When would Thinkpads phase out the 16:10 format?

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agarza · #1 Post by **agarza** » Tue Oct 27, 2009 10:40 pm

img]http://www.blogcdn.com/www.engadget.com ... resize.jpg[/img]

According to the leaked Lenovo roadmap, there will be new models with Calpella in January 2010. We were seeing already that the SL510 and SL410
sporting 'ugly' 16:9 panels which as we know that makes lose further vertical resolution compared to 16:10.

Last year I bought my T61 with 4:3 SXGA+ screen because I'm not a fan of widescreen laptops (16:10), but now the trend is moving to 16:9, hideous

Also, in the roadmap it seems the W500 will remain still the same, but when could we expect Lenovo to stop producing the last 16:10 Thinkpads, I might be thinking on getting a high resolution W500 if Lenovo finally decides 16:9 will be the new standard.

A shame

Karakasa · #2 Post by **Karakasa** » Wed Oct 28, 2009 2:47 am

Word up! Thinkpads aren't supposed to be mobile movie theaters. I start to get afraid that Lenovo will turn the brand into a consumer line after all.

mattbiernat · #3 Post by **mattbiernat** » Wed Oct 28, 2009 9:05 pm

that's why I ordered refurbished T60p with 4:3

i have X300 right now 16:10 and I have to say I never use lateral 20% of the screen, and i don't watch movies on it because the screen is really bad quality.

#4 Post by **jdhurst** » Wed Oct 28, 2009 9:08 pm

Karakasa wrote:I start to get afraid that Lenovo will turn the brand into a consumer line after all.

Microsoft is turning Windows into a consumer-only OS, so it all fits together. ... JDH

mattbiernat · #5 Post by **mattbiernat** » Wed Oct 28, 2009 9:40 pm

jdhurst wrote:
Microsoft is turning Windows into a consumer-only OS, so it all fits together. ... JDH

so where will businesses turn?

qviri · #6 Post by **qviri** » Wed Oct 28, 2009 10:00 pm

mattbiernat wrote:so where will businesses turn?

Chrome OS

ajkula66 · #7 Post by **ajkula66** » Wed Oct 28, 2009 10:06 pm

qviri wrote:

Chrome OS

And you're going to run Win 95 on your T60p, right?

No way any serious business is going the way of Chrome OS, for a variety of reasons. They'll just be sticking server versions of everything and anything MS-related onto laptops...

My $0.02 only...

agarza · #8 Post by **agarza** » Wed Oct 28, 2009 10:24 pm

But seriously, is anyone worried about the T410 not being 16:10, and losing more space?
I may get next year a WUXGA just before those dissapear too. But I don't dispose of big bucks.

ajkula66 · #9 Post by **ajkula66** » Wed Oct 28, 2009 11:13 pm

agarza wrote:

But seriously, is anyone worried about the T410 not being 16:10, and losing more space?

Getting worried about stuff like that doesn't pay. The direction in which Lenovo is headed has been obvious for quite a while, and it makes no difference what any one amongst us thinks about it...

That's why I'm building a FrankenPad capable of running a 64-bit OS and 8GB RAM while still having an IPS display...

If I were buying a new laptop these days, it would not be a ThinkPad, I'm sorry to say.

On another note, W500 is an excellent piece of engineering in my book. But the WUXGA LCD-at least the one I sampled-leaves an awful lot to be desired....

mattbiernat · #10 Post by **mattbiernat** » Thu Oct 29, 2009 7:10 am

ajkula66 wrote:
And you're going to run Win 95 on your T60p, right?

My $0.02 only...

hey i have very fond experiances with windows 95. it was the first windows that I have ever used and the first time that i touched a computer. and the first virus that i have introduced into my uncles computer.

#11 Post by **jdhurst** » Thu Oct 29, 2009 7:49 am

mattbiernat wrote:<snip>
so where will businesses turn?

That is a good question - one that I have not yet answered for myself. I do know I had to make major alterations to Vista Business to turn it into a business system and a I expect to have to the same for Windows 7. I am still working on a 4:3 (16:12) format on my T61p and I don't yet know what to make of the 16:9 format. ... JDH

skam · #12 Post by **skam** » Mon May 31, 2010 10:37 pm

I have two 4:3 UXGA thinkpad because i need 1200 vertical pixel to work.I do not like 16:10 buf if i will need buy a new thinkpad i will choose a W500 because have 1200 vertical pixel too.But now,the new W510 is 16:9! with only 1080 vertical pixel.W seris is to work not for watch movies.
Very bad Lenovo,very bad.

#13 Post by **underclocker** » Tue Jun 01, 2010 7:02 am

For me, it took going to a 15.4" WSXGA+ 16:10 display to find enough height and resolution to handle my daily work with comfort. That added a pound and considerable size to my "portable" machine.

I suppose there is a comfortable 16:9 LCD in the 17" size! At least we're getting a workout with all this innovation and progress. Maybe that was the plan all along.

#14 Post by **bill bolton** » Tue Jun 01, 2010 9:05 pm

skam wrote:Very bad Lenovo,very bad.

So who do you think you will be able to buy a laptop with 16*10 display from in the future, and how much of a premium will you be prepared to pay for it?

sanjuro · #15 Post by **sanjuro** » Tue Jun 01, 2010 10:26 pm

Thinkpads were one of the last to make the transition from 4:3 to 16:10. Likewise I expect the Thinkpads will be one of the last to go from 16:10 to 16:9, though the transition has already started in the L and 15" T series.

Since Lenovo has been a follower in the LCD transitions, it remains to be seen how wide spread the adoption of 16:9 screens will be in the small-footprint Thinkpads.

Apple, which was among the first to adopt wide screen format in notebooks, has elected to keep their macbooks at 16:10 even in their 15 and 17 inchers while adopting 16:9 for imacs with larger displays. They also elected to use 4:3 in their iPad. So this means that Apple has not seen the merit of 16:9 format in the portable computing (discounting iPad and iPhones).

Since Lenovo has been a follower in the LCD format war, it is not clear when Thinkpads will go 16:9 in 12", 13", and 14" formats. If they follow the rest of PC industry, next major redesigns will feature 16:9 LCDs in sizes smaller than 14". If they follow Apple, 16:10 may stay a while longer and there is a chance that even 4:3 format will make a return. It may well all depend on how fast LCD suppliers stop manufacturing 16:10's and whether new 16:9 notebooks like Thinkpad Edge are big sellers.

skam · #16 Post by **skam** » Tue Jun 01, 2010 11:33 pm

I don`t know bill,

I think to people like more widescreen ratio than standar 4:3 ratio likes the same 16:10 or 16:9.But another people prefer 4:3 like me.Widescreen ratio is best ratio to watch movies,but only for these.If i want to watch a movie I use my 16:9 tv,I don`t use my laptop.

TFT monitors have same problem.Before a 24" have 1920x1200 (16:10) but now a 24" have 1920x1080(16:9).There are less screem area.My monitor is a 20" ips UXGA too.

I would like in the future thinkpad come back 4:3 ratio with new OLED screem.This is my dream.

sorry by my bad English.

Navck · #17 Post by **Navck** » Sat Jun 12, 2010 8:49 pm

sanjuro wrote:Thinkpads were one of the last to make the transition from 4:3 to 16:10. Likewise I expect the Thinkpads will be one of the last to go from 16:10 to 16:9, though the transition has already started in the L and 15" T series.

Since Lenovo has been a follower in the LCD transitions, it remains to be seen how wide spread the adoption of 16:9 screens will be in the small-footprint Thinkpads.

Apple, which was among the first to adopt wide screen format in notebooks, has elected to keep their macbooks at 16:10 even in their 15 and 17 inchers while adopting 16:9 for imacs with larger displays. They also elected to use 4:3 in their iPad. So this means that Apple has not seen the merit of 16:9 format in the portable computing (discounting iPad and iPhones).

Since Lenovo has been a follower in the LCD format war, it is not clear when Thinkpads will go 16:9 in 12", 13", and 14" formats. If they follow the rest of PC industry, next major redesigns will feature 16:9 LCDs in sizes smaller than 14". If they follow Apple, 16:10 may stay a while longer and there is a chance that even 4:3 format will make a return. It may well all depend on how fast LCD suppliers stop manufacturing 16:10's and whether new 16:9 notebooks like Thinkpad Edge are big sellers.

Apple, like any good ENTERTAINMENT company has an exceptional marketing team. They are very capable of listening to the great whining on the internet for a 4:3 IPS screen and see that these people frankly don't give a (Word for: Excrement) about a quality product. Combined with their great capability to basically beat their suppliers as if they owed them lunch money, they will capitalize on people who really want a 4:3 IPS screen in anything.

However this doesn't mean you'll be getting a good product. Afterall, they are ENTERTAINMENT centric and not really a "hardware" company. Afterall, anyone can mill solid aluminum blocks, crank the reality distortion field and claim something like an ordinary iPhone screen has higher resolution than the human eye can perceive* (Realistically, for you photographer types, the human eye has in excess of a few hundred megapixels and incredibly high sensitivity with a fairly good SNR ratio too.) and market the product at their sheeple by shoving it down their throats.

Like any cutthroat ENTERTAINMENT company, they will use their marketing department to employ el-neato phrases like "We used electron microscopes to stare at the thumbscoop until it was perfect" while blatantly lying. This is however, a SUPERIOR method than lets say, actually putting work into your product in terms of convincing the unenlightened masses. Last time I checked, the unenlightened masses fell for 16:9 the moment their "slightly tech savvy but more like marketing targeted fool" and Apple rode that hard...

* http://www.clarkvision.com/imagedetail/ ... ution.html Please compare and contrast this to what Steveo has to shove down people's throats.

Remember, you could be using state of the art Roentgen LCDs miniaturized into 14.1" in 4:3 but LCD manufacturers frankly didn't agree with IBM, they did however, ride that little wave of shoving 16:9 down your throat and Apple joined in there because it is easier to market products than to improve them.

... Afterall, who cares about having a laptop design that has excellent thermal properties?

pianowizard · #18 Post by **pianowizard** » Sat Jun 12, 2010 10:21 pm

Navck wrote:* http://www.clarkvision.com/imagedetail/ ... ution.html Please compare and contrast this to what Steveo has to shove down people's throats.

Actually, Steve Jobs was more or less right. As you can see in that article you cited, the human visual acuity is "77 cycles per degree". In the scientific literature, I have seen lower values such as 60 cycles per degree but let's stick with 77 for now. The iPhone 4 has a resolution of 960x640 on a 3.5-inch screen. Based on my calculations, when this screen is held at a distance of 13.37 inches from a person's retinal cone photoreceptors (i.e. about 12.5 inches from the cornea), its pixel density is exactly 77 pixels per degree, matching our visual acuity. If the iPhone is moved beyond that distance, we would not be able to resolve every pixel.

What if we use 60 cycles per degree as our acuity? Then the iPhone 4's pixel density matches our acuity at 10.42 inches from our cone photoreceptors, or about 9.5 inches from the cornea. I can't speak for everyone but I happen to view my smartphones at about this distance.

skam wrote:Before a 24" have 1920x1200 (16:10) but now a 24" have 1920x1080(16:9).

There are pretty good 16:9 resolutions for 23" and 27" though, 2048x1152 and 2560x1440 respectively. For the 16:10 aspect ratio, 1920x1200 was the highest for both sizes.

I hope that laptop LCDs will soon have 2048x1152.

sanjuro · #19 Post by **sanjuro** » Sat Jun 12, 2010 10:59 pm

Navck wrote: * http://www.clarkvision.com/imagedetail/ ... ution.html Please compare and contrast this to what Steveo has to shove down people's throats.

Remember, you could be using state of the art Roentgen LCDs miniaturized into 14.1" in 4:3 but LCD manufacturers frankly didn't agree with IBM, they did however, ride that little wave of shoving 16:9 down your throat and Apple joined in there because it is easier to market products than to improve them.

... Afterall, who cares about having a laptop design that has excellent thermal properties?

Of course, much of what Steve says is B.S., I mean marketing. Still one has to give him credit for doing a better job than most techies in getting his designers and engineers to build products that people are willing to overpay. In the computing/technology area, no one has done a better and more visible job than Steve during late 20th/early 21st century.

This contrasts with the marketing from Lenovo on Thinkpads. Depending on the Thinkpad model, we may or may not over pay for it. Still some people grumble because LCD is not IPS, also it is not 4:3 or 16:10, or keyboard was redesigned. The fact is no "game changer" has come from Lenovo or others in a long time.

Navck · #20 Post by **Navck** » Sat Jun 12, 2010 11:38 pm

Actually Steve doesn't really make computing/technology, he introduces concepts that approach the closest ideal of the "iToy."

Frankly actual innovation comes from companies like Intel that push to get higher yields on faster CPUs.
Or harddrive companies, who try to give you more storage density for your dollar while making devices that last over five years.

Steve just makes something very pretty and uses his reality distortion field to make the public buy it. He could, with his RDF, sell the public gold foil Macbooks with Celerons and they would still sell like hotcakes. Why? Steve, charisma of Apple. There is no "game changing anything" from them.

However, with Thinkpads, they've been the first laptop to have:
Acceleration sensor that signals to HDD to retract head onto the ramp.
A capacitative type fingerprint reader intergrated into the laptop
First laptop with integration with HDD encryption
Useful tactile feedback on touchpad w/o extreme stiction (Sp) (Macbook touchpads)

And I could probably list a few more if I was sure of the items, such as various features to decrease the shock of the laptop hitting a table when placed down in an abrupt manner (The air-foot on the T30, the wavy feet to absorb some shock, the latter polymer-mix system used on the latest Thinkpads. Not sure if elastomer. The latter is a Lenovo, the former is IBM.)

Oh and the keyboards on Thinkpads have been the best keyboards I've used, next to my two Model Ms (Where the M13 is the only working one right now...)

And well, seeing Lenovo kept most of the design team or all of them so as far as I treat it, the same people are making the "same" Thinkpads, just with differences in how Lenovo wants them to make them for their target audience.

#21 Post by **JaneL** » Sun Jun 13, 2010 5:50 am

We are not going to have an Apple vs TP war here, and if I have to unpack my notebook to moderate this thread, I will use a scorched earth approach.

paul*robertson · #22 Post by **paul*robertson** » Sun Jun 13, 2010 12:19 pm

I'd be more concerned about the demise of the trackpoint in favour of touchpads.

Yossarian1 · #23 Post by **Yossarian1** » Tue Jun 15, 2010 9:18 am

If I were buying a new laptop these days, it would not be a ThinkPad, I'm sorry to say.

What then?

Marin85 · #24 Post by **Marin85** » Tue Jun 15, 2010 3:18 pm

I don´t believe that 16:10 will be phased out for the 17'' class. Lenovo, HP, Dell still keep 16:10 on their pro monsters although great deal of their smaller factor models were introduced with 16:9. I don´t understand much of professional photography, but my common sense tells me that a reasonable photographer would not trade vertical space for more horizontal space on a 17'' monitor. As for the mainstream W5xx and T series, 16:10 has already been phased out, so it is time to start asking when 16:9 is going to be phased out in favour of 16:10, and who knows, maybe 4:3

pianowizard · #25 Post by **pianowizard** » Tue Jun 15, 2010 4:31 pm

Marin85 wrote:it is time to start asking when 16:9 is going to be phased out in favour of 16:10

2.39:1 would be more likely. LOL!

sanjuro · #26 Post by **sanjuro** » Fri Jun 25, 2010 12:51 am

pianowizard wrote: 2.39:1 would be more likely. LOL!

In a perverse way, if 16:9 adoption were to happen sooner, then more of non-movie watching users of notebook will find out how little utility 16:9 screens have for everyday tasks. Then the pendulum will swing back to 16:10 or 4:3 format being rediscovered.

I also don't get the point of watching movies on 6-bit TN LCD's with terribly narrow viewing angles. I suppose that most people can't tell or care how bad their LCD's are on their notebooks.