The inverter and LCD cable that I bought from Bontistic arrived today, and it took me two hours to replace the original UXGA-IPS LCD with the QXGA LCD that I had bought earlier. Take a look at a screenshot here. I'm using Win XP's default icon size, with the vertical separation set at 35. The pixel density is now 170.7 dots per inch!!!! Thank God I've been using my Dell Inspiron's 147 DPI for half a year, so I've had some "training" already. The sharpness of the screen is unreal. And with so much real estate, I don't think I'll ever need to add an external monitor to get enough working area. But just to check whether the video card can handle so many pixels, I've just set up my 24" Dell monitor as an second monitor, and don't have any problem at all. Think about it, I now have 2048x1536 + 1920x1200 = 5,449,728 pixels!

UPDATE: On 27 Jun 2008, I upgraded a T43p to QXGA!

Sweet! Congrats, PW! You have a really unique setup.

Instead of screen shots, can you take some actual pics showing your dell and the R50p nearby?

Wow!

I wonder how well Vista would adapt to such a high-DPI display ... any plans to try?

Some very high-res Wallpapers for your wonderful display.

Aren't you picky? LOL! Here you go. You can see five Internet Explorer browsers, each at XGA resolution. Three on the R50p's QXGA screen, and two on the Dell 2407WFP's WUXGA screen. The browsers look so much bigger on the Dell, which has 94.3 dots per inch.

Thanks for the high-res wallpapers!



That would be fun to try. I will try it when I upgrade to a bigger HDD. I'm sure it won't support Aero though, because I only have 128MB video RAM.

Thanks for the pic PW, this goes to my 'Oooh!' collection. I am very very impressed. Great setup, and congrats on getting this beauty!

Not so much for Aero, but apparently Microsoft put a lot of effort into making Vista's graphic elements highly scalable, and a 171 dpi display would be an ideal way to test that theory.

Hmmm, I wouldn't be able match that DPI even if I managed to find a 12.1" UXGA display for my X31 somewhere!

I love and am envious of your R50. What a great setup you must have going on. That screen would be great for development work.

RE: Aero. My GPU only has 128MB of Video RAM as well. Vista Ultimate with full Aero effects is working great. So if you have 128MB as stated above, then IMO you should be good to go.

Good point. I've tried that under Win XP Pro by reducing the resolution from QXGA to XGA, and it looks surprisingly sharp at this non-native resolution. You might think that's just because it's now using exactly four pixels in place of one, but reducing it further to SVGA (where it uses 6.5536 pixels for each pixel, on average), it still looks prett good, definitely better than viewing the original UXGA Flexview panel at SVGA. The result should be even better with Vista.

This QXGA vs. UXGA-IPS comparison reminds me of one thing: The viewing angle of this QXGA LCD seems just as good as that of the original UXGA Flexview. So, does anyone know if it's also Flexview?



Lenovo.com used to have a page explaining that 128MB (including HyperMemory) is needed for SXGA+ to WUXGA, but anything above requires 256MB or more. I can't find that page any more.

PW, this QXGA screen is a flexview. I don't have the link right now, will post it later ... but it is 100% a flexview.

Sri, thanks for the confirmation. Flexview and the super-high res make this the world's best laptop LCD!

I have been using this new display for about four hours now, at a distance of about 16 inches, and I am adjusting to the 171 DPI unexpectedly well. I think it's just slightly harder than my Inspiron's 147 DPI. Perhaps the Flexview helps. Having already gotten used to the 216 DPI of my Dell Axim X51v PDA probably helps too.

I think I should try the Sony Vaio UX series, whose 4.5" 1024x600 has 265 DPI!

UPDATE: I just opened a PDF and a few Word documents in addition to this web browser and quickly realized that even QXGA doesn't offer enough working area. So, looks like I still need the 2407WFP external monitor!

Yup it's definitely the world's best laptop screen, if not the world's best lcd for image quality. Congrats!
data sheet: http://www.idtech.co.jp/en/products/pdf ... 10m-03.pdf

I just noticed it says it weight double as much as the UXGA
2.2 lbs vs. 1.1 lbs

What about the thickness of the screen? Was it much different from the uxga?

Thanks for the info. It did feel heavier. The weight indicated in my signature, 6.91 lbs, was measured with the original UXGA panel. I will weigh the machine again when I have a chance.



I forgot to compare it with the UXGA, even though I was going to. I was too excited, I guess.

I really want to see one of these screens in person.

FWIW, I'm not quite sure if the R50's video memory is shared with the system memory or it is dedicated. Speaking that when the R50 was made and at that time having 128MB of dedicated video memory was a big deal and the fact that the R series was the budget machine, I'm guessing that the video memory is shared with the system memory. (That is my guess, really do not want to go look it up and make sure). So to run Aero at that high resolution might put on a big strain on the system. It would be very cool to see, but I think it would slow down the entire system since the video memory is working of the system ram (and the system bus to get to that ram). At a lower resolution, running Aero may not be that big of a problem.

This screen is definitely the best laptop screen there ever was, and I wish i could afford one before I go blind with age I think only the R50p was designed to take this extra-thick and extra heavy LCD (though I remember a pic that I saw somewhere where one user had put this in a T43p ... link here).

PW, I just read a reply in the forum where someone said this is a mid-glossy screen ... AFAIK, this is a flexview. I can't find the doc on the IBM website now, I had it bookmarked and it is showing an error now. I'll find it and post here.

PW, your next goal should be a T221 monitor!!

Finally decent display

Ah, the magic words from Puppy! I thought I'd never see this

The R50p's 128MB video memory is dedicated. BTW, the R50 only has 32MB.



I read about someone installing it in his T43p too, but because IBM didn't design the LCD for the T43p, I think one needs to get several weird parts to make them compatible. Besides, I had already owned a T43 before but not an R-series, and I really wanted to try something new. For these two reasons, I decided to try this display with the model it was designed for.



Thanks for reminding me of that super monitor. It's on my wish list!



These words mean a lot indeed!

Well, if you have about $800-$1000 to spare you can get a Panasonic rebranded T221: Item #300118272628

Beware of the seller though, just 1 feedback, but he mentions he has 20 of these. Cheapest starting price I have seen for this model on ebay.

One just needs to be patient. I saw a good-condition one on eBay about a year ago with a BIN price of $300-ish.

He exhanged a 15" R50 lid onto a T43p base. The problem is that the screen ought to be thicker. And when i opened up my T42 lid to change the LCD, there really is was NO space left between the lower bottom and the lcd when the LCD is installed.
But now i see from the datasheets that the QXGA is definitely thicker than the SXGA+ and UXGA.

My goodness! That's immoral!

That's an amazing sight.

I just bought a 570E yesterday and took a photo of it and the R50p together:
.

The 570E has a 13.3" 1024x768 display (same as the 600 series). Comparing the size and spacing of the desktop icons gives you an idea of how small things look on the R50p's 15.0" 2048x1536 screen.

I have noticed one problem with having so much real estate, especially when I use the WUXGA external monitor in conjunction with the R50p's QXGA: it's hard to find where the mouse pointer is!

I'd get lost in there, forget about the cursor.

It's beautiful. Thank you so much for sharing.

That is a fine piece of artwork and shows what IBM/Lenovo can do.

The R50p was not a budget machine at all - it's essentially a T41p in a case big enough to handle a huge and heavy LCD.

Pop a Pentium M 2.1GHz CPU, 2GB RAM and a 7200rpm drive in there and fly away.

Complete these upgrades and you'd deserve the upgrade of the year award. That's one fine TP.

Although I really have no idea if (and when) I would make such a change, but would a QXGA, UXGA or SXGA+ flexview fit a thinkpad R60 non-flexview? Is there anything else that would need to be replaced? What's the cost?

I'm also wondering if the font-scaling in windows vista works nice on such an amazing screen?

I don't remember where I found the link and don't know if there are any alternatives but a program like Splitview will work very nice on such a huge screen I think. (I'm trying it out on SXGA+ for the moment)

I would like to know the answer to this as well, because if that's possible, I would like to buy Yak's excellent R60. Can someone please answer this question for us?

The T4x/R5x series flexview screens will not fit the T60/R60. I checked this a while back and according to the HMM, the cables as well as the cable connector positions are different - it is not physically possible to use the connectors.

Here are pics from the HMM that I found:
http://plaza.ufl.edu/psrivats/T42.JPG
http://plaza.ufl.edu/psrivats/T60.JPG

Note the parts that I highlighted in red, you'll see the differences.

Thanks Sri for taking the time to get those images. I looked at the R60 and R50p HMMs too and analyzed those diagrams closely, but they are so simplified that it's impossible to tell if the connectors are the same or not.