T43 15" SXGA+ vs. UXGA - is it really worth it??

[ionak]

I'm having difficulty deciding between whether I should get the T43 with the 15" SXGA+ and the x300 graphics card or the UXGA with the V3200. Everything else is the same. The price difference works out to be about $400 and I'm not going to be using the machine for gaming.

Appreciate any advice

[anthony]

"Worth it" is a hard judgement to make. In an earlier post, I was assured that I would notice the difference between XGA and SXGA. I presume the 128MB UXGA be noticeably different too. You have to decide if $400 is the tipping point for you.

Personally, I'm torn between good enough at $1900 and for $2400 exactly what I want. So I share your angst.

On the other hand, it's only money.... they'll make more!

[dukajoe]

If you dont play games then dont worry about it, Unless you do photo editing, or just want to wow people with your awesome UXGA screen. UXGA is anoying if you dont increase your font size or use mozilla, in other words, you have to go a little out of your way to accomadate, but once I did that myself, I love my screen. If you do decide to play a game once in a while get the v3200, it is awesome. Otherwise, its not worth the money.

[emorphien]

UXGA has a number of benefits IMO....

You have a higher resolution screen, you can reduce it if need be (ick), or increase font/icon size and browser text size to make visibility better. But if you get the SXGA you can never increase your resolution.

It's ideal for image editing, and it is ideal for a lot of office work. You'll see more of your text document and more of your spreadsheet.

For gaming it doesn't matter so much, and before too long you'll have to run games on it at lower resolutions because it doesn't have the best gaming video card in the world, even the V3200 isn't that great.

Of course as mentioned if you get the UXGA there's more showoff factor as well. But to be honest who really cares about that?

[BachManiac]

sxga+ is also huge enough for playing and work...

[simscitizen]

I've worked with 15" UXGA screens (an A21p) 15" SXGA+ screens (a Compaq nc8000) and 14.1" SXGA+ screens (T43). My thoughts are: If you think your eyes are good, go for the UXGA screen. But if they're not, you'll just go blind. I'm not a big fan of working at non-native dpi settings (makes web pages look a bit screwed up, and makes them harder to design as well as the tables in a web page are usually a fixed pixel size, but now you've arbitrarily increased the font size by some % making it look funky). My eyes are good enough to handle UXGA at native dpi, but if yours cannot I would recommend stepping down to SXGA+.