[gentoo-user] Re: OT: advice sought on new laptop for Gentoo

[Grant Edwards <grant.b.edwards@gmail.com>]

On 2010-09-05, Alan McKinnon <alan.mckinnon@gmail.com> wrote:
> Apparently, though unproven, at 17:18 on Sunday 05 September 2010, Grant 
> Edwards did opine thusly:
>
>> On 2010-09-05, John Blinka <john.blinka@gmail.com> wrote:
>> > Hi, all,
>> > 
>> > My trusty Inspiron 8200 is on death's door and so I'm looking for a
>> > new laptop - one that will run Gentoo straightforwardly, of course.
>> > 
>> > I really liked the 1600x1200 display on this machine, which I greatly
>> > prefer to the 1600x900 display on the more modern Inspiron 1545 I own.
>> > 
>> >  Most of what I do now is through a web browser, and I can see much
>> > 
>> > more of a web page with 1200 lines of display than I can with 900.
>> > And I dislike the massive width of the 1545 which makes it much less
>> > portable than the old 8200.  I'd love to replace my 8200 with a
>> > machine of similar dimensions, but thinner and lighter.  However, I
>> > cannot find any machine on Dell's website with a 4x3 aspect ratio -
>> > they all seem to be approximately 16x9 now.
>> > 
>> > So,  is 16x9 all that's available now in laptops?
>> 
>> Yup, and 16x9 sucks -- it's just an excuse to ship smaller,
>> lower-resolution displays labelled with bigger numbers.
>> 
>> Complete ripoff.
>
> If you have 16:9 at 1280*720, then yes, it is going to suck. There is nothing 
> inherently wrong with the aspect ratio, please desist from trying to make it 
> so.

Yes, there is an inherent problem: in order to get what I consider
acceptable vertical size/resolution you have to buy something that's
rediculously wide.

> There are good reasons for it. It most easily fits the overall
> dimensions of the machine, you have a wide and not very deep keyboard
> plus space for a touchpad and palm rests. It's all approximately
> 16:9.

No it's not.  At least only on any of my laptops.  I suppose you can
tack on a useless numeric keypat to try to take up some of the extra
horizontal space that's required in order to get a screen that's tall
enough to be useful.

> I paid the extra to get 16:9 @ 1920x1200. Best thing I ever did
> laptop-wise - I can get two webpages side by side on the screen
> looking very natural.
>
> Did you know that 16:9 is the eye's natural aspect ratio?

How do you explain the widespread popularity of portrait mode for
printed material?  Text is much easier to read in tall, narrow,
columns.  The more lines of code you can see at once when editing
source code, the fewer the bugs.  Both those have been experimentally
verified.

> Test it sometime with outstreched fingers.

I still vastly prefer 4:3 for all of the work I do.  I guess if you
want to watch movies, and you don't mind hauling around a useless
numeric keypad, 16:9 is nice.

-- 
Grant