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The Chromebook Pixel’s best feature

shayelk.in

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Re: The Chromebook Pixel’s best feature

#41

Post by iyulaev »

pwthornton wrote: post #36
petsos wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm guessing most of the wide screen "haters" are windows users that are used to the "one maximized app at the time" workflow.

Yes. I use Windows and OS X on most days of the week, and Windows has never been that well suited for wide screen use, whereas OS X's window management makes it much easier to put screens side by side. I'm often doing this, and it's one of the biggest reasons I'm more productive on OS X. The idea that an app would take up my entire screen, unless it was something like a video editing app, is crazy to me. A widescreen…

Windows key + (left or right arrow)

Works fine in Windows, I use it all the time.

Re: The Chromebook Pixel’s best feature

#42

Post by pedalpete »

petsos wrote: post #32
lenazegher wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

I'm guessing most of the wide screen "haters" are windows users that are used to the "one maximized app at the time" workflow.

I'd disagree with that based on the stereotype of windows users not caring about UI or not noticing the lack of things like smooth animations and awkward sizing.

I say that as a windows user and fan (I have a mac, but it's far from my favorite machine).

I also don't feel that mac is any better at managing two windows than Windows.

Microsoft has tried to improve the side-by-side window set-up with their hot spots, but I feel it is a fairly weak implementation, and even though they advertised the feature heavily in Windows 7, I doubt many people use it regularly.

Re: The Chromebook Pixel’s best feature

#43

Post by shrughes »

rayiner wrote: post #35
lenazegher wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

I think 16:10 is a great aspect ratio. In OS X on a 13" screen, it's perfect for two 80x25 emacs buffers side by side.

Now extend the screen vertically until it becomes a 4:3 screen. Now you can fit two 80x30 emacs buffers side by side.

Re: The Chromebook Pixel’s best feature

#44

Post by icebraining »

beagle3 wrote: post #37
taligent wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 ?

If that were true, people would have Preferred landscape books to portrait books. They don't.

Holding and flipping pages on a landscape book is harder; furthermore, books are usually smaller as a whole.

Re: The Chromebook Pixel’s best feature

#46

Post by icebraining »

bjustin wrote: post #38
lenazegher wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

I have a 13" Macbook Air with a reasonable 1440x900 resolution, and I can fit about 1 1/3 windows on screen, at best: a narrower-than-usual browser window and TweetBot. Laptop screens are generally not wide enough to fit two windows side by side. Even the ones that are, such as your 1080p 15" laptop, are unusable for most of us due to tiny text and so on.

I can fit two windows on a 1280x800 13" screen just fine. You need applications with little chrome to make it work, though.

Re: The Chromebook Pixel’s best feature

#47

Post by Cieplak »

taligent wrote: post #30
helloamar wrote: post #14

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.

It can boot Linux. In that regard, it has the potential to be a general purpose laptop. Although you have to keep your files in the "cloud" because it only has 32gb of storage.

Re: The Chromebook Pixel’s best feature

#48

Post by majormajor »

barrkel wrote: post #17
mtgx wrote: 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.

Reading in portrait on the iPad feels like US Letter sized paper; reading in portrait on my Kindle Fire HD feels like a paperback.

Meh. You get used to either one extremely quickly.

Re: The Chromebook Pixel’s best feature

#49

Post by PuercoPop »

jamesbritt wrote: post #27
shoopy wrote: 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."

well from the marketing perspective you could call it, tall screen.

Re: The Chromebook Pixel’s best feature

#50

Post by comex »

bjustin wrote: post #38
lenazegher wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

I have a 13" Macbook Air with a reasonable 1440x900 resolution, and I can fit about 1 1/3 windows on screen, at best: a narrower-than-usual browser window and TweetBot. Laptop screens are generally not wide enough to fit two windows side by side. Even the ones that are, such as your 1080p 15" laptop, are unusable for most of us due to tiny text and so on.

My 15" MBP at 1400x900x2 is wide enough to fit a split editor, or an editor and part of a terminal (I find that having part of a background window visible makes it less jarring to switch to it). I wouldn't mind it being physically taller, but I wouldn't want it to be any narrower.
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