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General discussion

Notebook LCD resolution question

Jan 25, 2005 7:23AM PST

Hi Guys,


I would need Your input on deciding what LCD screen to buy with my laptop, because I will view and edit a lot of Jpeg images on it.

I have two choices:

1. a 17.0" WXGA+ BrightView Wide Viewing (1440x900 res)
2. or a 17.0" WSXGA+ BrightView Wide Viewing (1680x1050 res)


The difference is $ 100 US in price, and I have no idea if the second option will give me better viewing capabilities.

This will be a desktop replacement (I live several months a year in Europe) so a Desktop PC with a classical monitor is not an option.

Thanks in advance, Les

Discussion is locked

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Resolution cannot effectively be changed
Jan 25, 2005 12:00PM PST

What I mean is, once you make your choice, you have to live with it.

In general, the larger your resolution on an LCD, the smaller everything will look. You're cramming more pixels in the same amount of space so you shrink everything down.

If you get the WXGA+, your image size will be similar to a 17" square LCD wit 1280x1024 resolution. If you've used one of those, you'll know what I mean.

If you go with the higher one, everything will be 15% smaller on the screen. If you've ever used an SXGA+ screen (a 14 or 15" screen with 1440x1050), it will be like that. For most people (me), it is too small to look at day in and day out.

Now you say, why don't I buy the better one and run it at a lower resolution? My mom did that with her D600 for a long time, but everything was fuzzy and she complained about it. It'd be the same with yours. Everything would be fuzzy.

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Internet web pages optimized for XGA
Jan 25, 2005 12:24PM PST

There are software solutions like Powerstrip where you can lower the resolution somewhat better than without it but yes you have only 1 native resolution on an LCD.

Internet web pages are optimized for XGA resolution as that is the standard. So, if you go higher often smaller words, etc can become garbled or even unreadable at higher resolutions.

People who want SXGA or the extreme UXGA do so as the pixels are smaller so they can see more of a spreadsheet, see more of a long line of code, etc -- but a widescreen is already giving you this benefit (at least for left to right not from top to bottom).

DVD's will look even better at SXGA as there are more pixels.

Most people who want the higher resolutions seem to be programmers or excel power users who want the maximum detail for those uses on the LCD.

I am satisfied with XGA for my use much of which is using internet web pages so I would not want to mess with it myself.

I have a 15.4" so perhaps a SXGA would be ok on a 17" LCD but you should view it for yourself and not risk it just on specs.