Screen sizes

[MikalE]

I'm sitting here this morning drinking my coffee and have three Thinkpads on my desk on turned on.

My prized A31p, my hot rodded T520, and my near mint Super T500.

As I look around at the displays my eyes gravitate towards the T500 every time. I can't believe the real estate of this screen compared to the other two.

It makes me not even want to use the T520, and prefer even the A31p screen size to the T520. The height of the A31p screen is nice, but it doesn't have the width of the T500.

What the heck is wrong with Lenovo eliminating the screen size of the T500 era computers??? What were they thinking? Why is that extra inch they carved off so darn important that they would sacrifice that much real estate on a display?

Rant over.

[dr_st]

What the heck is wrong with Lenovo eliminating the screen size of the T500 era computers??? What were they thinking?

It's nothing specific to Lenovo. Everyone went the same route, except Apple, which has always been different.

[RealBlackStuff]

It's because the unwashed masses wanted to watch movies on their laptops, that 16:9 became so popular.
They should have limited that 16:9 to consumer laptops, and keep 16:10 for business laptops.
But all computer companies are ruled by short-sighted penny-pinchers, who want to save everywhere they can.

[cadillacmike68]

T510 or earlier for a 16:10 screen.

But neither has built in USB3

[MikalE]

The screen size of my T510's is not the same as my T500.

[cadillacmike68]

They are both 16:10 ratio, at least that's what I thought.

[ThreeIguanasPerSecond]

It makes me not even want to use the T520, and prefer even the A31p screen size to the T520. The height of the A31p screen is nice, but it doesn't have the width of the T500.

...and it doesn't have the width of your T520's display panel (heh, the catch is that it applies only to the low-end 1366x768 panels). it's a just matter of trade-offs. exaggerating the difference doesn't make it true, does it?

you can rant all you want about how 1680x1050 beats 1600x900, or 1920x1200 beats 1920x1080. however those were old display resolutions in the past, so why exactly are you ranting about old panels beating old panels? you do like height (and width to some extent), so why don't you get a reasonably modern laptop with a 2880x1620 display panel? or a laptop with a 3840x2160 display panel? what makes it so, so very difficult to simply switch to a machine that has what you desire most at the moment?

Why is that extra inch they carved off so darn important that they would sacrifice that much real estate on a display?

that much? you call it that much?

if we were to head back a decade ago, where most high-end laptops came with either 1920x1200 or 1920x1080 display panels... it's really trivial. you do lose 230,400 pixels, but in the end, it's simply 120 horizontal lines that has been lost. it's TEN PERCENT of HEIGHT that you lose, and from the way you phrased your opinion, it seemed like they ripped off more than 10% of the height available. am i not wrong to assume that this is just pure exaggeration over something minor? or do i simply lack the mental gymnastics required to understand that losing 10% of height is unacceptable?

[dr_st]

They are both 16:10 ratio, at least that's what I thought.

No. T510 already changed to 16:9, unlike T410.

[MikalE]

It makes me not even want to use the T520, and prefer even the A31p screen size to the T520. The height of the A31p screen is nice, but it doesn't have the width of the T500.

...and it doesn't have the width of your T520's display panel (heh, the catch is that it applies only to the low-end 1366x768 panels). it's a just matter of trade-offs. exaggerating the difference doesn't make it true, does it?

you can rant all you want about how 1680x1050 beats 1600x900, or 1920x1200 beats 1920x1080. however those were old display resolutions in the past, so why exactly are you ranting about old panels beating old panels? you do like height (and width to some extent), so why don't you get a reasonably modern laptop with a 2880x1620 display panel? or a laptop with a 3840x2160 display panel? what makes it so, so very difficult to simply switch to a machine that has what you desire most at the moment?

Why is that extra inch they carved off so darn important that they would sacrifice that much real estate on a display?

that much? you call it that much?

if we were to head back a decade ago, where most high-end laptops came with either 1920x1200 or 1920x1080 display panels... it's really trivial. you do lose 230,400 pixels, but in the end, it's simply 120 horizontal lines that has been lost. it's TEN PERCENT of HEIGHT that you lose, and from the way you phrased your opinion, it seemed like they ripped off more than 10% of the height available. am i not wrong to assume that this is just pure exaggeration over something minor? or do i simply lack the mental gymnastics required to understand that losing 10% of height is unacceptable?

I'm talking about the physical size of the screen. I don't give a crap about resolution. I can make that anything I want within the limits of the GPU.

[cadillacmike68]

For me is it both. I like the larger overall screens so I go for T/W5xx and not T4xx.

But the aspect ratio is also very crucial to me with regard to working with any large spreadsheet. That extra 11% of highly usable vertical space makes a huge difference to me and many others.

[MikalE]

Yes,it does. I only know what I like, and not what the industry want's me to like with a small 15.6 screen that is so low that you have to scroll two pages for what you used to have to scroll one page.

I'll take a T500 screen over anything anyone else has produced since then.

[TPFanatic]

I am a T500 fan myself, but it's a shame the brightness, vividness, thickness, and power usage of the T500 screens are inferior in every way to newer offerings. I did an LED mod on one of my LP154WU1-TLC2s but it was a cheap one and ultimately more trouble than it was worth, and more damaging than beneficial, but at least the platform was useful to me even if just to experiment with. I'd already moved on to the likes of T420 and T430s with IPS mods, which are so much faster than the old Montevina chipset. The 2560x1440 mod for T420/T430/T420s/T430s is superior to anything I could plug and play in a T500, and I tried a number of screens. T500 is a remarkable machine, the culmination of the golden age (IBM-like) ThinkPad designs, but for a number of reasons it unfortunately does not age well. Two cores, two threads is now feasible for only basic tasks, either GPU is useful only for niche applications, it's heavy, batteries don't last long, hinges wear out quickly or get stuck, and the lid's magnesium cracks around the left hinge.

[axur-delmeria]

Someone succeeded in upgrading an R400 to a Q9000 by flashing Coreboot: https://www.reddit.com/r/thinkpad/comme ... d_success/.

It's possible that it would work on the T500 as well. That'll give some more CPU oomph.

[RealBlackStuff]

Like I have mentioned many times before, put a Sharp lq154m1lw2a or lq154m1lw02 in the 15.4" 16:10 machines, they are way better than any Lenovo-supplied ones.

[zoltan87]

It makes me not even want to use the T520, and prefer even the A31p screen size to the T520. The height of the A31p screen is nice, but it doesn't have the width of the T500.

...and it doesn't have the width of your T520's display panel (heh, the catch is that it applies only to the low-end 1366x768 panels). it's a just matter of trade-offs. exaggerating the difference doesn't make it true, does it?

you can rant all you want about how 1680x1050 beats 1600x900, or 1920x1200 beats 1920x1080. however those were old display resolutions in the past, so why exactly are you ranting about old panels beating old panels? you do like height (and width to some extent), so why don't you get a reasonably modern laptop with a 2880x1620 display panel? or a laptop with a 3840x2160 display panel? what makes it so, so very difficult to simply switch to a machine that has what you desire most at the moment?

Why is that extra inch they carved off so darn important that they would sacrifice that much real estate on a display?

that much? you call it that much?

if we were to head back a decade ago, where most high-end laptops came with either 1920x1200 or 1920x1080 display panels... it's really trivial. you do lose 230,400 pixels, but in the end, it's simply 120 horizontal lines that has been lost. it's TEN PERCENT of HEIGHT that you lose, and from the way you phrased your opinion, it seemed like they ripped off more than 10% of the height available. am i not wrong to assume that this is just pure exaggeration over something minor? or do i simply lack the mental gymnastics required to understand that losing 10% of height is unacceptable?

In reality that 10% loss in vertical space translates to quite a bit more workspace loss. Taskbar, window header, toolboxes etc. are all a given and reduce the useful space from the actual screen area where you do your work. So if you compare the available height of the actual work areas between these different aspect ratios, the 16:9 offering comes out a lot worse than it would first seem. One has to come up with all kinds of patchwork solutions for this situation, like making the taskbar hidden (I hate that), rearrange the toolbox etc. For many of us it's just way too inconvenient and a headache, especially if someone like me has a desktop setup with a 16:10 monitor, as the different layouts between systems would be just a source of constant frustration.

Also I never understood the screen resolution excuse: the fact that a modern 16:9 screen has plenty of vertical pixels, doesn't help much, as you can't go under a certain size with the displayed content, you will just tire out your eyes. I will admit I am somewhat unique in that I have pretty bad eyes, and get headache from screens easily. For me the 1600 x 1200 resolution on a 15 inch screen is the limit, anything more pixel dense than that is just too small, and have to adjust the sizing in Windows to compensate for too small objects and text. I envy those people who can work comfortably on a screen where everything is microscopic for an average human being.

[RealBlackStuff]

-You can move the taskbar to the (vertical) side.
-You can use Adblock etc. to remove unwanted images etc. from the page-header and make it narrower.
-You can untick some toolbar(s) in the View option of the browser
-You can use Ctrl-F1 to minimize the ribbon bar in M$-Office.
The above would give you at least 10% more vertical space.

[dr_st]

Also I never understood the screen resolution excuse: the fact that a modern 16:9 screen has plenty of vertical pixels, doesn't help much, as you can't go under a certain size with the displayed content, you will just tire out your eyes.

There are tasks that are more resolution-bound and others that are more screen shape-bound. This is not a "one-size fits all" or "bigger / taller / wider is always better" situation.