Thinkpads Forum

i dont like wide screen lcds on laptops.

so i vote NO to wide screen anything...




<3 jamse

I don't like widescreen much either, except for watching DVD movies on the laptop (and that is only if the X Series gets an internal optical drive)....but I wouldn't mind them making widescreen X Series Thinkpads in parallel with the 4:3 X Series Thinkpads *as long as* they don't mix funds for them up or "phase" them out.

Oh, the question asks who would want a widescreen X Series while the only answers available are "Yes" and "No."

I really hate widescreen.

Choice is always good. As long as Lenovo will offer a choice (as they do with the T60 widescreen option), why not?

The only advantage I see to widescreen is it could allow them to make a X similar but larger than the form factor of the Sony PictureBook models, where the system was more rectangular than square. No room for a touchpad, for example.

I will not buy another X series (except, perhaps, for cheap used ones) until there is a widescreen option, which makes the display shorter and increases the number of pixels by 30%. The advantage is obvious, so I don't understand why most people here still avoid widescreens like the plague. True, the 15.4" and 17" models are too wide, but 12.1" widescreen is still very manageable.

pianowizard wrote:I will not buy another X series (except, perhaps, for cheap used ones) until there is a widescreen option, which makes the display shorter and increases the number of pixels by 30%. The advantage is obvious, so I don't understand why most people here still avoid widescreens like the plague. True, the 15.4" and 17" models are too wide, but 12.1" widescreen is still very manageable.

I think the 13.1" widescreen is actually just a touch lower than the 12.1" 4:3 display. It's wider but that actually has the small advantage in that we could get a full-size keyboard on an X series (while keeping it thin and light)!

tomh009 wrote:I think the 13.1" widescreen is actually just a touch lower than the 12.1" 4:3 display. It's wider but that actually has the small advantage in that we could get a full-size keyboard on an X series (while keeping it thin and light)!

13.1" widescreen would make the laptop just a tad too big. But that's a good point, 12.1" widescreen laptops can have bigger keyboards than what the current X series has. That's yet another advantage of going widescreen. Oh, wait a minute, if the 13.1" widescreen has a slightly higher resolution than the 12.1" widescreen, say 1440x900, I would not mind having one.

12.1" 4:3 is 9.7"W x 7.3"H.
13.1" 8:5 is 11.1"W x 6.9" H.

1440x900 would have an almost identical dpi to a 14.1" SXGA+ display. Very nice idea, I think!

After switching from a MacBook (terrible reliability issues) to an X60s, my only complaint has been the screen shape. A 13" widescreen can easily manage side by side pages, which is really nice. I'd imagine a 12"WS can as well. The screen on the X series is just too narrow, and I never find myself needing the while height.

I'd sell my X60s in a second for a widescreen version.

I say "no" because it requires me to PgDn more. No need for widescreen on an X becasue you can't reasonably put two documents side-by-side on a widescreen 12" or 13" anyway.

Also, a widescreen may make the dimensions too wide, i.e., larger than a standard piece of 8.5"x11" piece of paper, thereby making a strange fit in a briefcase.

NeoMatrix wrote:I say "no" because it requires me to PgDn more.

Vertically, a 12.1" widescreen usually has 800 pixels, vs. 768 pixels on a 12.1" 4:3 screen, so you actually can see a little more vertically on a widescreen, and need to PgDn a little less often.

In terms of dimensions, the HP nc2400 is 0.976 in (H) x 11.1 in (W) x 8.38 in (D), exceeding 8.5x11 by only 0.1 in!

NeoMatrix wrote:I say "no" because it requires me to PgDn more. No need for widescreen on an X becasue you can't reasonably put two documents side-by-side on a widescreen 12" or 13" anyway.

Also, a widescreen may make the dimensions too wide, i.e., larger than a standard piece of 8.5"x11" piece of paper, thereby making a strange fit in a briefcase.

A revisit of "widescreen" on X-series...
If X-series is made wide in the future... it just doesn't make sense...
The only advantage is to put two document side by side, or to have some sidebar / messenger application staying on the side
In the X-series, which is oriented for work and light weight with the tiny screen, it just doesn't make sense to do these things

There are many things in this world that may appear to make no sense at all, but which we still have to accept ...

It would look a little more like a sheet of paper - this couldn't be that bad in case of x60t.

4:3 is close to the dimensions of a paper sheet than 8:5.

the longer format "F size" paper which is not so common in use will be closer to the 16:10 widescreen

However, 4:3 really more closely resemble the size of printed paper, in both cases of A4 size (Europe & Asian int'l format) & US Letter size

I just want to hope & pray that the higher quality 4:3 screens will survive in the display module manufacturing industry, maybe mainly due to the flourishing of tablet PC

I actually like having my desktop be "square". The idea of a 12.1 wide screen makes me think that looking at documents and web pages will be weird...too short of a screen...and useless real estate on the sides

One idea to make the widescreen (16:10) or the standard (4:3) on a 12" labtop *genuinely usable* is to make the screen capable of rotating to portrait mode (as in some of the desktop widescreens available in the market)

working on a 12.1" ultraportable laptop in the 3:4 (768x1024/1050x1400) and the 10:16 (800x1280) portrait mode will be very productive I can imagine

But the mechanics to construct such a rotatable screen laptop will be very difficult (if not impossible) to be implemented in a stylish way

milstein wrote:But the mechanics to construct such a rotatable screen laptop will be very difficult (if not impossible) to be implemented in a stylish way

What's wrong with the way they are implemented on Tablet PCs?

dr_st wrote:

milstein wrote:But the mechanics to construct such a rotatable screen laptop will be very difficult (if not impossible) to be implemented in a stylish way

What's wrong with the way they are implemented on Tablet PCs?

dr_st... you didn't get me...

I am suggesting a capability to do screen rotation in the laptop mode (from a 1024x768 landscape to a 768x1024 portrait), but NOT in the tablet mode as in tablet PCs

an example would be in the Sahara tablet
http://www.tabletpc2.com/Review-Sahara.htm
but it is a tablet PC, and its keyboard is not attached contrary to the Thinkpads, and it needs a dock to do that upright screen "rotation" implementation

If it is widescreen do we still have the capability of going back to 4:3 resoulution?

tyanlion wrote:If it is widescreen do we still have the capability of going back to 4:3 resoulution?

I think it should be possible to display 4:3 resolution centered at the screen, with a black frame around it. I have a 1400x1050 resolution, and through presentation director it's possible to display a 1024x768 at the center of the screen. Should be possible with any resolution, possibly depending on the video card driver.

dr_st wrote:

tyanlion wrote:If it is widescreen do we still have the capability of going back to 4:3 resoulution?

I think it should be possible to display 4:3 resolution centered at the screen, with a black frame around it......

I just hope we can make use of the whole screen real estate, there's no point in doing a shrunken 4:3 on a 16:10
however, 800 & 900 are still > 768 in terms of vertical height, hope that's gonna be easily bearable, if X-series is really going to join the widescreen camp

chars on such a small wide screen will be too hard to read...

You can have all the votes you want (my vote is for no btw) but it wont change anything - 4:3 12" panels are getting difficult to obtain - by 2008 your only x series choices will be widescreen.

snife wrote:You can have all the votes you want (my vote is for no btw) but it wont change anything - 4:3 12" panels are getting difficult to obtain - by 2008 your only x series choices will be widescreen.

If it is true... probably with no FFS (IPS) too...

milstein wrote:

snife wrote:You can have all the votes you want (my vote is for no btw) but it wont change anything - 4:3 12" panels are getting difficult to obtain - by 2008 your only x series choices will be widescreen.

If it is true... probably with no FFS (IPS) too...

Nope, welcome to the world which Dell has created - only crappy widescreen displays on every notebook PC by YE 2008.

Well I got mine today. I'm thinking if it were just enough wider to have a full size A keyboard (not the nav buttons), then it could be a good thing. I would not want to lose the IPS, or the vertical pixels, just add some pixels to the horizontal. I'm using the SXGA+ screen.
So yea, the keyboard is a "little" tight.