watch a wide screen movie is a selling point. And, wider screens are a boon to people who use graphics applications like Photoshop where the extra width gets filled with palettes.
Write shorter methods. That is all.
I wrote parts of this stuff
A commenter in an old thread had the explanation for this:
Widescreen monitors are about keeping the cost of LCDs high - providing a new "feature" that people have to pay for without actually providing any costly new functionality.
Some time after widescreen becomes ubiquitous you can expect them to reintroduce 4:3 monitors as the new thing.
What is the actual percentage of the market for laptops who are developers? The summary almost makes it sound like it's the entire user base and that manufacturers are ignoring a huge and important market segment.
It's not just a case of the manufacturers being selfish. It's a form factor issue.
The biggest limiting factor on a laptop's width is the keyboard. Almost everything else you can shrink and expand without limitation. Resizing the keyboard is not as easy. By messing with the layout you can add or remove a row of keys but that's about it unless you want to significantly shrink the size of the keys themselves.
Add to that the fact that every centimeter of extra screen height equals a matching amount of extra case real estate in front that can't be put to very good use, where as extra width lets you expand the keyboard outward.
So, if you want a more portable laptop any shrinkage is going to have to come from the vertical instead of the horizontal. Also, many backpacks/bags/slip cases have the laptop inserted sideways so one that is smaller in that dimension is easier to get at.
The percentage of coders in the over-all laptop market is probably less than 1%. The vast majority of laptop buyers want widescreen. The better question is why laptop manufacturers would create a line of laptops for such an incredibly small niche.
If you think there is a large market for coder/laptops start up a business yourself and make a killing. I won't be holding my breath on that.
If someone says he and his monkey have nothing to hide, they almost certainly do.
I'd think that the move to widescreen is global, and not reduced to laptops. Desktop screens in bigger sizes are only widescreen. I think 20" is about the maximum you get in 4:3. Even these are in very short supply. 22" and 24" are just widescreen, and of course I don't think we'll ever see a 30" 4:3 monitor, even if that were desirable.
I think the laptops are adapting to a general tide in the industry. It's probably not economically viable to keep making 4:3 screens. Also, the laptops have an easier time growing horizontally. You can after all offer a better keyboard. But vertically there is nothing you can add at the "other side of the clap" that has user value.
Rome taught me patience and assiduous application to detail. Virtues which temper the boldness of great, general views.
The form factor allows for a lot less wasted space below, where the keyboard is, for a device that's overall smaller and easier to carry and stick on small tables. This seems like it was written by someone who never actually carries a laptop around, or just lugs it between desks and plugs it in.
If you're only using it at a desk, why not just buy a desktop and a widescreen monitor that you turn 90 degrees, so you can get full page views? (Actually, there have been laptops offering detachable, rotatable screens, but they have not been that popular)
I just opened my Macbook's terminal window and expanded it to full size. Got 209x53. That's on a 13 inch widescreen, with OSX's nonremoveable menubar and other window dressing, Monaco 10 pt. Unless you've got a cumbersome IDE, is that really not good enough for coding on the go?
About the only place I see "Full Screen" (what a misleading name!) movies is WalMart. They've lost out on quite a few sales due to only having the FS version of a particular movie, while most other stores will only have the WS version.
The OP accused manufacturers of going widescreen to save money, but the truth is that the market wants widescreen because there is now so much widescreen content. 4:3 laptops just don't sell any more except to niche markets (pretty much corporate-only). Most corporate users are happy to receive a widescreen laptop or display nowadays for the "pseudo-dualhead" effect of being able to stack windows side by side.
retrorocket.o not found, launch anyway?
And I don't recommend that large a virtual display for general-purpose use; things can get "lost" in the corners ;-(
"My opinions are my own, and I've got *lots* of them!"
The amateur who says "vertical space matters" to developers, never ran a comparison diff on his code.
Side by side, my friend. Side by side.
"Flyin' in just a sweet place,
Never been known to fail..."
There's nothing wrong with widescreen. It's more suited to our eyes for watching movies, and it forces developers to consider how their app looks and feels when tiled on the screen and used in conjunction with other on-screen apps (ie, *gasp* multitasking) instead of being maximised all the time as if it where the only app.
Widescreen is also great for developers, artists, designers, writers, and many other professionals, since you can rotate the screens and get a vertical, page-oriented layout.
BUT, the problem is that rotation is rarely supported -- not on laptops, or on monitor stands. On graphics cards, it's "supported" usually, but without acceleration, which sucks. How hard can it be to rotate 90% before applying an operation on today's super-fast graphics cards?
I came here to say almost the same thing. 24" widescreen at 1920x1200 gives me room for four 80x25 terminal windows open with a large readable font, or if I want to I can maximize one terminal window and see almost forever.
I've never thought of a widescreen as a smaller version of a 4.3 aspect screen. I think of it as a 4.3 screen with extra space on the sides.
I suspect that a great deal of the argument about wide-screen monitors (even if not in this particular case) comes down to those who prefer working with maximised windows, so that the aspect ratio of the window is fixed by the screen, and those who loathe maximised windows and like to keep multiple windows open side-by-side.
There was a similar argument recently when the BBC redesigned their News web site. Half the visitors said "Hurray, the big empty space occupying half of my browser window is now a smaller empty space". The other half screamed "Now I have to make the browser window nearly the full width of the screen, obscuring the other windows I have open."
Problem solved my ass. Why should I use a bigger resolution in a tiny screen that will kill my eyes, then waste part of the screen because it's too uselessly wide? (And no, two windows of code side by side is not going to help much most of the time.)
I neverunderstood what's with this widescreen obsession. Just because a few metrosexual stylists decided the newest fad was to have widescreen screens, vendors have thrown actual usability and requirements out of the window. Text is harder to read when lines are too wide; browsers won't automatically columnize text (and it'd be kinda useless to do that); I don't need to have things side by side because I work in full screen; pictures and people accomodate better in 4:3 screens (and I don't know about theirs, but in my town, people is taller than wide); and most of all, the area of vision of our fucking human eyes is more similar to 4:3 than it is to that fucking stylist fad.
I was about to say 13256278887989457651018865901401704640, but it appears this number is private property.
Whining Dev: "Waaah! This 1280x1024 screen is too small! I can't see all my code on it!"
Manufacturer: "All right, fine, here's a 1600x1200 screen."
WD: "Wellll... okay, you live THIS time..."
DVD Watcher: "Hey! Why can't I watch my DVDs in widescreen on my laptop?"
M: "Fine, fine, here's a 1920x1200 screen."
DW: "Yaaaaay! And my desktop looks so much bigger, too!"
WD: "HEY HEY HEY! What the hell is this? My screen isn't tall enough now! I want more height so I can see more code!"
M: "But... but that's the exact same screen height you used to have and just bugged for a few minutes ago. It's the width that's-"
WD: "TALLER SCREEN NOW FOR I AM INCAPABLE OF RUNNING MY CODE EDITOR NOT-MAXIMIZED AND IT IS WHOLLY INCOMPREHENSIBLE FOR ME TO FIND OTHER USES FOR THE EXTRA WIDTH"
M: *deep sigh*
Demanding constant attention will only lead to attention.
I have been coding on wide screen laptops since long time , and I am totally fine with it , actually vertical scrolling is much easier than doing horizontal scrolling on the non-wide screens. When you have a long function name which requires like 7 parameters , each on is a structure with pointers ...you will appreciate the wide screen.
Also as a developer I need to open lots of windows at the same time , so I need a longer taskbar
What you should be complaining about is the inability of Windows and many of the apps to negotiate a dual-monitor configuration.
It's long past time that Windows and its apps got some standards of behavior in the multi-monitor world.
"We reject as false the choice between our safety and our ideals." --The American President (20.1.2009)
yes... am I alone on this? I find resizing windows to be a serious PITA. With the exception of my IM window, I never use a non-maximized window. I really don't know what it is, but I just hate non-maximized windows... Oddly, I don't mind windows that maximize to a non-full screen size.
Why kick against the goads of commerce and progress? Why complain about that which you cannot change? You are flotsam on the sea of technology...
Besides, my MacBook is pretty and trendy and makes me look smart.
Actually, I've come to like the wide-screen format for placing my IM buddy list on the left and OSX dock on the right. It works nicely. Code? Yeah, that's mainly what I look at all day. The center area for content and side areas for BS is the Slashdot model!
Actually... that's the point. Since Slashdot began its been begging for a wide screen monitor. The OEMs are finally giving into the Slashdot imperator by providing Slashdot-optimized widescreen monitors!
-- @rjamestaylor on Ello
Or, just turn OFF the greatest vulnerability of all time: browser scripting.
And watching a HD movie on my 15" laptop!?! Haha, what's the point? I'd rather watch it on something designed and comfortable for movie/TV watching.
So would I, but the conductor of the commuter train I ride got really upset when I used up a whole row on my sound system alone.
Christ, do Slashdotters never leave the house? Seriously, you can't think of a single place or situation in the entire world where it would be good to watch a movie, but you can't fit a 54" TV?
Comment of the year
Years ago, I remember the "Radius" monitors that were sold as higher-end displays for Apple Macs. They easily rotated the 4:3 aspect screen between a "portrait" and a "landscape" mode, and as I recall, the computer received a signal that it was rotated (mercury tilt sensor in the display, I guess?), so it would automatically flip the video signal to match it.
Seems like that whole thing never really caught on though, and I don't see why not? I'd love to have a wide-screen notebook that would allow you to pull up on the display to extend it a few inches from the notebook, and then let the user rotate it to portrait mode to read full PDF pages at a time and so on.
If that's too much to ask, at least I'd like to see more desktop LCDs supporting rotation. My Samsung Syncmaster 213T did this nicely, except you still had to tell the computer you rotated it afterwards. (Is it THAT much to ask to integrate some sort of rotation support with modern video cards, so a display being turned can tell the ATI or nVidia board you need to rotate the video display 90 degrees?)
Why are ACs allowed to post links anyway? That's just asking for abuse. IMHO, link posting should be limited to non-AC posters. ACs should be there for people to express their own opinion anonymously because of fear of repercussions, not provide links to other people's opinions. AC posts should be the exception, not the rule, and they should be a lot more limited than real account posts as a result.
On the widescreen thing, non-widescreen laptops are going away because of people wanting to watch movies in the car or on airplanes or whatever. That's the only time I'd ever watch a movie on anything other than a large widescreen TV....
Check out my sci-fi/humor trilogy at PatriotsBooks.
The problem is that the "widescreen" displays being offered are, by and large, no more wide than were your old displays. That's what ticks me off the most. 1280x1024 was a decent resolution a couple of years ago. But then "widescreen" came out and, oh, what do we have?
1280x900. Gee whiz, thanks! Since it's now clearly rectangular it's "wide", but all they really did was cut off one or two hundred pixels from your vertical rez. Exactly how did I benefit from this? Drives me absolutely insane. Finding laptops above 900 pixels vertical is quite a chore; I know, because I've spent quite a while pricing them out for work and I refuse to go below 1050.
I like my 1680x1050 screens just fine, but they still don't compare to the 1600x1200 screens of yore, which are nearly impossible to find these days. Sacrificing 80 pixels in the horizontal to gain that kind of vertical resolution is fine by me.
I realise everyone's needs and preferences are different, but I am so, so tired of manufacturers touting this OMFG WIDESCREEN garbage like it's the second coming, when in reality it's just as wide as it was before, and significantly less tall.
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