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Are Widescreen Laptops Dumb? (theverge.com)
"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?
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.
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Let's get it vertical!
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.
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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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.
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I'm currently using a 16:9 screen with the Windows taskbar underneath, at the top the window title bar, the Firefox menu bar, a tab bar and the address bar. It does not seem tight at all.
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Widescreen works for me.
I donâ(TM)t get all the complaints about widescreen - being able to naturally put two things side by side is super useful. In fact, most people who get a second monitor put it... right beside their first one. Why? Because itâ(TM)s more natural to us to look side to side than up and down.
I 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. The wide monitor gives you more room to put your documentation or header file next to the code youâ(TM)re working on.
I look forward to buying myself an ultra wide 34â screen soon!
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tl;dr: The answer is always no, except in this case, where the answer is yes.
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.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
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I've been saying from the start that 4:3 is a much better fit for getting actual work done, especially on a laptop. Well, maybe not if all you do is watch video and (ab)use spreadsheets. Meaning that laptops are still being designed for suits, not for getting work done. For writing code, text, or any number of other things, height is much more important than width. So might as well focus on vertical pixels and keep the horizontal pixels down a bit, so the laptop can be smaller.
And put in a decent keyboard with a trackpoint while at it, thanks.
With a widescreen hotizontal screen, I can have 2 things side by side.
With widescreen laptops, there's generally also space for a full(ish) keyboard and number pad on the attached keyboard
The submitter, with his/her whinging over "trying to keep things minimalist" is exactly the reason human/computer interfaces (including 16:9 glossy screens on work computers) are so abysmal today. Form doesn't follow function but rather hip design trends or splashy first-impression shininess whose uselessness becomes painfully apparent after their first few minutes of use.
So the justification that a wide screen is dumb, is because the content isn't widescreen.... except it's general purpose computer and the content on the screen could literally be anything... It could be a video, that is the same aspect ratio as the screen... or it could a tall narrow stack of code...
So let's forget about content, because that could be anything.
let's look at form... what do we need for a laptop? A keyboard is key... those are wide and short, like 15:6 aspect ratio... we'll need a mouse interface, so we can stack that under the keyboard to get a slightly better aspect ratio... and then once we have that part built, we'll slap on a screen that will cover the whole thing.
Aw crap, people want a full keyboard, with number pad? well that's like a 25:6 aspect ratio... a touch pad isn't going to fix that up... we could put a lot of dead space in there by they want them smaller and lighter... we'll just make the screen wider!
And that's how laptops are designed, and if you don't like how a webpage looks on a screen like that don't buy a laptop like that or don't go to webpages like that...
Right now, my laptop has 2 inches of plastic on top and bottom, that instead could be part of the screen.
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.
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It should be 16:10
golden ratio is about 1.61803
I have a 4:3 laptop. I like its display height, and its device width. If I wanted to buy a new laptop now, I'd have to get a wider screen, leading to either a wider (=bigger) device, or less display height, both of which won't be an upgrade.
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 happy with a 16:9 screen, so long as screen size is adequate. My last few laptops have had 17" screens, and I wouldn't buy smaller for myself. By work laptop is a 15" screen and I don't see the 16:9 screen as being a problem at all. I have 2x21" 16:9 monitors plugged in to the dock at work, though (so I use all 3 screens), and typically use a 21" 16:10 monitor at home with it. But I always use the laptop screen too, though typically just for reading emails.
Depending on what I'm doing, a bit more height would sometimes be nice (when reading code). Or sometimes more width (when having 2 documents open side-by-side on the same monitor). But on the whole, I've no issues with 16:9. I actually seems a good compromise.
I have a 16:10 monitor at home, and I don't really notice much of a difference from 16:9. 4:3, to me, is unusable these days.
(but I still really really want a 16:9 phone 6" premium phone again)
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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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I'm honestly surprised side tabs don't seem to be more popular or more widely supported, especially for widescreen setups. Something like what is offered by the Tree Style Tab extension on Firefox (or really just 'flat' sidewise tabs really should be a native option, or less of a kludge than it currently is for Chrome.
It's likely just a personal taste but it seems to make things far less cluttered and provides a main window closer in shape to the traditional 4:3 proportions.
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 ref.
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Can I just tell websites I have a 20:9 on my 16:9 so it'll push all the trash on the side of the screen out of sight?
Most modern applications and operating systems don't use static window layouts. If you resize a window horizontally, it will reformat the content to fit the extra space, because the window manager knows how big the display is, and the application knows how big the content is. And, if you're watching a widescreen format media (which basically everything is unless you're watching a VHS transfer from 20 years ago), then it naturally fits the display.
Except for Slashdot, where giant ads that create massive whitespace on the right side of the comments section; but that's not on anybody but Slashdot - their shit CSS and apparent lack of enforcing ad size boundaries.
In the summary, they used the phrase "as if that wasn't all enough" and my first thought was "enough to what? Not make a point?"
Oh no, applications and web sites have to actually pay attention and realize that all display dimensions aren't 1024x768 any more. Or, If you do have badly behaved content, you can have two windows next to each other because we also can have more than 512MB of RAM. Welcome to 15+ years ago. Let's not even get started on multiple displays - HOLY SHIT MY DESKTOP IS 10240 PIXELS WIDE AND ALL OF IT IS USED UP BY HORIZONTAL CONTROLS BECAUSE A DESIGN GEEK SAYS SO.
Nope - I'm just fine with the wide displays I've got, and it makes the notebook easier to carry with one arm, as it fits nicely between the elbow and wrist.
Slashdot still doesnâ(TM)t support Unicode after it was added to the HTML standard in 1997.
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 virtual desktops (a total of TWENTY FOUR virtual desktops) is absolutely fricking awesome.
on virtual screen (2,1) i currently have SIX 80x60 xterms stacked up 3x2 with about an inch to spare below them. those only take up less than HALF of the left-hand screen real-estate. to their right i have TWO web browsers open at around 1100x800 (chromium) and 1100x700 (firefox) below that. i still have 35 pixels below those two, to fit two time-displays (xclock set to HK/TW time and another one for GMT).
this does however mean that i am sitting approximately a maximum distance of 11 inches from the screen (with short-sighted glasses *removed*) otherwise it is flat-out impossible to read the text. surprisingly however you get used to reading insanely-small text... which is *supposed* to be "retina quality"... very very quickly.
message to product development management weenie types: not everybody is a mindless movie-junkie-zombie "consumpty-numpty"...
at work I've got three widescreen monitors - all of which I've configured as vertical monitors.
Overall it gives me roughly 4k resolution (and similar aspect ratio), but usability-wise my scrolling is far more effective. I rarely need to scroll horizontally, so seeing more vertical code in the same window is far more useful.
The only sucky part is that the windows shortcuts are designed for horizontally oriented monitors (splitting a screen in half width-wise with CTRL+Left makes sense when you've got double the width, and CTRL+Up is assigned to maximize, and there's no concept for "split vertically").
but i won't dare switch back, and I've even managed to convert one of my coworkers.
The only real choice for a tall/square Windows laptop is a Microsoft Surface.
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.
Ken
16:10 was a much better aspect ratio than 16:9 for just about any workload - including movies. It's all about marketing - the less square the aspect ratio, the fewer pixels you get for the same width (e.g. 1920x1200 vs. 1920x1080, or 3840x2400 vs. 3840x2160) and diagonal size, the two main metrics by which screens are marketed. The manufacturer gets to sell you fewer pixels, resulting in better yields, and less surface area, resulting in lower cost to them, all while getting to charge you a higher price because the numbers look the same or better. This is in part why now, after a few years of manufacturers having shaped the market by making 16:9 the norm, we are now seeing an increase in ultra-wide screens which take this to the next level.
What I prefer is as much of a screen estate as possible. A phone is used vertical, as PC and laptop is horizontal. A tablet could be used both ways.
I liked the 1920x1200 I used to have. I now have 1920x1080 and it is not that much different. I personally rather have 3 screens at 1920x1080 than one screen that is 5760x1080, but that is because I see each screen as a different workspoace. That way I can watch a movie on one workspace and still use different workspaces on different screens.
As I am not a gamer, I do not notice the difference between 1920x1080 and 4K. Others might, but I do not. I will also never say that others must work the way I do.
So the questions comes down to opinions and like assholes, everybody has one. Unlike assholes, I have more than one and do not think that a default aspect ratio is a solution for me for everything. Even my phone I sometimes use in portrait and sometimes in landscape, so the aspect ratio changes in a per user case.
At work I have one monitor in portrait and the other in landscape, because THAT makes me do my work better.
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> 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 you go past 12 lines, the programmer and reviewer have to mentally chop it up into multiple sections anyway, they can't mentally see the entire function *in all it's detail* at once. That creates bugs, and makes some of them hard to see.
Of course there are some exceptions, such as tables, lists of homogenous items.
As a long time hater of almost every turd Apple craps out, I'm going to give them some props here. 16:10 is in my opinion the way to go. It's perfect to split in half if you'd like to use two windows at a time. I often have source code open on one side and a result display on the other. Yes, I do multiple monitors like everyone else, but having two windows perfectly laid out on the main screen is still very useful. I do it every day. I'm using a decade old LG 30" panel that I paid through the nose to get when it was new. My side monitors are 16:9 because I couldn't afford to get two more proper 16:10 displays. How I wish they were 16:10 though. Also, as others have mentioned, you can rotate the monitors so they are vertically long instead of wide. This again is perfect for normal document reading full page. Yes, you can scale a doc to fit 16:9 or some other oddball aspect ratio - but it doesn't work out quite right and results in a frustrating experience. Anyone who thinks they like 16:9 and haven't tried 16:10 I highly recommend giving it a shot if you get an opportunity. I would lay down hard currency that you would change your mind after even a few days.
So, in this case, good on apple for giving their customers a better option. I still won't be buying one, but they did something right here for sure.
With a widescreen laptop, you get a numeric keypad. With a numeric keypad, you can play Nethack efficiently. What more can be said?
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.
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.
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My company's stupid IT department has decided that brand new 20" widescreen monitors must replace aging 20" 4:3 monitors. I have fought off all attempts to replace my monitors, so far. I like to be able to read the text on the screen, even if it is a little bit more pixelated.
If you're running at the same resolution as your desktop, then you have the same amount of "content" on screen; it's just smaller by way of the smaller form-factor. This is a completely made-up complaint.
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 like the best, screens are getting wider and wider.
Personally I hate that, but it's hard to make your your voice heard in the market if there's only very little choice when it comes to 4:3 or 3:2 or even just 16:10 screens.
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 misses the big picture.
I do have and use my laptop when I need to travel or in metings but for most of the work I do there isn't a laptop made with enough screen real estate to really be efficient. Minor difference in aspect ratio just really aren't all that important. 16:9 or 4:3 doesn't make a meaningful difference in my work flow. What I actually need is the ability to open and use 3-4 (or more) windows at a time. For example this morning I had some work instructions I was creating, our inventory system, a tooling database, and a customer drawing all open at the same time and I needed data from each. Trying to switch between these documents on a tiny 15" screen would result in a huge negative impact on productivity for me. Now your workflow might be different and that's fine. Some stuff I do can be done very efficiently on a laptop - I don't need multiple windows to email.
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.
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 is because the keyboard needs to be wide and the clamshell styling means the screen protects the keyboard. Trackpads suck, and so they've been getting shrunk and phased out in place of touchscreens. Naking the keyboards less deep, and the screen aspect ratio has gotten wider and shallower to cover the shrunken keyboard.
It's kind of a sucky legacy format, but clamshell laptops haven't totally disappeared because Google's tablets largely suck with Android being optimized increasingly for phones (512MB stupid!) to the detiment of tablets. Chromebook/Android mashup failed. And Google will reshuffle the idiot who did that, ditch his 512MB 'Go' phones and hopefully Androids shortcomings will be fixed then.
I've used 4:3 until they were available, then in the last 5-6-7 years used 16:10 (Thinkpads T420/520), and a few months ago I was able to get a T60p (4:3) with a new motherboard that some enthusiasts at 51nb.com are developing (codename "T70"). What I do is sysadmin work and some development, and I'm definitely NOT going back to 16:10 or 16:9, this is just better.
I thought I was alone on this one. I can't stand these wide-screen displays on laptops or even computer monitors. The FEW times I watch movies on them, I don't care about the "distracting black bars" at the top and bottom. MOST of the time I'm on the computer, I'm doing WORK which means READING and WRITING. I prefer working top to bottom without having to constantly keep scrolling.
If I want to watch a movie or a show on the computer, I'm more than likely to plug in an HDMI cable and watch it on my 65" television, not on my 15" laptop screen.
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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?
Paul Thurrott wrote an article about his love of 3:2 displays a few weeks back: https://www.thurrott.com/hardw... (Premium, requires membership to read the full article)
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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.
A lot of complaints when there is a solution.
Move the taskbar to the side!
I have moved mine to the right (I like the clock/systray more than the Start-button) after Windows 7 came out stealing more vertical screen real-estate.
Granted, with all useless ribbon-interface and moving to 16:9 there is less and less usable vertical space.
(Not to mention all websites starting to use "fixed" in their CSS for menus......but that's for another thread)
i am on the hunt for one of those rugged outdoors type of cellphone with physical buttons, no touchscreen, but it has a flashlight, and a BIG 10000 mha battery that can last a month before recharging
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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.
I've been putting the Taskbar on the right side of the screen for as long as it's been possible to do. Part of it stems from using Linux in the mid 90'S and I would set up multiple virtual desktops and that's where I happened to place the controls for it. Then when I went to multiple monitors it made even more sense because it would place the start menu along the right side of one monitor and just to the left of the other. When wide screen monitors were sold it allowed me to make the Taskbar a bit wider, which meant I could put more stuff in it and still be able to read a bit of text.
I've been using tree style tabs for a very long time too. This places the tabs along the left side of the browser. With a 16:9 monitor I was able to make this wider to.
Perhaps the author should stop using a wide format monitor like it's a 4:3 and these will become non issues.
I suppose 16:9 works well if you are consuming or producing media in that format. However for most productivity apps like wordprocessing or coding, I would rather see more vertical pixels in order to display more and scroll less.
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 have done with it.
Yes, I have a 17" widescreen laptop. Yes, I watch movies on it. Yes, I take it on planes and carry it around with me (have done for the last 10 years). No, it's not a big deal. But squinting at anything smaller is a complete waste of time.
While I agree with the premise of the original post for consuming a single piece of content, in the work environment I frequently have two documents open at the same time - A web page and a word document - two spreadsheets, or whatever. In this case the wider display acts more as two portrait displays built in to the same laptop. As long as the screen is large enough and the resolution is high enough, it means that a significant amount of both documents can be seen, read and worked on comfortably.
If the original author doesn't like scrolling, there is no good reason to display a document zoomed to the whole width of the screen unless the screen is very small. I already have an external (also widescreen) display when I use my laptop at work, which means that I can happily have three or four things open at once.
If I had to go back to a 4:3 display, especially when using my laptop away from my desk, I'd find it very, very difficult to efficiently display two word documents. Either side by side with incredibly narrow windows, or above and below windows which exhibit all the problems of wide displays discussed in the original post, but with things like the chrome duplicated, causing even more of a letterbox problem.
Wider is superior.
When all you think about is the UI you have already defeated yourself. Wide screens are about productivity. Having 2 documents/webpages/pdfs/etc... open side by side is how the far majority of the people I know "use" their laptops/computer monitors.
Bookmark bars are for noobs although I will say I do keep my windows task bar always visible.
So yes, wider is always better, and yes, "That's what she said too."
10:1
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?
It was Hollywood movies that started with a wider format, and it reached the 70 mm film format and went for this wider format.
Cathode ray tubes and TVs based on them would like to show a circular picture if they can get away with it. The best they could come up with as a kind of circle doing its best to masquerade as a rectangle. Sony struggled so hard to make the picture tube with a strict rectangular picture. The shadow mask in color TV was absorbing so many electrons near the corner, accumulated charge and deflected the beam it was a night mare. Standard def TV based on cathode ray tube was nearly impossible beyond 36 inch screens.
With the hand held phones, it is so easy to go for wider format for video and portrait mode for text, it is evolving in that direction. Almost all the desktop monitor mounts lets you flip the mode. I use two monitors in landscape mode. But almost all my reports use one in portrait, for writing code and one in landscape to see the product/GUI.
If someone comes up with a clever clamshell for laptops that lets you choose tall or wide easily and quickly it would get some good market share.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
If you don't want to make a MAC with wide screen, don't. Stop trying to pawn your stupid ideas off on everyone else like they should agree by default and follow.
Some of us actually LIKE and USE Widescreens. We also use headphone jacks.
Now please, GTFO.
You don't use a computer at your job?
I may be in the minority in that I have my taskbar set to never combine or hide labels. I use the whole horizontal space - two lines of it, actually. If I put the toolbar to the side it would take up a significant chunk of the screen just to display the names of apps. The bottom seems to make sense to me. Unless you're on of those folks that has the patience to hover over an icon and click on one of the windows that pops up, I can't see why this isn't ideal.
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.
Please don't try to make your own personal needs and preferences universal, they aren't. There are good reasons for logic of UI. 18:9 if you don't understand 16:9, chances are you are not doing anything that suits it, so go with something else. Yiu already have choices. Your own personal scenario does not call for 'changing a standard'. Get over yourself. I smell millennial on this one.
I would prefer 4:3, but no one sells that now. I would pay extra for it if someone did. I like tall terminals and 16:9 is useless for that purpose.
If there is a best/universal screen ratio, it must be the Golden Ratio (1.618...:1).
Then this is the closest:
"Apple's MacBook Pro that has a 16:10 display"
Roughly 4:3. Beefed up to 16G RAM & 1T spinning rust (go pull that off with your bog standard Chromebook or your Strawberry Latte MacFail). Paid roughly 400 dollars. Debian GNU Linux awesome on top of this.
Happy as a clam.
Hello everyone. I would like to apologize for begin the raging asshole that I am. You see I am now undergoing a treatment program in an attempt to resolve my many issues. In going through this self discovery process I have realized that a lot of my problems, especially with my inadequacy, centers around the fact that I was repressing my homosexuality. I now know that homosexuality isn't bad it is just the repression of it and the problems that causes are bad. Most notably this repression caused me to act out at anyone who rightfully pointed out my failings. I realize now that so much of what I said was just wrong. I also realize that I have developed serious problems such as stalking, harassment, poor physical health, and feelings of inadequacy. To this end I would like to apologize to the entire slashdot community.
APK
P.S. => As part of my treatment I have been forced to read what I wrote and realize now that all the mockery and insults I received were fully justified... apk
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.
this is stupid, go fuck yaself
"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 even 13-15" laptops to watch movies, and - you know, based on those really-outdated organs our EYES and the really outdated bilaterally-symmetrical placement - horizontal format is a much better presentation medium in that case.
-Styopa
No disrespect intended, but I find slashdot as one of the worst "website offender". The "big orange ad" together with the browser tabs, floating headers, etc give about 3 inches of vertical screen on my macbook.
I can't 'page-up/down' to see the first headline.
So yes, "short laptop" combined with "greedy ad placement" (squatting on precious vertical real estate) makes things worse
I love the numpad, for games, and data entry. I rarely would consider a laptop that doesn't have that feature. So Numpad means more horizontal width on the monitor, but not a guarantee of large size.
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 to be awkward to type on.
One solution would be a detachable screen that could connect at either of two sides. There is the possibility of misplacing your screen, but on the other hand, it should make replacing a broken screen far simpler. That seems like a pretty ideal solution to me. Don't know if there are any out there. If not, there should be.
Pound! Bang! Bin! Bash! is this a shell script or a Batman comic?
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.
Just put your laptop sideways and BOOM! You have a 9:16 display that's a much better fit for websites.
#DeleteFacebook
They're only dumb if you work in a shop with coding standards that are restricted to 80 characters and naming conventions with variables that can be 40 characters.
I've had to move the Dock or Taskbar on my computers, and the toolbars in my applications, over to the left side of the screen to get around this brain-dead widescreen design decision. Even on the Microsoft Surface, which has the least-crappy aspect ratio of any computer on the market, I find that shoving the Taskbar to the left makes the remaining screen real estate a little more useful. But while these tools can be moved like this, they aren't designed to work well as a vertical strip (e.g. font pickers are unusable).
My Windows taskbar has been vertical, running up the right side of my screen, for probably a decade.
One of several reasons that Opera was my web browser of choice for several years was its native support for a vertical tab bar. I could have dozens of tabs open, and be able to see all of them, and read their titles. It was tremendously useful, while it lasted.
PowerPoint has started putting context-sensitive tools and controls on the right side of the screen instead of just at the top, and the slide thumbnails on the left.
Chrome now makes the status bar at the bottom of the window invisible - freeing up an extra line of space in the window - unless it has something important to display (e.g. when you're hovering over a link and want to see the URL).
Reading/comparing/referring to two documents side-by-side is pretty darned useful in a number of different contexts. (Of course then each application window has to have a sensible layout for portrait-oriented display, as well....)
Yes, it's an added burden for developers to have to consider how their application might be used on displays with different aspect ratios. That doesn't mean that they shouldn't do so, and especially not that they should fail to consider how to present their product on the most common format today.
~Idarubicin
The big problem with using landscape monitors in portrait orientation is that the sub-pixel anti-aliasing doesn't work correctly anymore. I'm not even sure you get vertical anti-aliasing when rotating a monitor (does any OS supports it?). Even if you do, anti-aliasing is needed horizontally.
#DeleteFacebook
Bah, get off my lawn!
Laptops started moving toward 16:9 ration when TV was going HD and moving from 4:3 to a wider format. We saw it first with consumer designed laptops and for awhile business notebooks resisted. But eventually the fix was in that wider was better so the 16:9 became the normal aspect ratio. Even today you hardly can find even a desktop monitor that isn't wide screen.
One can not escape.
On my desktop, I always INSIST on a pivot monitor. That way, I can rotate to the most appropiate form factor (16:9 when in excel, or comparing two documents side by side, 10:16 when reading a spec or writting a document)
So, I do not care much if the monitor is 4:3, 16:9 or 16:10, but I also preffer 16:10 in my desktop.
Sadly, my current desktop monitor is 16:9, but is the only pivot one I could find at the time in Venezuela (is not like we have much choice here...)
*** Suerte a todos y Feliz dia!
...ridiculously provocative headline. The Verge writer sounds like a UI wonk that can't fathom any setup other than 16:9 which was unheard of itself before the advent of streaming video. Power users will take all of the real estate they can get (like my twin 21" 1920 x 1080 monitors) to support having multiple applications displayed at once. It is a rare day that I don't have VS and SSMS up side-by-side for development. "One size fits all" assumes common usage parameters, and y'all know what happens when you assume...
My research says: y
Awesome setup -- keep that screen at arm's length (to keep your vision from deteriorating further) and you can always annoy the curious onlooker by "What do you mean, you can't see it, it's right there!"
Offer him your glasses if he still can't see =)
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?
I whole-heartedly agree. Menu bars were just fine, better organized, easily customizable, and didn't take up an inordinate amount of space. The "ribbon" format is still crap. I do think that it matters to a point where users think the tabs and chrome should be located. Whatever fits with the design AND provides the most ease of use for the bulk of your users is probably your best choice. The outlier users shouldn't drive design decisions. Neither should UI designers who don't take user needs into account (*cough* ribbons *cough*). That doesn't necessarily mean programming for the lowest common denominator. It's more like programming for the sweet spot in your user base that will get the most utility out of your product.
No, this is the one (and possibly only) time that Apple being about a decade behind the trends (as they usually are) is actually an advantage.
But anti aliasing and the truetype etc suck big time in Remote Desktop anyway.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
Because supporting multiple sized screens is so haaaaard.
(We are user design experts, why won't they believe that we know what's best for them?)
Size==Function
12"
Apple's original 12" laptop was the perfect travel form factor. It would fly, fit an aircraft drop down table space and slip into any briefcase.
13"
Apple's new ~12" wannabe is meh...compromising
15"
Apple's high end laptop 15" 16:9 offering is function over form for POWER users in Film, Photography, Editing, etc... its essential
4:3 Monitors
Desktop word-processing applications pretty much suffice on the gold standard business portrait 4:3 format
16:9
Desktop human factors tilt the 16:9 form factor in favor of larger is better on the eyes, your workspace and workflow.
I can function on a screen the size of Apple's iPad mini with a Bluetooth keyboard but its like scratching out code on a postage stamp. My productivity goes way down, workflow drops and works space evaporates beyond browsing
So people have complained a lot about the possibility of laptops becoming more like iOS, running one app at a time...
Then you complain about a form factor that is purpose built to better handle applications running side by side. HMM.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
hmmmmm The Screen Resolution on our Phones are Different.... Its the Laptops that are Wrong!
Those of us who do actual work on a laptop have to suffer, just to please those lazy bums who want to watch movies that fill the whole screen.
... I would say "yes".
The problem is with dumb users who are unable to reconfigure their desktop and move the taskbar to the right or left, or make it automatically hide.
When I had a job and a desktop computer, I turned the display to vertical (portrait) orientation. The Dell monitors had an easy pivot to do this. Much nicer to work on text, etc.
BTW, why do they always specify ratios as 4:3, 16:9, etc. It's hard to compare. Why not just reduce the fraction to a decimal? 1.3, 1.7, etc.
I don't read your sig. Why are you reading mine?
The closer you get to square, the more area for a given perimeter. I don't need side by side since I can just use multiple tabs. If I need to compare two somethings, I would prefer to use a tool to do it instead of my eyes.
16:9 has won, get over it. Just stop changing the number for the sole purpose of changing it. 18:9 smartphones are dumb.
But if you are NOT going to comply with the 16:9 standard, at least make it different enough. 4:3 would be fine, but don't do 18:9 or 16:10. The difference from 16:9 is not big enough to be worth not respecting the standard.
If you are still using a PC today then yeah, us pros are all laughing at you. Doubly so if you smugly run linsux on it.
I agree with the sentiments in many other posts that the market is geared towards "ohh shiny" types. I want a 16:9 or 16:10 widescreen MATTE screen, thanks. That's why I have yet to replace my 2011 Macbook Pro. I don't need the glossy, protective layer as I don't want kids so don't need it baby-proofed.
I'm sick of companies trying to use pointless metrics to determine what consumers want... they only made giant phones in the last few years and then use that "data" as justification for only making those because those are "all that sold." It's a self-fulfilling prophecy, and it's full of shit. (It's all bullshit folks, and it's bad for ya. -Carlin)
Also, regarding applications, I like tabs - but that's besides the point. I think I'm missing the point of this article.
========
77 77 77 2e 6d 65 6c 76 69 6e 73 2e 63 6f 6d
"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
What's distracting about a black bar that isn't distracting about anything else around an image? Screens are always surrounded by something. No-one complains at the movies before they find the ceiling too distracting.
systemd is Roko's Basilisk.
Does anyone really use the bottom for the dock? At work on Mac OS and at home on XFCE, in both cases I have that stuff over on the left edge.
Ok, that's just me, except when I look around at the other people at work.. docks on left edge. Everyone started doing that when monitors started getting shorter. Yes, monitors. These aren't laptops and even so, 16x9 is a common monitor size.
Minor point, I guess, though. Overall, the UI elements are otherwise stacked vertically, just as he says. But you have to use 16x9 because that's what all the monitors are, unless you want 9x16. ;-)
If you need laptop for regular work: spreadsheets, word processor, internet, File exploring, etc: a more 3:2 format would be welcome. If you need laptop for video-realted work would make a 16:9/10 laptop ideal. A 16:9 laptop for regular work, such as the Dell I received from corporate has such high resolution that I have to tune it down to 1360 x 768 so I can properly see everything in the screen. The fonts are SO small it makes no use having such resolution and a 16:9 screen. Let's reason it.
Snark aside, I move my taskbar to the side. Even on desktop systems. It helps and gets away from the "but there's nothing I can DO!" defeatism.
Yes, this is on Windows. Just move the damn thing already.
You know what else helps? A monitor that rotates and offers a portrait option. I have one of those too, but I must confess that I don't use it in portrait mode very often. However when you need it, you really need it!
Anyone notice System76 laptop options disappearing? 15" options are gone for certain models for example.
I ask because I was considering a purchase, but found I'd pondered my choices too long and while there are still 17" versions available, the 15" version I was interested in vanished (you see it in the summary, but not when you go to build and buy one).
I suppose this may mean new models are soon to appear?
... you can't watch a video without being distracted by a complete lack of content.
There is literally (LITERALLY) nothing there to be distracted by!
First modern laptop to have a different aspect ratio gets my money without question. They don't exist!
Yes, they do: the MS Surface Book has a 3:2 aspect ratio but they are not cheap (unless you compare them to a mac!).
I need a decent keyboard on my laptop. Keyboards are wider than they are tall. That is it really, seems pretty logical to me.
?
Honestly, if I could get large, hgh resolution monitors in 4:3 or 3:2, I would.
The problem is, the availability just isn't there.
As such, I'm compromised on pretty much all laptop purchases.
Yes, there's the Surface, but the Surface is compromised in ways that make it a sub-optimal choice for me.
For my desktop, I wound up simply buying 3 27" 4K monitors, rotating them into portrait mode, then merging the screens.
The result is actually a bit less than 3:2, but it makes reading EMINENTLY less "scroll-happy" than a widescreen.
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
16x9, commonly 1920X1024, may be fine for viewing widescreen videos but it's a poor geometry for getting actual work done. This has been true for as long as the geometry has been common, regardless of whether it's a laptop or a desktop. (I don't count tablets because there's not yet a good system for content creation through hand gestures.) At the default font, you often can't view a full page of text or a full web page, having to rock the page back and forth while you're working. This is ludicrous. The geometry is made for watching movies, and that's not the primary purpose of a PC. Or, arguably, a laptop, although I bet more people are primarily content consumers on laptops.
1920X1280 monitors are available, and I find them a lot more useful. You can see an entire page of text, or an entire web page if you don't have too much crap at the top of your browser. I don't know offhand if 1920X1280 laptops are available.
This has been true for a long time. Really, it's just now being noticed?
4K shook things up a little, as now even though the geometry is still sub-optimal for non-video work, at least there's enough real estate to get work done. I don't have a 4K tv -- I don't think it's that important. But I do have a 4K monitor on my primary workstation.
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
Are Laptops Dumb?
You're welcome.
4:3 makes a lot more sense for document editing and web browsing, which is what most people spend the majority of their time doing.
Widescreen ratios are great for movies and games. But I sure wish I could still buy a 4:3 monitor for all the time I spend doing things besides watching movies and playing games.
I like a wide laptop because it gives me a wide keyboard. A 4:3 display means a cramped keyboard.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
iPad Pro.
Combine this with whatever keyboard you prefer; personally I use a non-laptop arrangement (the amazing Microsoft Universal Foldable Bluetooth Keyboard), but there are laptop-style, hinged keyboards out there that are viable.
In general I find few limits to what I need to do, but much of my work is online or cloud-based one way or another. Short of the odd Vagrant box I could do everything with an iPad Pro and a Raspberry Pi as a local helper.
I like 16:10 even for desktops, and it irritates me how hard it is getting to find them.
They actually seem quite intelligent. Ask them out, spend an evening together, ask the right questions and you will know.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
#DeleteFacebook
I won't buy any desktop display or laptop less than 16:10.
I want wide. I also want tall. I'll take 4:3 over any of the wider choices.
When I'm watching video, wide is fine. When I'm programming (or any other kind of creative writing) I want lots of lines visible, so tall is better.
"Almost every wise saying has an opposite one, no less wise, to balance it." - George Santayana
> But does a 200 line function have more bugs than 17 12-line functions calling each other
Yes, significantly so. Because when the author or reviewer are looking at it, they HAVE to divide it into chunks that are no more than twelve lines. That's about how much human short-term memory can hold. In the 200-line function, each chunk uses arbitrary variables also used in other chunks, chunks that are no longer in short-term memory.
By dividing the chunks explicitly, on purpose, you decide which variables get passed where and make that explicit in the function call.
> Sometimes multiple function can make code harder to understand.
Once you have a dozen inter-related functions, that's a class or library. Your software then uses that class, and the three short functions called by main() can be understood (reviewed, debugged) separately from each of the library functions.
This argument was around 10 years ago when 4:3 screen laptops were still available.
16:9 are cheaper in several ways.
You get bigger numbers for marketing with lower screen area. 1280x1024 is a bigger, more expensive screen than 1280x768. 1600x1200 is similar to 1920x1080, but the numbers are much smaller.
Laptop widths are dictated by keyboard size too. To fill out a standard laptop width with a wide screen means you can have a smaller screen. The laptop base doesn't have to be as deep to match the screen either.
I have used 4:3, 16:10, 16:9 and 21:9. I prefer 16:10 because :
1/ It suits best my workflow (all windows maximized and vertically stacked).
2/ On laptops it allows for "bezelless" design and I hate big bezels. Unfortunately for me only Apple has 16:10 displays and I do not use Apple laptops because running Linux on those is real pain.
Yes, 16:9 Is a dumb aspect ratio for anything other than video or video games. But, then that's all some consumers care about.
I personally have a 4:3 display at my desktop, a 3:2 display on my surface pro, 3:2 ratio for all photography gear, and a 4:3 display on my latest android tablet.
It's not to please the lazy bums who want to watch movies.
16:9 laptops means smaller, cheaper to produce laptops.
For the same screen width, there is less screen area and fewer pixels. Cheaper and cheaper.
Screen width is determined by the laptop width, which also needs to accommodate a keyboard.
A 15" widescreen is wider than a 15" 4:3, allowing a more comfortable keyboard layout while also being cheaper. The backlight doesn't need to spread as far either, so the diffuser doesn't need to be as complex.
The base can also be smaller to match the screen, meaning the it's also cheaper and lighter.
"Watching movies" was the excuse. Cheaper is the reason.
This was debated 10 years ago. 16:9 was NEVER the right ratio for computing, it was simply easier for the manufacturers to produce one aspect ratio. Using the HDTV AR as as reason for productive work on a PC was always stupid.
I put together my own 1600x1200 laptop using junk Thinkpad parts off eBay. Don't settle for inefficiencies when the efficient versions are cheaper (also assuming the more efficient screen makes up for the time spent finding the parts).
It's really annoying that CRTs still have better resolutions than most desktops do today. Where are all the IBM T220 offshoots? Consumer displays haven't caught up to 2001 yet.
something that is missed in all of this is field of vision human eye vision is wider then it is tall the amount of effort on the viewers part to move the focal point of your vision is less side to side then up and down ( a large angle change will regardless of orientation will require some pan and scan ). This is why media has been moving this direction over the years. Maximum use of para central vision and maximum use of peripheral vision. The best way to look at it is siting to close to a screen or getting a TV or screen that is to large. You work harder and the experience is not better. As a connoisseur of odd screen resolutions 1600x1200 1920x1200 2560x1440 and now 3440x1440 I can hands down say wider is better at the correct viewing distance. I got 3840x2160 4k monitors to replace my 1920x1200s after holding out for years for a taller resolution and hated the screens not because of the height but because of the size to resolution 28 inch 4k is BS if you are over 12 years old. I upgraded to a 3440x1440 and its been the best viewing experience I can remember and the bigest screen upgrade I have seen since I went from a 1024x768 CRT to a 1600x1200 lcd. on laptops the wide screen was also the only thing that allows for larger screen sizes like 17 inches a 4,3 17 inch would be unbearable, and would never fit in a bag.
Why are we still having a discussion on screen size at all? Electronically painting a screen in some fashion is something we've been doing since the 1800s. Let's move on.
I'd rather portable computing drop the screen altogether and give me high resolution augmented reality. Preferably, it would render in my eye so that the highest resolution would always be concentrated on the highest resolution portion of my retina. I'd also prefer it to have some resolution spread throughout the field of view.
Then, if I won't to continue to pretend I'm looking at screens, no problem. I can virtually place screens of whatever size I want anywhere in my environment. Even floating in the air around me. Or, perhaps I'd prefer virtual sheets of paper that I could pick up and move around that just happen to be able to show live images in full color.
The point is, we spend vast resources incrementally improving a hundred plus year old approach that is already alright. Why not freeze it where it's at and shift the R&D to an approach for the next hundred years. There are so many billions involved in each new generation of displays that I'd bet it wouldn't take long to break free of displays being physical things. And now that I put it that way, I guess we've been using the same tech since we started painting the walls of caves. Really, let's move on.
I was frustrated by this issue several years ago when my work gave me a laptop with a small crappy low res screen.
I found my happy place by moving the windows task bar to the left hand side of the screen instead of underneath, and have never looked back.
These days I use multiple other add-ins to restore sensible behaviour to the windows interface, including 7+ taskbar tweaker, classic shell, custom AHK scripts, registry tweaks and other scripts that I need to install and follow every time my PC is rebuilt.
It is yet another unfortunate poison of the windows ecosystem that we now all have to deal with.
> 16:9 as the 'right' display shape -- allowing video playback without distracting black bars
It's funny, how 16:9 is often marketed as "not having black bars on movies"
Well, the fact is, MOST movies use even wider picture, thus still having black bars, even on 16:9. Most newer TV content is 16:9 though, obviously (along with direct-to-TV movies)
on virtual screen (2,1) i currently have SIX 80x60 xterms stacked up 3x2
For those of us who start having eyesight problems, and would prefer that going worse (staring all day at tiny letters will degrade your sight further rapidly), tiled xterms are a very bad idea.
I instead use fairly big font on maximized terminal, 10+ tabs on every monitor on every workspace, and switch between them (with two terminals visible at once because of two monitors).
But that means the physical aspect ratio matters -- ie, anything worse than 4:3 would leave me with an useless narrow "wide" strip. The primary monitor is vertical, but 16:9 is unfit for rotating thus it needs to be 4:3 (3:4) as well.
The creatures outside looked from Alt-Right to Antifa; but already it was impossible to say which was which.
I use my iPad to browse, so it's easy to rotate. Menus stuck, so I use Vivaldi on my 16:9 - and a mouse gesture takes all the tabs n stuff away (but not fullscreen). Maybe it's your OS succinct, not the display. I personally think laptops suck. I have a great cheap easier to switch bits ATX and the rest is tablets.
No, and you're stupid for asking.
One convertible laptop (I think it is the Surface Pro) has a detachable keyboard. No, not some bog-standard, optional USB or Bluetooth keyboard, an actual integrated keyboard, that is sold as an integrated system. I think the keyboard also extends the battery life, IIRC.
The original design idea was for a portable computer with both a tablet and a laptop mode. However if the screen could attach to the keyboard in 2 different orientations, you could have total flexibility. Screen in portrait mode or screen in landscape mode. Your choice!
Now I'm wondering if someone has already done this...
When I ran Windows at work (I'm a Linux guy) I kept the start bar on the right side. This made the main part of screen more reasonable in aspect ratio, and let me see more of the tab text. If you can accept that then the wide screen is not so bad.
J