5 ms·

Not exactly breaking news unless you've been living in closet since widescreen panels came out. It is nice that some manufacturers (especially Microsoft) are p

Not exactly breaking news unless you've been living in closet since widescreen panels came out. It is nice that some manufacturers (especially Microsoft) are putting out great aspect ratios for productivity. For productivity, I've found that the sweet spot seems to be either ultra widescreen (side by side applications), or multiple screens with 3:2 / 4:3 / 5:4. 16:10 is much better than 16:9 though, especially on a small device.

hyperpl 6y ago
I'm getting ready to sell my 16:9 thinkpad carbon x1 for the 16:10 nano or x1 2021. I'm OK with my 16:9 43" monitor because it's so big I get the vertical real-estate but my thinkpad feels as though it's really only useful for watching 16:9 videos which I don't do. If 2021 is the year of 16:10 for Thinkpad, then I'm hoping 2025 is the year of 3:2 and maybe hopefully sometime in 2030 we'll be full circle back to 4:3!
- zepolen 6y ago
  Still don't understand why there is no love for LG: https://www.lg.com/us/laptops/lg-17u70n-r.aas8u1-ultra-slim-laptop https://www.lg.com/us/laptops/lg-17u70n-r.aas8u1-ultra-slim-... - 16gb ram (max 40gb) - 2 x nvme ssd - 17" 16:10 2560x1600 display - nvidia gpu - aluminium body 4.3 lbs - sd / usb / usbc / hdmi / ethernet ports - $1,699.99 (!) Or you could go for the intel gpu version which weighs 2.9lbs.
  - Eldandan 6y ago
    I suspect it's due to competing with the Dell XPS 17 2020. I prefer Thinkpad due to their keyboards and I am a trackpoint user, but if I really needed 16:10 then I would get something from Dell's XPS line. With the LG I'd be taking a risk with ergonomics such as the keyboard and trackpad, whereas I know what the XPS feels like.
    - zepolen 6y ago
      The keyboard/trackpad on the LG is imho better and having pixel less screen @ 17" with the added vertical height is a no contest for productivity. I took a risk on it as well and it's served really well as a daily worker. The XPS otoh is a (badly executed, no retina) macbook clone. LG brought out the first light 17" laptop two years ago when everyone was still on 15", but frankly if they don't get support then I'm afraid they'll stop releasing these machines.
    - heelix 6y ago
      I picked up a 17" Dell XPS with the updated monitor. It is absolutely glorious. Was able to add a M2 drive and upgrade the memory. Had to do a bit of work to get the killer nic to work with Linux, but it is a solid machine. It is remarkably small for such a large screen.
  - metalliqaz 6y ago
    LG makes laptops?
    - jandrese 6y ago
      I'm curious if they actually design/build them or if they are just rebranded Clevos.
  - lliamander 6y ago
    I convinced an accountant I know to get the 2020 version (wider 0 key) and they love it. Personally, I refuse to use anything other than a ThinkPad if I can help it because: 1) Linux support 2) trackpoint Hoping they bring taller displays to AMD thinkpads in the near future.
netule 6y ago
For writing, I have a 90° angled 27" 16:9 monitor at 1080x1920. It's absolutely unusable for programming since it barely fits 80 characters at a usable scale, but it's like having a giant page in front of me when using a word processor/text editor.
- anamexis 6y ago
  Why is it usable for word processing but unusable for programming?
  - jacobwilliamroy 6y ago
    Usually word processing and typesetting have word-wrap enabled. This is undesirable in a program. The 9:16 screen may still be useful for programming though, because it's nice to have some documentation out on another screen.
  - munificent 6y ago
    Word processors soft wrap text to whatever window width you want. Code editors need to be as wide as the code.
    - emayljames 6y ago
      Atom, VSCode, Dreamweaver and others also use soft wrap by default.
      - nicoburns 6y ago
        Soft-wrapped code tends to be pretty difficult to read though. Certainly much more difficult than wrapped prose. Personally I prefer horizontal scrolling over wrapping code pretty much always (at least on a mac where horizontal scrolling is easy).
        jlarcombe 6y ago
        Xcode used to be really good at softwrapping code. It was so useful with the assistant editor on a laptop screen. It got worse at some point around Xcode 8 or 9, which was a shame.
dheera 6y ago
The thing that really bugs me though is the marketing teams that started using the terms "4K". Displays used to be 480p, 720p, 1080p, and then ... 4K? The 4K was clearly intended to fool people into thinking that it was 4Kp or 4000p. But get a load of this... 4K is 2160p. It should have been called 2Kp to be a fair comparison with the then-state-of-the-art 1080p. The marketing departments quietly went from measuring the vertical to measuring the horizontal to fool a bunch of unsuspecting consumers.
- athenot 6y ago
  It's 4k because it's an HD resolution (1080) doubled horizontally and vertically. If this is HD: ┏━━━━┓ ┃ ┃ ┗━━━━┛ Then 4 of these tiled become 4k: ┏━━━━┳━━━━┓ ┃ ┃ ┃ ┣━━━━╋━━━━┫ ┃ ┃ ┃ ┗━━━━┻━━━━┛ I used to have 4 separate HD monitors laid out horizontally on my desk, and in terms of pixel realestate, a 4k effectively replaces them... until retina/high density displays became affordable. Now my 5k monitor is effectively the realestate of 4 HD monitors, but nice and smooth.
  - dheera 6y ago
    No, it's 4K because it's approximately 4000 (actually 3840) pixels in the horizontal dimension. It has nothing to do with 4 times 1080p. 640x480 ("480p" <-- vertical) 1280x720 ("720p" <-- vertical) 1920x1080 ("1080p" <-- vertical) 3840x2160 ("4K" <-- they marketing departments suddenly started measuring horizontal)
    - Tijdreiziger 6y ago
      4K is the marketing term, i.e.: 4K > Full HD > HD > SD (marketing terms) 2160p/i > 1080p/i > 720p/ > 480p/i / 576p/i (resolutions)
    - kalleboo 6y ago
      640x480 (VGA), 800x600 (SVGA), etc came from the computer industry since they had 4:3 CRTs 720p, 1080p came from the TV industry since they always counted video in "lines" (NTSC is 525 lines) 4K came from the movie industry (the 2005 Digital Cinema specification), since movies have wildly different aspect ratios so counting the vertical doesn't make sense (specifically, it's very rare for movies to be 16:9!)
darkwater 6y ago
I have an ultrawide LG display and it really improved my life, especially with videocalls. I can keep the call window big enough in one half and with the other read code, documentation, looking at a graph etc. Before that I was constantly changing the focused window or not seeing the other person(s).

hyperpl 6y ago

I'm getting ready to sell my 16:9 thinkpad carbon x1 for the 16:10 nano or x1 2021. I'm OK with my 16:9 43" monitor because it's so big I get the vertical real-estate but my thinkpad feels as though it's really only useful for watching 16:9 videos which I don't do. If 2021 is the year of 16:10 for Thinkpad, then I'm hoping 2025 is the year of 3:2 and maybe hopefully sometime in 2030 we'll be full circle back to 4:3!

zepolen 6y ago
Still don't understand why there is no love for LG: https://www.lg.com/us/laptops/lg-17u70n-r.aas8u1-ultra-slim-laptop https://www.lg.com/us/laptops/lg-17u70n-r.aas8u1-ultra-slim-... - 16gb ram (max 40gb) - 2 x nvme ssd - 17" 16:10 2560x1600 display - nvidia gpu - aluminium body 4.3 lbs - sd / usb / usbc / hdmi / ethernet ports - $1,699.99 (!) Or you could go for the intel gpu version which weighs 2.9lbs.
- Eldandan 6y ago
  I suspect it's due to competing with the Dell XPS 17 2020. I prefer Thinkpad due to their keyboards and I am a trackpoint user, but if I really needed 16:10 then I would get something from Dell's XPS line. With the LG I'd be taking a risk with ergonomics such as the keyboard and trackpad, whereas I know what the XPS feels like.
  - zepolen 6y ago
    The keyboard/trackpad on the LG is imho better and having pixel less screen @ 17" with the added vertical height is a no contest for productivity. I took a risk on it as well and it's served really well as a daily worker. The XPS otoh is a (badly executed, no retina) macbook clone. LG brought out the first light 17" laptop two years ago when everyone was still on 15", but frankly if they don't get support then I'm afraid they'll stop releasing these machines.
  - heelix 6y ago
    I picked up a 17" Dell XPS with the updated monitor. It is absolutely glorious. Was able to add a M2 drive and upgrade the memory. Had to do a bit of work to get the killer nic to work with Linux, but it is a solid machine. It is remarkably small for such a large screen.
- metalliqaz 6y ago
  LG makes laptops?
  - jandrese 6y ago
    I'm curious if they actually design/build them or if they are just rebranded Clevos.
- lliamander 6y ago
  I convinced an accountant I know to get the 2020 version (wider 0 key) and they love it. Personally, I refuse to use anything other than a ThinkPad if I can help it because: 1) Linux support 2) trackpoint Hoping they bring taller displays to AMD thinkpads in the near future.

netule 6y ago

For writing, I have a 90° angled 27" 16:9 monitor at 1080x1920. It's absolutely unusable for programming since it barely fits 80 characters at a usable scale, but it's like having a giant page in front of me when using a word processor/text editor.

anamexis 6y ago
Why is it usable for word processing but unusable for programming?
- jacobwilliamroy 6y ago
  Usually word processing and typesetting have word-wrap enabled. This is undesirable in a program. The 9:16 screen may still be useful for programming though, because it's nice to have some documentation out on another screen.
- munificent 6y ago
  Word processors soft wrap text to whatever window width you want. Code editors need to be as wide as the code.
  - emayljames 6y ago
    Atom, VSCode, Dreamweaver and others also use soft wrap by default.
    - nicoburns 6y ago
      Soft-wrapped code tends to be pretty difficult to read though. Certainly much more difficult than wrapped prose. Personally I prefer horizontal scrolling over wrapping code pretty much always (at least on a mac where horizontal scrolling is easy).
      - jlarcombe 6y ago
        Xcode used to be really good at softwrapping code. It was so useful with the assistant editor on a laptop screen. It got worse at some point around Xcode 8 or 9, which was a shame.

dheera 6y ago

The thing that really bugs me though is the marketing teams that started using the terms "4K". Displays used to be 480p, 720p, 1080p, and then ... 4K? The 4K was clearly intended to fool people into thinking that it was 4Kp or 4000p. But get a load of this... 4K is 2160p. It should have been called 2Kp to be a fair comparison with the then-state-of-the-art 1080p. The marketing departments quietly went from measuring the vertical to measuring the horizontal to fool a bunch of unsuspecting consumers.

athenot 6y ago
It's 4k because it's an HD resolution (1080) doubled horizontally and vertically. If this is HD: ┏━━━━┓ ┃ ┃ ┗━━━━┛ Then 4 of these tiled become 4k: ┏━━━━┳━━━━┓ ┃ ┃ ┃ ┣━━━━╋━━━━┫ ┃ ┃ ┃ ┗━━━━┻━━━━┛ I used to have 4 separate HD monitors laid out horizontally on my desk, and in terms of pixel realestate, a 4k effectively replaces them... until retina/high density displays became affordable. Now my 5k monitor is effectively the realestate of 4 HD monitors, but nice and smooth.
- dheera 6y ago
  No, it's 4K because it's approximately 4000 (actually 3840) pixels in the horizontal dimension. It has nothing to do with 4 times 1080p. 640x480 ("480p" <-- vertical) 1280x720 ("720p" <-- vertical) 1920x1080 ("1080p" <-- vertical) 3840x2160 ("4K" <-- they marketing departments suddenly started measuring horizontal)
  - Tijdreiziger 6y ago
    4K is the marketing term, i.e.: 4K > Full HD > HD > SD (marketing terms) 2160p/i > 1080p/i > 720p/ > 480p/i / 576p/i (resolutions)
  - kalleboo 6y ago
    640x480 (VGA), 800x600 (SVGA), etc came from the computer industry since they had 4:3 CRTs 720p, 1080p came from the TV industry since they always counted video in "lines" (NTSC is 525 lines) 4K came from the movie industry (the 2005 Digital Cinema specification), since movies have wildly different aspect ratios so counting the vertical doesn't make sense (specifically, it's very rare for movies to be 16:9!)

darkwater 6y ago

I have an ultrawide LG display and it really improved my life, especially with videocalls. I can keep the call window big enough in one half and with the other read code, documentation, looking at a graph etc. Before that I was constantly changing the focused window or not seeing the other person(s).