Thinkpads Forum

Am thinking of getting the T400 with its 14.1" screen at WXGA+ (1440X900) resolution. This is a business and travel laptop, so I use two programs 90% of the time--Microsoft Word and Excel 2007. Screen real estate is very important for me, as I work with a lot of data simultaneously.

With my current T60, with its 15.4" screen at WSXGA+ (1680x1050) resolution, I can see two pages simultaneously (that is, side-by-side) using Word's "print layout" view setting, at 90% zoom, and still have a narrow vertical reference frame open on the right (ie, what you get when you hit shift-F7 for thesaurus, etc.). For Excel, opening a new workbook on default zoom lets me see 26 horizontal columns (A through Z) and about 46 vertical rows of data.

I know the T400 will net me slightly lower resolution and less display size, and I'm willing to pay this marginal price due to the increased portability. So can T400 owners with the WXGA+ setup here tell me, if they can get two pages simultaneously on Word's "print layout" view setting at a reasonably high zoom? Obviously we can get 8 pages at low zoom levels; for my X61, I can get the two pages side-by-side at maybe 65% zoom, but the 12-point Times New Roman text is so small it's impractical. So, could I work on two pages simultaneously at a practical zoom setting on a 14.1" screen using default 12-point font. Likewise, when you open up a new Excel workbook, how many rows and columns can you see?

Not quite an exact comparison, but:

T61 14W 1280x800 allows Excel 1-37 vertical and A-S horizontal, full screen. Word, two pages at 73% max in 12 point font. Also full screen. At 73% there is no room available for the reference frame. The 73% side by side is readable even by me (who needs cataract surgery and am no longer correctable to 20/20)

And an SXGA+ (1400 x 1050) 14.1" data point...

Word 2003, with a two-line toolbar, can achieve 79% zoom on a two page layout with 10 point text and is still (barely) legible without my reading glasses:

http://www.kawakami-ca.com/images/word2 ... gaplus.jpg (451KB; 1040 x 1050)

82% zoom in "full screen" mode, but it falls to 67% with the Research sidebar open.

Excel 2003, with again a two-line toolbar and blank document (100% zoom, 10 point text), has A-U columns (8.43 default width) and 50 rows. Full screen mode adds 7.5 more rows. When 12 point text is used, it's 43 rows with the standard layout and 49 rows full screen (still A-U columns).

edit: WXGA+ data point (R61 14.1") to follow later today... I need to install Office on this system .
edti2: Hmm.. seem to have forgotten that there's still a trial copy of Office 2007 on this system . At any rate, here's the data from this 14.1" R61:

Word: With the Research sidebar displayed, a two-page layout is at 64%. 12 point text is barely readable for me without my glasses. I can barely manage 10 point text with my glasses and that's only with an "easy" font like Arial.

http://www.kawakami-ca.com/images/word2 ... gaplus.jpg (250KB 1440 x 900)

Minimizing the Ribbon, the Zoom factor increases from 64% to 72%.

Excel: At 10 points, there's A-V columns and 38 rows. 12 points reduces it to 31 rows. At Full Screen mode, there's 48/39 rows (10/12 points). Minimizing the Ribbon has 43/35 rows.

Ray—
On the R61, if you close the research sidebar, how high can you push the zoom before it shifts back to a single page display? On my machine 74% does it.

With the Research sidebar closed, and using the zoom slider to increase the size, it gets to 82% before it snaps back to a single page view (at 84%; step size is 2% if using the slider). However, at 82%, the last line on the page is not visible with 1" margins (the default). If narrow margins are specified, there's even more lines which are cut off at that zoom level. Using View/Two Pages, the zoom level is set to 73%. Manually increasing the zoom by 1% (View/Zoom/Percent) I can get to 83% and still have two pages displayed (albeit with some missing lines).

Thanks, Ray. I think you've answered the OP's questions and mine. I've been wondering about the difference between WXGA and WXGA+ in useable screen real estate.

Being a blind old guy, I'd rather work at higher percentages of zoom and scroll to the bottom of the page, so WXGA just as useful for me. I assume the opposite would be true for someone like pianowizard.

Thanks for the screenshots. BTW, Word/Excel 2007 are real snoozers--the ribbons by default take up so much screen space--but minimized, and without the reference bar, it's okay.

So it looks like the T400 14.1" with WXGA+ (1440 x 900) will suit my display needs. Those of us with the T6X 15.4" widescreen models know they're not that easy to carry around, even if they're lighter than typical desktop replacements.

Again, thanks for all your help. Now the hard part: accepting the additional keyboard flex... grr.

rkawakami wrote: Hmm.. seem to have forgotten that there's still a trial copy of Office 2007 on this system.

A quick off topic question, is there a way for me to quickly uninstall the trial copy of Office 2007 that came on one of my new ThinkPads (with Vista / XP downgrade on it)? I prefer Office 2003 and usually just wipe the drive when I first setup a new machine. However I'm pressed for time and wonder if there is a way to remove all of Office 2007 by itself. I've read that add/remove programs in XP does not remove all remnants, but I don't know how accurate that statement is. Nor do I mind if a few bits are left as long as they don't cause a problem.
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Cheers...

starholmre wrote:Now the hard part: accepting the additional keyboard flex... grr.

Lenovo fixes this: http://www.thinkpads.com/2009/04/03/thi ... -reviewed/

archer6 wrote:<snip>... is there a way for me to quickly uninstall the trial copy of Office 2007 that came on one of my new ThinkPads (with Vista / XP downgrade on it)?

Not sure. I haven't tried running any of the uninstall routines for Office 2007. Like you, I prefer the cleaner layout of 2003.

Prior to asking the question here on the forum I had performed a search using Google, Webcrawler, etc and found numerous stories that varied so widely, it's hard to sort out the right from the wrong. What is evident however, is that it's not easy to cleanly and completely remove the trial version of Office 2007. Apparently it takes more than just using add/remove programs. And yet it's just what I've read.

With my new W500 I used the "custom restore choice" on the rescue and recovery partition. What I found quite interesting, was that it lists some, not all of the preloaded trialware / bloatware. For example it listed the trial anti-virus app, and just a few others. It did _not_list Office 2007. Yet at the end when it was finished Office 2007 trial version had not been installed. I was left with a beautiful clean install of nothing other than the OS, ThinkVantage, and a few Lenovo OS specific apps. Just the result I was looking for. If I don't find a clean way to remove Office 2007 by itself I may have to spend the time as I did with the W500, and use R&R.

Oh.. another thought that came to mind, which is the reason I hesitate to use R&R is my wondering if it's truly the very same image with the latest drivers and all that is put on the machine at time of manufacturing. Since Lenovo has taken away what I used to use for downloading all drivers after a clean install, I hate to have to do them one by one if any are missing from the R&R partition. Any thoughts on this?

Thanks