But a laptop is more than just a video playback machine. For myself and millions of others, it’s the primary tool for earning a living. We use these machines to read, write, remember, create, connect, and communicate. And in most of these other applications, a 16:9 screen of 13 to 15 inches in size just feels like a poor fit.
As long as I can easily open more than one document side by side, any aspect ratio gets my blessing. I don’t mind black bars on video, especially since today’s screens have pretty good black levels, so they’re hardly distracting. Still, I’m glad more and more laptop makers are starting to see the benefit in 3:2-like displays.
Considering some laptops has become stupidly powerful not to even consider regular desktop as viable alternative (have to buy separate keyboard, mouse, inverter, screen, speakers, webcam, card reader, etc) the only drawback is multiple screen support. You still have to have a dock and some additional screens somewhere to drop by for real office usage.
Now take into account Project Valerie or Slidenjoy, and you have to take my money. Deploy only one screen in confined space (train, bar, …) or the three of them when enough space around (office, beach, …) and get your shit done comfortably (1- data sheet, 2- code, 3- debug). Just to say…
To be honest, I’m not going to buy another laptop that is only 15 inches. I have taken my 17 inch Sager on airplanes, across the country, and I don’t think there are serious portability issues. I put it in a backpack, and I’m good to go.
> I don’t mind black bars on video, especially since today’s screens have pretty good black levels, so they’re hardly distracting.
Unfortunately for you and I, normies are idiots who will in fact complain about the black bars.
The fact that you used the word “normie” makes you an idiot.
Widescreen laptops are retarded. I used to have a Macbook Pro 13″, now running a Razerblade Stealth 13″. There’s a massive difference in the screen real estate and the razer screen is a big downgrade in usability.
… or the content? My desktop and my laptop both have 1920×1080 screens, and while I wouldn’t mind a bit more vertical usage, my pet peeves include the websites that insist on only using the middle third of my screen.
Every page has these huge white wings on either side (sorry, Thom, but OSAlert is a major offender here– good thing the content is of fairly high quality).
Either that, or the “web page” is a series of fullscreen images you have to scroll through, with minimal content, because someone thought that instead of adapting the newspaper column to the web, it would be a good idea to use power-point presentations.
The most egregious of these I encountered recently was an HTML5 website of the scrolling image variety with a video embedded in one frame– that auto played, and had no controls to stop, pause, or mute it.
Personally, as for doing “real work”, most of my time is spent either in 100×30 shell windows, or vertical emacs windows that take up one half of a monitor– usually scattered across 6 virtual desktops on two monitors giving me six 3840×1080 desktops.
So no, wide screens don’t bother me that much.
If you’re on Firefox, set media.autoplay.enabled to false in about:config.
Then, <video> and <audio> elements will ignore the “autoplay” attribute and calls to the .play() method until they see one come from a short-lived user event handler like “click” or “keydown” (Or you trigger playback using something like the context menu).
(With the caveat that they haven’t yet implemented their plan to treat granting camera/microphone permission as permission for autoplay so WebRTC Just Works^a"c.)
Also, both Firefox and Chrome let you mute all audio from a tab by clicking the speaker icon that appears in the tab bar to clue you into where the noise is coming from or by right-clicking the tab and selecting to mute it from the context menu.
I know– I muted the tab. It’s the first time I’ve had to do that, though, since usually embedded videos have an embedded player that I can click “stop” or “pause” on.
I find “newspaper column” easier to read/follow… (and I set emails to txt / so that they wrap at 80th character) …I suppose that means you simply can’t please everybody
(hm, maybe we could have webpages with 2 or 3 columns…)
If the display gives enough height (in pixels), then I don’t have complains about it being to wide. Depending on the task, the width may be even a benefit.
I’m quite happy with my 16:10 (or 16:9. Whatever, don’t care) laptop that I use every day professionally as a developer.
I think the widescreen format is excellent for developing. Having terminals side by side, or using Eclipse (or any IDE for that matter) in a wide screen is better. At least for me.
On a small-screen (< 14″) I would prefer 3:2 resolution. I normally use every program full-screen on it so I need enough vertical space. Also, it makes the physical shape of the device nicer. I really don’t like these very long phones we are getting now!
On a larger-screen (14″-19″) I would prefer “Full-HD”. Nice to have 2 programs half-screen and nice for full-screen video.
On an external screen (>19″ of course but normally 27″ or even larger) I would like to have 4K but presented to the connection as 4 virtual full-hd screens
from TFA
No, the laptop is best used the way that works best for my usecase, not the way you want me to use it. Its multitasking, and I’m a multitasker. I’ll use it the to perform multiple tasks.
Its often suggested by tech writers that laptops are replacing desktops, but this yokel is trying to say they have completely different use cases? Same OS, Same input mechanism, same display mechanism, same apps. But magically you shouldn’t try to do more than one thing because it ruins my argument.
Now, taking deep breath, I’d like more vertical space too. Please kill off the “HD” 1024x 768 resolution from the face of the earth. Moar pixels, please.
Amen to that. And I need not only side-by-side comparison but also enough vertical depth to display within-document context.
In fact, kill off all the …x768 resolution stuff. I’d like to say to get rid of everything with less than 1200 vertical resolution…
No, the best screen size is the one that works best for my usecase, not the one you want me to use.
For photo editing a wide ratio works best, especially on a small screen.
The photo can be displayed at a reasonable size in it’s native ratio (usually 3×2), while most software programs place the tools in columns on the right and left.
Using software with vertical toolbars on a standard ratio monitor, that doesn’t leave much room in the center for the actual photo.
Spot on, replace actual photo with the code editor in an IDE (toolbars on the sides) and it’s the same situation.
One of the reasons for wider laptops is wider keyboards…
Tall and narrow screens might be better, but tall and narrow keyboards are not, and since laptops are usually a clamshell design you can’t have one without affecting the other.