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sector666

advice on which laptop screen to get

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I know just about everything I want on a specific laptop except for one thing. There's two options for the screen that I could choose between and I don't really know how much a difference it would make.

Either way it would be a 17.3" screen. I could have 1600x900 resolution and a more glossy screen than normal for a laptop (no anti-glare, wider viewing angle range, and higher contrast). Or I could have 1920x1080 but with a smaller viewing angle range, anti-glare, and lower contrast, for $100 more.

It would be used mostly for games and internet. I really can't tell how much of a difference the resolution would make vs the contrast. I almost think the lower resolution might be better (higher contrast isn't available in the higher resolution unfortunately) but I could use some advice on which would likely be more important for gaming - the resolution difference or the contrast.

Questions like this aren't minded here are they?

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Unless you need it urgently for some reason, I'd wait until I saw one with a 1920*1080 screen with the other specs the lower resolution one has.

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1600x900 is pretty tiny for 17". My 13" has 1280x800 for example. Then again, if you're not going to be doing "work" then 1600x900 will probably be fine for your purposes. You will also get higher FPS in games :-)

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I would have figured that 4/3 aspect ratio would be the most important factor for gaming, unless you can handle having "black bars" or a distorted image.

I think Chocolate Doom had some recent commits to work around this kind of problem (and other cool display-related stuff, like simulated CRT scanlines) but most other ports probably aren't that exacting.

Of course, if that laptop can handle 320x240 (or 640x480, etc.) natively in fullscreen, then you don't have that problem to begin with. But apparently, some newer laptops aren't so lucky.

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hex11 said:

I would have figured that 4/3 aspect ratio would be the most important factor for gaming, unless you can handle having "black bars" or a distorted image.

Nowadays pretty much any game has wide screen resolutions. Including many Doom ports. Besides, how the heck are you going to have 4/3 on a laptop?

If you're going to use it just for games and internet, I'd say pick the smaller resolution. You'll get better FPS in games and the size difference doesn't mean much when browsing websites (besides, some sites might look silly small with a huge resolution). Now if it was a work laptop I'd go for the bigger resolution any day. More screen real estate for work = more efficient working and less time spent scrolling around and moving windows. I love the HD screen on my work laptop (15.4 inch with 1920 x 1200).

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hex11 said:

I would have figured that 4/3 aspect ratio would be the most important factor for gaming, unless you can handle having "black bars" or a distorted image.


...except they don't make laptops and scarcely even computer monitors in 4:3 aspect ratio these days, because *gasp* most everything made in the last several years uses 16:9. I've seen several games that have limited/no support for 4:3 resolution, as well.

edit: damn, beat to the punch

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Whats the actual contrast\viewing angle difference? I find that a decent panel with a matte coating is barely any different from a coated panel as far as contrast and viewing angle is concerned. I find amtte screens to be easier on the eye for longer periods of time too. Which might be important if you read a lot on it (internet) or play games for a while.

I prefer matte screens myself since I have a great hate of reflections and seeing myself staring at the screen when it's dark. Sadly they make very few laptops with matte screens these days.

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exl: It looks like I had the angle range backwards. The larger res anti-glare screen has 110º horizontal and 90º vertical, and the smaller res one has 80º horizontally and 45º vertically. So the viewing angle is actually narrower on the lower res one.

The contrast ratio is listed as 600:1 for both, so that's not very helpful in telling how much the anti-glare affects it. The color gamut is 60% on the low res and 72% on the higher res anti-glare. So somehow the anti-glare one apparently has more color depth, which is the opposite of what I have thought. Maybe the higher res one is simply overall a higher quality screen.

On top of all that, with what exl said about matte not usually making that much of a difference in the first place, it's sounding there's not much reason to go with the lower resolution.

I hope that a larger resolution wouldn't make small images look too small though. I'd forgotten that image editing is something I'd most likely be doing with it as well.

I've had a chance to use 1920x1080 before, and the one thing that bugged me most is anything to do with images that weren't very large. Editing doom textures for example you'd really have to zoom in a lot to be able to see anything, and having to zoom in four times on every image you open just to be able to see anything does get cumbersome. Pictures from old digital cameras and any other old images also become so tiny at that resolution that it's hard to see them. But I guess there's nothing you can do about that.

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Editing textures on a screen with 60% colour gamut seems like a bad plan anyway. I suspect that monitor's image looks similar to the crappy Acer one I now use as a secondary. Oblivion looked really weird due to the thing rendering reds very poorly.

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Jodwin said:

Besides, how the heck are you going to have 4/3 on a laptop?

They managed just fine for 20 years...

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Jodwin said:

Besides, how the heck are you going to have 4/3 on a laptop?

By sacrificing the numeral pad in favour of some virtualized Fn-key garbage and distributing Home/End/PgUp/PgDn/Ins/Del across the board randomly. At least that's how all of my 4:3 screen laptops have been built.

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I would get the non-glossy high resolution screen. Mostly because it fights against trends that I really wish weren't happening. Buying into the glossy screen trend will only leave people with less choice in the future (even business laptops are starting to come with glossy these days). From what I can tell the glossy screen is just a marketing ploy to make the monitors look better in stores/pictures (and it seems to work).

Mithran Denizen said:

By sacrificing the numeral pad in favour of some virtualized Fn-key garbage and distributing Home/End/PgUp/PgDn/Ins/Del across the board randomly. At least that's how all of my 4:3 screen laptops have been built.

Or by making the laptop taller (remember that in practice wide screen actually means short screen). Granted this topic is about 17" laptops where number pads are pretty much standard, but most smaller laptops I've seen just have thick plastic bars on the sides of the keyboards and the keyboard isn't any bigger than any of my 4:3 laptops. Also my Thinkpad laptops have the Home/End/etc keys in the same spot as a normal keyboard.

4:3 monitors seem to have a tendency of having higher ppi than their wide screen counterparts. For example Lenovo once made a 12" tablet laptop with a 1400x1050 screen which has more horizontal and vertical resolution than any of their later offerings.

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hex11 said:

I would have figured that 4/3 aspect ratio would be the most important factor for gaming,

Jesus, even N64 games have 16x9.

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exl said:

I prefer matte screens myself since I have a great hate of reflections and seeing myself staring at the screen when it's dark.

Same here. I'm considering buying a matte filter for my current laptop.

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I don't personally care about games newer than 1996. The desire just ain't there.

But this matters to me:
http://doom.wikia.com/wiki/Aspect_ratio

And it's not just Doom that's an issue (although Chocolate Doom handles it gracefully), but potentially all old DOS games. I'm lucky enough for now to own a 4:3 LCD, but when the next "free" laptop comes along, I'll take it without questions. ;) Maybe by then DOSBox will be able to manage gracefully too.

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Aliotroph?: That's a good point about the color.

Thanks everyone for the input. It's clear that the higher res matte screen would be best.


hex11: Clearly you're in the dark on how 16:9 systems can work with 4:3 games. Unless your graphics card is shitty, you should be able to set how you want 4:3 aspect games handled on you monitor. You can have them stretched (looks horrible) or you can have the original aspect preserved (pillar boxing). You should be able to set it in your card manufacturer's software, so you shouldn't ever have to worry about being stuck playing a 4:3 game stretched even if you ever do want to play any 4:3 games which aren't DOS.

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I could well end up with a "shitty" graphics card. But even if it's not, the proposed solutions of stretching or pillarboxing don't provide any real comfort. The stretching just looks ridiculous. The pillarboxing is not as bad, but it reduces your available screen real-estate, which is very lame.

The best solution, of course is simply to own a 4:3 ratio display. Then there is no problem to begin with. ;) And as a side-benefit you also get more vertical space for editing or reading code/documents, where number of lines visible is typically more important than line length.

Oddly enough too, quite a few 4:3 displays also had a matte screen option, which I also greatly prefer.

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hex11 said:

I don't personally care about games newer than 1996. The desire just ain't there.

Then it's probably not wise to give advice to somebody who's buying a new computer and is probably going to play games made after 1996, is it?


On topic: If the rest of your proposed system's specs are up to snuff, I'd say go for the 1080p one. Either way, you could always pick up an external monitor to use at your desk to get better contrast.

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Hey he asked for opinions, so that's what he got. ;)

Anyway, he posted to a Doom site, so one could argue that accurate Doom graphics (and possibly other old school games of that era) are very important. It's up to each of us to determine how much it matters to them.

I brought up the subject because I'm betting some people don't even know about the aspect ratio issue, until they're forced to use wide-screen display (and then it's too late, they're stuck with it).

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That butterfly keyboard is one option, esp. for the smaller laptops. But on regular size ThinkPad (14-inch screen), you normally get a regular keyboard layout, minus the numeric keypad.

But, IBM does have another option for that too:
http://www-307.ibm.com/pc/support/site.wss/MIGR-39501.html

The ultrabay is a standard unit that just slaps in/out from where your CDROM drive would normally sit. It's an interesting alternative to USB keypads for those who are heavy keypad users and don't want to haul extra stuff around. I don't personally ever use the keypad for anything though, even on regular desktop keyboard.

I've always been impressed with ThinkPad machines, but alas it seems they too may be switching to wide-screen displays just like pretty much every other manufacturer. Personally, I think it's a Microsoft ploy to hamper all the Linux hackers from getting any work done. But it will not work! Linux hackers have found a way to defeat this by simply turning the laptop on its side and using Xorg's xrandr program to rotate the display by 90-degrees, thus gaining even more vertical space than before! ;)

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hex11 said:

I've always been impressed with ThinkPad machines, but alas it seems they too may be switching to wide-screen displays just like pretty much every other manufacturer. Personally, I think it's a Microsoft ploy to hamper all the Linux hackers from getting any work done. But it will not work! Linux hackers have found a way to defeat this by simply turning the laptop on its side and using Xorg's xrandr program to rotate the display by 90-degrees, thus gaining even more vertical space than before! ;)

http://www.lenovoblogs.com/insidethebox/2009/04/display-ratio-change-again/

Absolutely nothing to do with Microsoft and everything to do with consumers not buying 4:3 matte screens any more.

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sector666 said:

hex11: Clearly you're in the dark on how 16:9 systems can work with 4:3 games. Unless your graphics card is shitty, you should be able to set how you want 4:3 aspect games handled on you monitor. You can have them stretched (looks horrible) or you can have the original aspect preserved (pillar boxing). You should be able to set it in your card manufacturer's software, so you shouldn't ever have to worry about being stuck playing a 4:3 game stretched even if you ever do want to play any 4:3 games which aren't DOS.

Sometimes even the software can't do the trick. For example, this morning I uninstalled the 266.58 drivers for my 8800GT because it wouldn't do the pillarboxing even with the option selected in the Nvidia Control Panel. I switched back to 186.18 which was the last version I knew that did the pillarboxing correctly. I would think that later drivers would at least pillarbox, but that wasn't the case for 266.58. It seems nvidia doesn't care much about their later drivers not pillarboxing.

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Blzut3 said:

Absolutely nothing to do with Microsoft and everything to do with consumers not buying 4:3 matte screens any more.


Come on man! Coders using laptops on their sides? :D

Anyway, consumers will buy whatever gets heavily marketted (and a lot of them don't really know wtf they're buying). So long as it's cheap enough, and it's cheaper for the industry to sell widescreen TVs and LCDs, so that's what we get, for now at least.

Btw, you might find these numbers interesting:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Display_aspect_ratio#Diagonal_and_area
The "Image Area 4:3 content" column is very telling: the widescreen 16:9 LCD only has 168.9/254.0 =~ 0.66, so roughly 2/3 of the display is used when pillarboxing. You're basically throwing away 1/3 of your widescreen monitor if you want to display 4:3 accurately! The 16:10 LCDs fare slightly better but still not great for showing 4:3 images.

Of course, the 4:3 screens also have more surface area to begin with, but that's all part of the cost-cutting that manufacturers are benefiting from.

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HWGuy said:

Sometimes even the software can't do the trick. For example, this morning I uninstalled the 266.58 drivers for my 8800GT because it wouldn't do the pillarboxing even with the option selected in the Nvidia Control Panel. I switched back to 186.18 which was the last version I knew that did the pillarboxing correctly. I would think that later drivers would at least pillarbox, but that wasn't the case for 266.58. It seems nvidia doesn't care much about their later drivers not pillarboxing.

That is truly bad. I suggest you contact Nvidia about it. I'm aware one person contacting them probably isn't going to do anything about it but people really should let companies know when things like that bother them. If enough people do it it may make a difference.

If I were ever to encounter something like that I know there's no way in hell I'd be silent about it.

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