Confused About LCD Panels & Sizes

[ArtShapiro]

I'm the clown who ran over his T42 a few weeks ago, damaging the LCD panel.

I've been struggling to get the replacement panel working reliably; there's still some loose connection in the video that is resisting my debugging efforts. When the panel "lights up", it's beautiful, but then it suddenly goes almost-dark (while still driving an external monitor fine). Moving the disassembled lid or tapping the ribbon cable or tapping the screen will sometimes bring video back and sometimes not; other times it just pops on or off by itself.

I'm now starting to plan for the eventuality of not being able to fix the T42, and purchasing a replacement T6x (presumably) machine. And I find myself somewhat confused when looking at the Lenovo "Outlet" page. I suspect these are easy questions; I just haven't had to acquire this knowledge before.

a). I understand that non-widescreens are a vanishing breed, and this might be my last opportunity to get a sane display. The "refurbished" Lenovo machines are mostly T61s, and a mixture of machines labeled and not labeled as "widescreen", yet they all say WXGA or WXGA+. Does that automatically mean widescreen, meaning they simply mislabeled some of the machines incorrectly (i.e. without the "widescreen" description), or do I misunderstand something?

b). The "new" section on the outlet has a whole bunch of SXGA+ machines, which probably is what I'm after. Some are labeled "TFT" and others aren't. Is TFT a Good Thing or is it a Bad Thing?

Thanks for any guidance.

Art

[awolfe63]

All the T61s are TFT.

[ajkula66]

TFT = standard TN panel in plain English

Yes, a bunch of them are mislabeled in the Outlet, and you have to go by actual screen resolution to ensure that you're getting what you want...

And not to scare you, I've recently gotten a machine that was billed as WSXGA+ when in reality it was WXGA...so keep your fingers crossed.

[pxa270]

TFT = standard TN panel in plain English

Not just TN, all the common LCD computer display types (TN, IPS, MVA, PVA) are TFT (thin film transistor). Even some non-LCD displays like OLED use TFT technology, but in practice TFT is used as a synonym for LCD for computer displays.

[TTY]

...yet they all say WXGA or WXGA+. Does that automatically mean widescreen...

Any resolution starting with a W means widescreen.

Is TFT a Good Thing or is it a Bad Thing?

The fact that a screen uses TFT technology doesn't say much about its quality. There are good and there are bad TFT screens.

[SaberX]

Saw this on a e-bay page and thought it would help out on the screen sizes....
The "W" will stand for Widescreen.
Widescreen is 16X10
Standard is 4x3

XGA -> 1024 x 768 ,
WXGA -> 1280 x 800 ,
WXGA+ -> 1440 x 900 ,
SXGA -> 1280 x 1024 ,
SXGA+ -> 1400 x 1050 ,
WSXGA -> 1280 x 854 ,
WSXGA+ -> 1680 x 1050 ,
UXGA -> 1600 x 1200 ,
WUXGA -> 1920 x 1200.