Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Professionals need our 4:3 screens

cs.put.poznan.pl

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

41–50 of 96 posts

Re: Professionals need our 4:3 screens

#41

Post by tjoff »

jxdxbx wrote: post #25
Paul_S wrote: post #7

4:3 and matte and a proper keyboard. These no longer exist because Apple and shiny.

Apple was one of the last holdouts. They were shipping matte and 4:3 laptops until relatively recently. Reflective screens are the biggest shame. They’re worse but they sell better. For a while 4:3 looked “old fashioned.” Turns out that a tall form factor works for phones, but thankfully most manufactutors relize that tablets should be 4:3 or close to it.

I thought they were among the very first to abandon matte and 4:3, what models are you thinking of?

Re: Professionals need our 4:3 screens

#42

Post by mamon »

kev009 wrote: post #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 th…

4k is the worst thing that could happen: it is so heavily marketed and has 16:9 aspect ratio. It is only appealing to people who use computer mostly to watch videos (who, unfortunately are majority of PC users).

The rise of so called "Smart TVs" and tablets gives us a hope that people who are only interested in watching movies will finally stop buying computers at all, and once again professional users will be the main focus of laptop and computer monitor manufacturers :)

Re: Professionals need our 4:3 screens

#43

Post by chvid »

I am professional and I like my wide screen laptop.

Most of the time I am in this editor-thingee where the left-hand side is a tree-structure showing an overview of the project I am working on and the right-hand side is some sort of detail view.

Perhaps there are some toolbars too but they are just fine being vertical.

Re: Professionals need our 4:3 screens

#44

Post by lazyjones »

bartread wrote: post #10

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…

> which has a screen that's much closer to 4:3 than 16:9.

It's 3:2 probably, 13.5" 2256x1504 ...

Re: Professionals need our 4:3 screens

#46

Post by wccrawford »

Al-Khwarizmi wrote: post #36
wccrawford wrote: post #8

>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.

He already does that with his desktop monitor, he's talking about laptops. > This is why my desktop LCD monitor is mounted vertically the whole time, and this is also why I would like my notebook monitor to be positioned likewise.

In that case, the answer is because adding more height to the screen would mean adding more height to the base as well. You basically double the additional weight, which is against his low-weight requirement.

Alternatively, you can shrink the keyboard. I'm sure that if he tried a keyboard with smaller keys, he'd suddenly add a third requirement to his list: Regular sized keys.

I remember the days of people complaining about laptop keyboards, and I'd much rather have a slightly wider screen that I didn't need than smaller keys.

Re: Professionals need our 4:3 screens

#47

Post by nukeop »

oldcynic wrote: post #39
nukeop wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just open two buffers side by side and it's almost like you have two 4:3 monitors. Isn't that better?

Let's see. No it isn't. Not even close. A 4:3 aspect would give 1920x1440. You have 1920x1080. Where has the bottom quarter of the screen gone? It's not there. How can that possibly be better? I'd take 3:2 with high enough resolution as that's the equivalent of 2x 4:3 side by side in portrait. That would be a fair trade off. I'd still prefer a 4:3 laptop though!

What if I set my resolution to 3840x2160? Do you think it's about raw pixel count? Widescreen resolutions make most people more productive.

Re: Professionals need our 4:3 screens

#48

Post by scarface74 »

I have what I think is one of the last great 1920x1200 laptop displays. Not 4:3 but better than 1920x1080 It's a Core 2 Duo 2.66Ghz Dell from 2008. It serves as my Plex Server.

At least after 2012 you could get Retina display Macbooks and later PCs that you could use in other modes without looking bad.

All that being said. For reading, I much prefer my iPad because it is 4:3.

Re: Professionals need our 4:3 screens

#49

Post by anfilt »

mamon wrote: post #42
kev009 wrote: post #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 th…

4k is the worst thing that could happen: it is so heavily marketed and has 16:9 aspect ratio. It is only appealing to people who use computer mostly to watch videos (who, unfortunately are majority of PC users). The rise of so called "Smart TVs" and tablets gives us a hope that people who are only interested in watching movies will finally stop buying computers at all, and once again professional users will be the ma…

For the desktop market you are forgetting the gamers, unless they quit using desktops and laptops they prefer wider screens. So I don't see it going away especially when the manufactures can be lazy and use the same panels in multiple products.

Although I would be happy if your prediction turned out to be correct!

Re: Professionals need our 4:3 screens

#50

Post by eludwig »

mozumder wrote: post #3

iPad Pro with keyboard.

Yeah, this was going to be my suggestion, but again, i think it depends on usage.

I have a 12.9 inch (first gen) iPad Pro. Using it in portrait to read is completely amazing. It is actually almost too tall for my lap like this (I am not a large person), but I can just manage.

Some of these folks may be able to get away with this solution if reading PDFs, web pages, etc. I assume that at this point it is also possible to do console style development on an iPad (remote apps, ssh, etc). The only bummer is the iOS local development problem for people that need the software flexibility of working locally. I really, really wish Apple would allow this.

But for reading and writing, the iPad Pro is pretty darn hard to beat.

Post reply on HN