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The Chromebook Pixel’s best feature

shayelk.in

21–30 of 94 posts

Re: The Chromebook Pixel’s best feature

#21
post #3

That's a very interesting point. I remember when we had 15 and 17" LCDs back in the day that were always nearly square. Now it seems rare to find a computer screen even remotely square.

I find this (oddly) most pronounced on the iPhone 5. On previous models, landscape browsing was a valid option, but once you get the extra length vertically in portrait, the limited landscape view feels completely uselessly constrained.

Re: The Chromebook Pixel’s best feature

#22
post #4

Absolutely. I hated when everyone started making 16:9 monitors. The 16:10 ones weren't quite as bad, but seriously, give me some vertical pixels. Especially true for coding where it's useful to see as many lines of code on the screen at possible.

3:2 used to be the standard screen ratio. just look at your 15 inch CRT monitor. the industry then went for 16:10 the so called "WIDESCREEN" at that time, and now 16:9

I don't remember seeing 3:2 in widespread use. What you used to have was 4:3, a vastly superior aspect ratio especially on laptops.

Re: The Chromebook Pixel’s best feature

#23
post #9

I feel like I'm taking crazy pills when I talk about aspect ratios with average consumers. Most people really do believe--probably through HDTV marketing--that wider screens are better. The lion's share of most people's time on the Internet is spent reading and scolling vertically, yet our devices are optimized for watching little sixty second movie clips at a time. Why wouldn't you want to make the 95% case more ple…

The author dismisses the possibility of side-by-side windows on a small screen, but I no problems using multiple windows on my 1080p 15" laptop screen. Therefore i find a wider screen much more productive--it's much harder to intelligently fill a screen with a narrower aspect ratio

Re: The Chromebook Pixel’s best feature

#24
post #4

Absolutely. I hated when everyone started making 16:9 monitors. The 16:10 ones weren't quite as bad, but seriously, give me some vertical pixels. Especially true for coding where it's useful to see as many lines of code on the screen at possible.

Get a monitor stand that swivels, so you can use the 16:9 ratio to your advantage. The only catch is that you start noticing when people write long lines over 120 chars, though they shouldn't do that in the first place.

Edit: It's also really awesome for reading/editing documents, since you can fit the full page onscreen.

Re: The Chromebook Pixel’s best feature

#25
post #4

Absolutely. I hated when everyone started making 16:9 monitors. The 16:10 ones weren't quite as bad, but seriously, give me some vertical pixels. Especially true for coding where it's useful to see as many lines of code on the screen at possible.

> Especially true for coding where it's useful to see as many lines of code on the screen at possible.

Have to disagree here.

For Java and iOS development widescreen is far better because it allows project tree on the left, code in the middle and outline/inspector on the right.

Re: The Chromebook Pixel’s best feature

#26
post #4

Absolutely. I hated when everyone started making 16:9 monitors. The 16:10 ones weren't quite as bad, but seriously, give me some vertical pixels. Especially true for coding where it's useful to see as many lines of code on the screen at possible.

3:2 used to be the standard screen ratio. just look at your 15 inch CRT monitor. the industry then went for 16:10 the so called "WIDESCREEN" at that time, and now 16:9

Actually the old-school CRT monitors were much narrower even than 3:2 (1.5) - they were 4:3 (1.33), just like NTSC television, and very close to the very-old-school "Academy Ratio" in the movies.

Which is the reason the movie business invented wide-screen: To make their movies darn near unwatchable on standard television. HDTV went wide-screen to chase the movie business, which has in response pursued ever more extreme ultra-wide ratios (12:5 or 2.40 in not-insane notation) for their blockbusters, so even with a brand new wide-screen HDTV, you get letter-boxing and only partial vertical resolution when you watch the latest Batman movie or whatever.

Now there are some small movements in the direction of ultra-ultra wide-screen in the computer business, and it doesn't bode well. [1]

So it's Hollywood's fault that your computer screen has a stupid shape, just as its Hollywood's fault that it has a stupid interface (HDMI/HDCP), too.

[1] http://www.cnet.com/laptops/toshiba-satellite-u845w-s410/450...

Re: The Chromebook Pixel’s best feature

#27
post #9

I feel like I'm taking crazy pills when I talk about aspect ratios with average consumers. Most people really do believe--probably through HDTV marketing--that wider screens are better. The lion's share of most people's time on the Internet is spent reading and scolling vertically, yet our devices are optimized for watching little sixty second movie clips at a time. Why wouldn't you want to make the 95% case more ple…

... that wider screens are better.

That might kinda sorta almost even be true, except that 1080p (1920x1080) is not wider than WUXGA (1920x1200).

It's just shorter.

But "wide screen" just sound so much nicer than "short screen."

Re: The Chromebook Pixel’s best feature

#28
post #9

I feel like I'm taking crazy pills when I talk about aspect ratios with average consumers. Most people really do believe--probably through HDTV marketing--that wider screens are better. The lion's share of most people's time on the Internet is spent reading and scolling vertically, yet our devices are optimized for watching little sixty second movie clips at a time. Why wouldn't you want to make the 95% case more ple…

The reason wider screens are preferred is because of human's field of view. We see 180 degrees horizontally yet only 135 degrees vertically.

So why on earth would you build a screen that requires people to expend more energy to use ?

Re: The Chromebook Pixel’s best feature

#29
post #17
post #13

Google should make Android tablets 3:2, too, if they aren't going to make them 4:3 like Apple. It should be a bit better than 16:10, which I think still turns a lot of people off from using Android tablets vs iPads, knowing they can't really use them in vertical mode.

The Nexus 7 viewport feels very book-like as portrait. The iPad is the one that looks "wrong", too fat.

This is a matter of opinion, and I imagine probably highly correlated with which device you own.

Re: The Chromebook Pixel’s best feature

#30

Currently they say the battery comes upto 5hrs. If they could double it up, it will be great,

Really. The only thing not making it a 'great' device is the battery life ?

You do realise that ALL it does is surf the web ? I don't understand why anybody would buy it over an iPad or a refurbished MacBook Pro. I personally think it is one of the most pointless devices released in the last few years.

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