Windows 8 and Screen Resolution: WXGA Still Most Popular

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%."

Comments

1366x768

[CyberK]

Also known as the cheap laptop screen.

Re:1366x768

[hjf]

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

[x0d]

That is correct. Older higher-end Thinkpads had like 1600x1200 or 1440x1050 even on smaller screens, like 14" and that was back in 2002-2003, so, by now everyone should have caught up as parts became cheaper(they did, right?). But it's 2012, and the standards haven't been raised by much. Maybe the arrival of the new iPad will improve things...

Re:1366x768

[amiga3D]

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

[Electricity Likes Me]

More to life yes, but I suspect in marketing to the general consumer "1080" is now a secret codeword. Hollywood in reference to HDTV and Blu-Ray throws the term "1080p" around as the thing you want. Hell, it "feels" nice when I think about it. So for the average consumer it certainly sounds good.

It's just you, and other posters are right: for general purpose computing, it's not really so good because in working with documents, web-pages etc. everything we do is much more orientated towards "tall" resolutions (i.e. we work with portrait documents, not landscape).

One of my brothers runs 3 monitors and he has 1 24" screen configured specifically in a portrait configuration for this very reason.

1366x768

[CockMonster]

I hate this resolution. I seems to me that screen resolutions have gone backwards, it's nigh on impossible to do any development with this shitty resolution. My old 5 year old Dell laptop supports 1600x1200 compared to my more modern Acer laptop despite the Acer having a far more powerful graphics card. It's not even a native HD resolution so your graphics card has to scale the 720p image up to display it on fullscreen... which totally defeats the purpose of 720p as the scaling hardware is probably crap. It seems to me that laptop manufacturers are shooting themselves in the foot with this crap.

Stop 16:9 displays!

[ArchieBunker]

Please stop it with these 16:9 ratio displays. I can't stand having a two foot wide desktop with 6 inches of vertical height.

Re:WTF is WXGA?!

[Mr Z]

1080p is a thousand times more descriptive than UXWVGA or what have you, because it tells you both the vertical resolution and the fact that it's progressive scan (the 'p') as opposed to interlaced. TVs only come in a small number of aspect ratios (4:3 and 16:9), so the horizontal resolution is implied by the vertical.

And to boot, the "GA" part, which has alternately stood for "graphics adaptor" (eg. CGA == Color Graphics Adaptor) and "graphics array" (VGA == "Video Graphics Array"), is just stupid. That video card names somehow became a handle for resolutions is just silly, since originally, all these cards were capable of multiple resolutions. (Ok, the MDA wasn't, but then the MDA didn't end in 'GA' now did it?)

I guess this all happened around the time of the second wave of "SuperVGA" cards. The first wave did 800x600, and the newer ones could do 1024x768, and needed some way to distinguish themselves. Once XGA came along, the alphabet soup resolution plague was here to stay.

Re:I'm surprised so many people have widescreen

[cpu6502]

Because they didn't break. Throwing-away a still working piece of equipment is what is filling-up landfills and damaging the environment. In addition to the 4:3 CRT and LCD screens, I also still use a TV set from the 70s, a second set from the 90s, a Pentium 4 computer, a Pentium 3 laptop, a Dolby 5.1 surround stereo, and 1987 and 97 cars..... rather than toss them in the trash, I just keep using them until they die. THEN I will upgrade.