What do you think about a widescreen X series?

[devilsrejection]

Seriously take this into consideration. the keyboard on the x is already perfect, i love mine more than anyone. but think about wide screen for a second.

the keyboard can be even better, more stuff can be on the screen, and think of the widescreen x tablet. It can literally be like holding a piece of paper. also there is more space to have a larger battery giving you even more battery life.

you know some people hated that lenovo purchased ibm because they are afraid of change. i was one of those people. i love my black brick and hope that never changes for as long as i am alive, but i hope new innovations, to appeal to a broader audience would come out.

This thread is about a widescreen X, but i also want to say I hope they reintroduce the S series and bring it stateside. 10.4 inch ultra portable would be amazing+++

[beq]

Would a 12" widescreen really fit more than a 12" 4:3 screen? It'll be wider but shorter, though I suppose there's a better chance to be able to practically use two pages side by side?

Then again most widescreen resolutions seem to maintain the same vertical resolution as their closest 4:3 brethren, which would mean slightly higher pixel density. For example a 12" widescreen is liable to use something like 1280x768 (thus more pixels than 1024x768)...

BTW have you noticed how most widescreen resolutions are not really in a 16:9 aspect ratio exactly (like my 1920x1200 desktop LCD for example)? Weird, I wonder if the physical LCD screen dimensions would also not be 16:9 ratio exactly...

[beq]

Anyways, I personally think 12" widescreen would be great in the X4x series, and especially for the X41 Tablet.

Like you said, the chassis can be wider to have even more headroom for keyboard space. And at the same time the chassis depth can be reduced to accomodate the widescreen's shorter height, because there's no touchpad anyways (just empty bezel space for the palm rest). And the X4x series uses shorter 1.8-inch hard drive which is not as long as a 2.5-inch drive, so that's less of an obstacle in terms of reducing chassis depth...

And a 12" widescreen seems even more beneficial for the X41 Tablet because it's already an inch deeper than the non-tablet X4x models (with the extended battery, the X41T truly looks like a square brick!). So a widescreen again should allow it to reduce the screen height (and thus reduce the chassis depth)

And of course there's the DVD movie playback benefit, assuming you have a DVD drive.

Wait, I just had a thought... perhaps they can use the extra space real estate of the wider chassis to squeeze in a built-in optical drive!! Hehe

[Yotam]

I hate widescreens unless we're talking about a plasma for my living room
(And seriously, I really think that 4:3 is the best for computers (not only notebooks). Widescreen is good only for movies.

[devilsrejection]

I hate widescreens unless we're talking about a plasma for my living room
(And seriously, I really think that 4:3 is the best for computers (not only notebooks). Widescreen is good only for movies.

i think tablets + wide screens are the best combination.

[Adam]

It can literally be like holding a piece of paper. also there is more space to have a larger battery giving you even more battery life.

An 8.5" x 11" piece of paper is actually much closer to 4:3 than 16:9.

8.5/11 = 0.7727

3/4 = 0.75
9/16 = 0.5625

[bigscreen]

I would appreciate a wide-screen X series. A model similar to the X32 but not as deep and a little bit wider, so that the standard keyboard from the T series fits. Compatible with standard docks would be perfect.

[bhtooefr]

I could kinda see why some people would want a widescreen X, but I don't.

I'd like higher pixel density, which a widescreen has, but a 4:3 can as well.

The current X series display is 105.79 DPI.

The 12.1" widescreens that are on the market are mostly 1280x800, which is 124.75 DPI.

Myself, I want 1280x960 (4:3, 132.23 DPI) or 1280x1024 (5:4, 135.47 DPI).

[pphilipko]

I could kinda see why some people would want a widescreen X, but I don't.

I'd like higher pixel density, which a widescreen has, but a 4:3 can as well.

The current X series display is 105.79 DPI.

The 12.1" widescreens that are on the market are mostly 1280x800, which is 124.75 DPI.

Myself, I want 1280x960 (4:3, 132.23 DPI) or 1280x1024 (5:4, 135.47 DPI).

Still, there's more pixels than a standard 1024 * 768.

[beq]

It can literally be like holding a piece of paper. also there is more space to have a larger battery giving you even more battery life.

An 8.5" x 11" piece of paper is actually much closer to 4:3 than 16:9.

8.5/11 = 0.7727

3/4 = 0.75
9/16 = 0.5625

To put another way, I also note that the X40/X41 (with 4-cell battery) at 8.3" x 10.5" fits just inside the dimensions of a 8.5" x 11" letter-size paper. Which I loved because you can stack the notebook under a piece of paper and have it be completely hidden

A widescreen version might be even narrower than 8.3", but it would also likely be longer than a letter-size paper. So in that sense, a widescreen model would be less like a paper than a 4:3 model.


P.S. Just to reiterate it's weird that many widescreen resolutions don't seem to conform to 16:9 aspect ratio exactly (whereas normal resolutions usually conform exactly to 4:3 aspect ratio)...

3/4 = 0.75
480/640 = 0.75
600/800 = 0.75
768/1024 = 0.75
864/1152 = 0.75
960/1280 = 0.75
1050/1400 = 0.75
1200/1600 = 0.75

9/16 = 0.5625
480/800 = 0.600 (equivalent to 15:9 aspect ratio)
768/1280 = 0.600 (equivalent to 15:9 aspect ratio)
800/1280 = 0.625 (equivalent to 16:10 aspect ratio)
1050/1680 = 0.625 (equivalent to 16:10 aspect ratio)
1200/1920 = 0.625 (equivalent to 16:10 aspect ratio)

[bhtooefr]

And nobody's going to make a 1280x720 (720/1280 = 0.5625) display, unless it's an HDTV set.

(Of course, I bring out the classic example of not conforming to 4:3 - 1280x1024. 1024/1280 = 0.8.)

[beq]

That's a good point... in digital television, widescreen resolutions 1920x1080 and 1280x720 (and QuickTime's 852x480) are exactly 16:9.

I'm just curious why widescreen computer resolutions are actually not as wide as 16:9 (in which case either the physical screen of the computer monitor is not 16:9, or the screen is 16:9 and the pixels are not perfectly square)? Heck, Apple's 15" PowerBook runs at 1280x854, which is even narrower...


And yeah I realize 1280x1024 is a 5:4 resolution, an exception that doesn't conform to 4:3. I would not want that as an LCD's native resolution, because again that would mean either the physical screen is 5:4 ratio, or the pixels of the screen aren't square...

Can you imagine the X41T (with 8-cell battery) using a screen that's physically 5:4? It would be deeper than it is wide, which might look funny

[bhtooefr]

Even more interestingly, a 1920x1200 @ 32-bit display uses almost 9MB of VRAM, whereas a 1920x1080 @ 32bit (read: 1080p resolution) uses just shy of 8MB. Seeing as they'd skip from 8MB straight to 16MB, and wouldn't make a 9MB graphics card, an HDTV-res display can actually use half the VRAM.

Now, the reason I think it is? They're basing it off of standard PC resolutions.

Let's take UXGA as an example, here. 1600x1200.

You want to make it wide. 16:9 gives you a (roughly) 2133x1200 display. Almost 10MB VRAM for a 32-bit display. Also, note that I said roughly - 16:9 makes it 2133.3333... pixels wide. 16:10 gives a nice round number.