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

[Allan Gottlieb <gottlieb@nyu.edu>]

Alan McKinnon <alan.mckinnon@gmail.com> writes:

> 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.
>
> 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.
>
> 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. 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.

I agree with the thrust of Alan's reply, but his numbers require
nonsquare pixels.

With square pixels 16x9 is 1920x1080 (so called full HD is 1080p).  This
is my laptop's display.

My big (30") monitor is 16x10 (2560x1600) and is a joy to use.  I prefer
the current wide aspect ratio better then the previous 4x3 standard.

allan