Thinkpads Forum

brchan wrote:4k video and high resolution media is a large driver of high dpi and high resolution displays.

Right. But I don't think there's a point to 4K on laptop screens. See my last post.

brchan wrote:Having greater pixels in general also attracts the average consumer more.

Why? Because they think "more is better" (like megapixels in cameras) and don't understand the tradeoffs that come with it?

Why? Because they think "more is better" (like megapixels in cameras) and don't understand the tradeoffs that come with it?

Unfortunately, yes.

Weboh wrote:

brchan wrote:4k video and high resolution media is a large driver of high dpi and high resolution displays.

Right. But I don't think there's a point to 4K on laptop screens. See my last post.

SXGA+, WSXGA+, UXGA and WUXGA scaled to native resolution are good for productivity on large enough displays, which for me is 13.5" and up. If I only had 768 vertical pixels to work with on a 15" screen I would have to modify the dpi to get everything small enough to not feel claustrophobic. In which case I might as well have had a higher native resolution in the first place.

I'm with you on the 4K though. Unless you just plan on watching 4K content on your laptop all day, or you need to do some kind of photo or video editing that requires it, I just don't see the point. Having a nice, clear, crisp image on your screen at all times is nice and all, but you're never going to run it at native resolution for enhanced productivity.

Weboh wrote:I always wondered why people like high-dpi screens. It seems to me that the point of the higher resolution is so that you can see small details, like text. But if the details like text end up being so small you have to scale the text up to be able to see it, what's the point? I have a 15.6 inch 720p screen and never wanted a higher resolution. I like being able to see things without having to strain, and I have 20/20 vision. I'm genuinely curious how the higher resolution helps.

When you scale up text, it becomes sharper and easier to read.

600X wrote:When you scale up text, it becomes sharper and easier to read.

Not to my eyes, regardless of whether I'm wearing glasses or not.

To me personally, anything other than 100% native resolution on a laptop screen simply does not work.

To each their own.

fatpolomanjr wrote:

Weboh wrote: Right. But I don't think there's a point to 4K on laptop screens. See my last post.

SXGA+, WSXGA+, UXGA and WUXGA scaled to native resolution are good for productivity on large enough displays, which for me is 13.5" and up.

I had to Google what all those abbreviations stood for. I've always just called resolutions by their dimensions. I can tell you care a lot about your monitors. I got on the Thinkpad train at the wrong time and have one of those with a "terrible" screen you're all talking about. I don't mind it too much, but then again, I don't use the laptop's screen all that much either, and when I do, I usually just have Word and a web browser side-by-side. When I need a big Excel sheet and something else shown at once, I just use my big screen (22-inch WSXGA+ monitor). I'm not sure if it would work on a smaller monitor though, since I would have to strain to see anything. I do get what you're saying about feeling cramped. I wouldn't want to use any resolution smaller than what I have for sure.

I guess higher dpi is for "mobile workstations" like the T series that try to give you as close to a desktop experience as possible so you can get as much done on-the-go as possible (or for people who don't know they can plug in external monitors...).

600X wrote:When you scale up text, it becomes sharper and easier to read.

How so? Isn't the point of ClearType to make text sharp? I've never had a problem reading text on my computer. Text sizes were designed to look good without scaling (they were designed before there was scaling, after all). Do you have a problem reading text that isn't scaled up?

Weboh wrote:How so? Isn't the point of ClearType to make text sharp?

Try printing page of text on a printer set to 150dpi and a printer set to 1200dpi. The higher resolution printing will produce much sharper text.

For further details I recommend reading this: http://www.eizo.com/library/basics/pixel_density_4k/ They are much better at explaining why text will be sharper on high resolution displays than I ever could.

Weboh wrote:I've never had a problem reading text on my computer. Text sizes were designed to look good without scaling (they were designed before there was scaling, after all). Do you have a problem reading text that isn't scaled up?

I don't have any problems, but I use FHD on 14", so I scale up font by roughly 20% to make it more comfortable to view. Since I use Gnome, scaling works really well. All you need to do is increase the font size in the settings. This will increase the text size across the entire system. Unlike Windows, which even today doesn't scale all of its system text properly, let alone GUI elements.

ajkula66 wrote:Not to my eyes, regardless of whether I'm wearing glasses or not.

To me personally, anything other than 100% native resolution on a laptop screen simply does not work.

To each their own.

Native resolution is a must, regardless of the subject matter. Scaling up to make fonts sharper only works if the physical font size stays the same. In order to compare this, you could try setting a T520 with FHD display and a T540p with 3k Display side by side and setting the scaling on the T540p to 150%. Physical font sizes will stay the same, but text will be sharper on the T540p due to the higher pixel density.

This is also the reason why 4:3 displays will always have more vertical space than any 16:9 display: At the same font size, all that matters is the physical height of the display.

If you sit far enough away from the computer screen, you might not notice the difference in pixel density. Whether or not you should use a high dpi display is a different matter of course. After all, not all software supports high dpi and power consumption is higher as well.

I keep enjoying my 19" 5:4 SXGA Monitor with 1280x1024 res. which I bought in 2008 (HP LP1965).
It's still as good and clear as day 1.
I would take that res. in a 13.5"-14" laptop (like in the old 770X/770Z) to "reshape" the model.

Basically, given the same physical font size, higher resolution (aka PPI, DPI) will make text look sharper and easier to read. This can easily be seen with first vs second generation iPad, for example.

600X wrote:This is also the reason why 4:3 displays will always have more vertical space than any 16:9 display: At the same font size, all that matters is the physical height of the display.

Precisely. This is something that folks that pay attention only to resolution often forget. With a higher resolution, the default settings will render smaller fonts, so you can fit more on the screen; however this assumes that you are actually comfortable working with these small fonts. If you end up blowing everything up to roughly the same physical size, then the physical size / dimensions of the display matter more than the resolution.

Weboh wrote:But I don't think there's a point to 4K on laptop screens.

Well, but its also hard to argue why laptops should be limited to FHD-like resolutions, while 5" phones already have 2K screens.

Scaling has gotten much better in Windows over time, now its only the 3rd party software vendors that have to tune their apps to work correctly with scaling.

When scaling works 100 % correct, you have no disadvantage with the higher-res screens, besides a small impact on battery life. The text will look sharper, plus, you will have the option to just make the text smaller if you want more room for productivity.

Eventually, at some point, we might hit 8K screens in laptops. I think thats pretty much the end of the line for the foreseeable future.

Ibthink wrote:When scaling works 100 % correct, you have no disadvantage with the higher-res screens, besides a small impact on battery life. The text will look sharper, plus, you will have the option to just make the text smaller if you want more room for productivity.

It is also the only fix for terrible text anti-aliasing that can not be turned off in recent Windows versions.

Weboh wrote:But if the details like text end up being so small you have to scale the text up to be able to see it, what's the point? I have a 15.6 inch 720p screen and never wanted a higher resolution. I like being able to see things without having to strain, and I have 20/20 vision. I'm genuinely curious how the higher resolution helps.

As already explained by others, many people appreciate higher than 1366x768 on 15.6". Things still look sufficiently large on 15.4" 1920x1200, or 14.0" 1920x1080, so many of us don't scale the text up, and as a result we can display much more information on the screen than you can on your 15.6" 1366x768.

For a long time I thought I didn't want higher than 12.1" 1024x768 or even 14.1" 1024x768. Then one summer I started trying 14.1" 1400x1050 (a T43) and liked it, went up further to 15.0" 1600x1200 (an A31p) and liked it even more, and so I upgraded one more notch to 15.4" 1920x1200 (a Dell Inspiron 6000). My initial reaction was "holy crap things look too small", and I even felt dizzy. But I persevered and got used to it after a month, without scaling. That summer was almost exactly 10 years ago, and since then I have had a hard time going back to 1366x768 or 1280x800, let alone 1024x768. If you ever give higher resolutions a try and find them too dense, don't dismiss them too fast. Give them a month, and after adapting to them, you probably would find 1366x768 crippling.

15.4" 1920x1200 yields a pixel density of 147 DPI, and I am perfectly comfortable with this density. I am still fairly comfortable with 13.3" 1920x1080 which is 166 DPI. My upper limit is probably 170 DPI, beyond which I need to scale, for example I am using 150% on my Dell Inspiron 15-7568's 15.6" 3840x2160. I have Windows 10 on this back-flipping 2-in-1. While the scaling isn't perfect, it is better than previous generations of Windows and after using it for a couple months I am quite happy with it. But I still prefer to not scale if possible. On 15.6", my ideal resolution would be 2304x1296 (170 DPI), i.e. the same width as the 12" 2304x1440 MacBook but shorter due to the 16:9 aspect.

This is a complex matter. Vector graphics scales endlessly, since it's by definition independent of physical pixel matrix. As long as it is accompanied by a proper antialiasing, angular and curved edges look smooth. Raster graphics, on the other hand, depends strongly on physical pixel size. To make a simple example, the icon: (viewed as gif, not ASCII) is pixelart. Hence, if you have too high DPI, you won't see individual pixels, making it hard to resolve.
In the golden era, we had pixelart, which I both made and use to this day. This stuff uses indivudal pixels e.g. for creating fonts with a rule, that there can be no antialiasing (blurred pixels) and no line can be thicker than 1 pixel. Sadly, high-DPI screens are/will render this nonexistent.
Too bad. Because for example RBS, with his 19'' 1280x1024 has no problem enjoying the beauty of this here:

while pianowizard can forget it. Imagine the toil of this graphics' creator, now it's doomed.

This is a multilayered tale of mathematics, graphic artists' life, programmers' work and redistribution of work in graphic arts. Some apps have pixelart+static raster images (menu icons)+vector (svg icons). Only part of this scales, and there's nothing more than maths to it. As we advance, DPI rises, some of this content scales well, some not at all.

I'm amused by claims that "third party" content doesn't scale. Pff... if someone took his grandpa's photo in 1999 with then-state-of-art 1MPiX camera, there's no way this will ever scale. It will be a million pixels, whatever DPI you view it on. Watchable on older stuff, on retina it will turn into a postage stamp. Or, if 'scaled up' (which would be pixel enlarging) turn into pixel-salad. In other words, 99% content of the internet is "third party" as in, it doesn't belong to the corpo-troika (google,ms,apple). Good luck scaling that. So people basically speak about scaling text, and this alone. As always with 'progress', we probably gain something. We loose a lot, too.

You can actually use larger images, but scale them to a certain px (not pixel, but px, which is defined by the W3C as 1/96" - in practice, it's not, but at 100% scaling, it's 1 pixel, at 150% it's 1.5 pixels, at 200% it's 2 pixels) in HTML. Then, the browser renders the image with whatever quality is available to the right size.

Lenovo Miix 510 Windows convertible leaks online http://www.notebookcheck.net/Lenovo-Mii ... 047.0.html

a 12.2-inch IPS display with 1,920 X 1,200 pixels So there are both 3:2 and 16:10 12" to 13" displays available while the X series still have the 16:9 crap only.

Half full glass is also half empty. I prefer hoping one of those screens will eventually make it to X.

would be interesting to know who makes the panel. Could be the manufacturer of the 16:10 13.3" screen of the retro...

bgx wrote:would be interesting to know who makes the panel. Could be the manufacturer of the 16:10 13.3" screen of the retro...

It is Leadtek (or Samsung ?) http://www.leadtekdisplay.com/122-inch- ... p-206.html The advantage is there is single supplier only so no typical Lenovo panel lottery possible.

Any chance we could see a prototype at IFA 2016 in September http://www.ifa-berlin.com/ ?

I will be visiting IFA, I don´t think they will show off the Retro model there. IFA is more about general consumer products.

Puppy wrote:Lenovo Miix 510 Windows convertible leaks online http://www.notebookcheck.net/Lenovo-Mii ... 047.0.html

a 12.2-inch IPS display with 1,920 X 1,200 pixels So there are both 3:2 and 16:10 12" to 13" displays available while the X series still have the 16:9 crap only.

The same bs again; useless laptop with beautifull screen. And decent laptop + useless screen.

The Yoga Book also have 16:10 display.

I wonder if part of this is possibly related to the design cycle of the different series. Perhaps the T, W/P, X etc. take longer to make design changes for, whereas the cheaper consumer-grade notebooks get churned out of the design and prototyping phases faster?

Or maybe they're testing to see how sales fare with minor changes (like a 16:9 to a 16:10 screen) on the cheaper grade units to see how it might impact sales on the premier lines?

More likely, the two lines are just handle by different groups at Lenovo, with different mindsets.

theterminator93 wrote:I wonder if part of this is possibly related to the design cycle of the different series. Perhaps the T, W/P, X etc. take longer to make design changes for, whereas the cheaper consumer-grade notebooks get churned out of the design and prototyping phases faster?

Or maybe they're testing to see how sales fare with minor changes (like a 16:9 to a 16:10 screen) on the cheaper grade units to see how it might impact sales on the premier lines?

They have made so many other "design changes" to Thinkpads, that this is obvilousily (sic!) not the case.
The just buy the cheapest parts, they can find, or they have simply lost connection with quality part manufacturers, respektive internal engineering, (cf. the latests P-series).

jcvjcvjcvjcv wrote:The same bs again; useless laptop with beautifull screen.

Puppy wrote:The Yoga Book also have 16:10 display.

I just looked up the Yoga Book. OMG, it uses a virtual keyboard! This may be the ultimate example of a "useless laptop with beautiful screen"!

pianowizard wrote:I just looked up the Yoga Book. OMG, it uses a virtual keyboard! This may be the ultimate example of a "useless laptop with beautiful screen"!

Don't worry, the future ThinkPad version will have a virtual trackpoint

Lenovo: http://shop.lenovo.com/us/en/tablets/le ... k-android/

On-Demand Halo Keyboard With Haptic Feedback – Makes Serious Work Easier.

When you want to get serious work done, just open the Yoga Book in Type Mode and type away with the easy-to-use Halo keyboard. The Halo keyboard only shows up on demand, only when you need it. The software-optimized keyboard auto-completes and auto-corrects as you type—letting you work quickly and accurately. Its haptic feedback and keyboard shortcuts provide an experience that’s like using a real keyboard, bringing the best of software and hardware into the smartest and thinnest keyboard yet.

I can't believe Lenovo actually wrote this . It looks like they didn't learn anything from the 2nd gen X1 carbon...

Worse: the stupid thing has IBOOK printed on it, WTF?
http://www.lenovo.com/images/subseries/ ... indows.jpg

The "I" is "Yoga" by small letters.