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Professionals need our 4:3 screens

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11–20 of 96 posts

Re: Professionals need our 4:3 screens

#11
Same! I hate the freaking wide screen madness. It's not just laptops though. There are not a ton of manufactures making LCDs with modern resolutions in a 4:3 aspect ratio. Also a lot them are quite expensive.

Eizo makes 1:1 desktop monitor, I managed to get one used for a good price I love it! I would get a second if they did not cost so much.

http://www.eizoglobal.com/products/flexscan/ev2730q/index.ht...

Also 5:4 is basically stuck as 1280x1024. You think for the desktop monitor market there would be more variety of aspect ratios made with higher resolutions.

Re: Professionals need our 4:3 screens

#12
On the other hand resolution has gotten to be AMAZING with 4k so I almost don't care anymore. That might be eye sight dependent as I am able to use fairly minimal scaling.

I've had over the years ThinkPad 760, 600X (600 was one of the best laptop ever designed given the constraints in available tech, not sure anything can ever top it), T42, T61p, T420s and now P50 and it is a worthy family member as good as any of them. I /really/ wish they had a P4x that was 14" while retaining the xeon/ecc and 4k but that must be too niche.

I was sad when we lost 4:3 screens.. and was hoping the ThinkPad 25th Anniversary edition would have been delivered to David Hill's design intent.. just to have a real special piece of art if nothing else, but I don't think we'll ever see the industry go back.

Re: Professionals need our 4:3 screens

#13

>When it comes right down to it, I find only these two things to be of paramount importance: >the highest possible screen, >the lowest possible weight. Rotate the monitor sideways. According to the only 2 criteria that matter to him, a 16:9 monitor on its side is way better than a 4:3 monitor in any rotation.

How many laptop monitors can you rotate?

Re: Professionals need our 4:3 screens

#14
The author presents his own personal opinions as though they were shared by the majority of programmers, but they're not. 4:3 ratio offers little space and I found that I actually prefer ultrawide monitors (21:9) to regular HD ones. The extra width lets me open 4 emacs buffers side by side (or 5-6 if I'm editing smaller files) which gives me unparalleled possibilities for editing and comparing code. Of course when it comes to laptops I find 16:9 way better than 4:3. I don't think we're going to see too many 4:3 laptops in the future.

Re: Professionals need our 4:3 screens

#15
post #5

So, he doesn't like 16:9 or 16:10 because he doesn't use the extra space? I think I couldn't live without a wide-screen.. screen. Most of the time, I have 2 or 3 files side-by-side. I also think that the author actually has a different problem: a bad trackpad. He stated he needs to scroll a lot to view content, and a nice trackpad goes a long way with this. It all comes down to opinion; I'd rather have a wide screen…

Extra space? There is no extra space, if anything the aspect ratio of wide-screens makes the screen smaller if keeping with the weird diagonal measurements.

16:9 is in my opinion quite terrible for computer work, 16:10 is ok but hardly great.

Re: Professionals need our 4:3 screens

#16
post #5

So, he doesn't like 16:9 or 16:10 because he doesn't use the extra space? I think I couldn't live without a wide-screen.. screen. Most of the time, I have 2 or 3 files side-by-side. I also think that the author actually has a different problem: a bad trackpad. He stated he needs to scroll a lot to view content, and a nice trackpad goes a long way with this. It all comes down to opinion; I'd rather have a wide screen…

You can still do that with 4:3. Think of the dimensions of a real open book.. it's quite alright :)

Re: Professionals need our 4:3 screens

#17

Or is this a call for mainstream operating systems and applications to get creative (read, nice tiling or splitting by default)? What if all browsers suported single page split view? So that the left side was your regular view, half width, and the right side was the continuation of the same page, where the left side ended.

How would scrolling work? If both panes went up or down a little, I'd find it a little jarring. Maybe I would get used to it, I don't know.

Re: Professionals need our 4:3 screens

#18
post #13

>When it comes right down to it, I find only these two things to be of paramount importance: >the highest possible screen, >the lowest possible weight. Rotate the monitor sideways. According to the only 2 criteria that matter to him, a 16:9 monitor on its side is way better than a 4:3 monitor in any rotation.

How many laptop monitors can you rotate?

All of them. You just need usb keyboard and mouse and flat stable surface.

Re: Professionals need our 4:3 screens

#19

Disagree. I have a Microsoft Surface Pro (or Surface Book Pro - I can never remember which because I find the naming scheme ridiculous and irritating but, basically, the most powerful variant)[1], which has a screen that's much closer to 4:3 than 16:9. I tend to like to have files open side by side. Not just code, but often documents, web pages, and sometimes spreadsheets. This does not work nearly as well on a 4:3 s…

Is it a laptop with detachable screen? => Surface Book (after MacBook)

Is it a tablet with a thin attachable keyboard? => Surface Pro

Re: Professionals need our 4:3 screens

#20
post #13

>When it comes right down to it, I find only these two things to be of paramount importance: >the highest possible screen, >the lowest possible weight. Rotate the monitor sideways. According to the only 2 criteria that matter to him, a 16:9 monitor on its side is way better than a 4:3 monitor in any rotation.

How many laptop monitors can you rotate?

All of them, but you'll rotate the laptop itself with it. Which can be quite a hassle. :p
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