5 ms·

The only valid argument that I'd find for glossy screens is that you can build them more robust than matte screens. For example, it's much easier to clean the g

by gst 15y ago

The only valid argument that I'd find for glossy screens is that you can build them more robust than matte screens. For example, it's much easier to clean the glass on the new Macbooks compared to a matte screen, which you wouldn't clean with a normal towel. Another example is Lenovo's new X1 laptop that uses Gorilla Glass which should be even much more robust than Apple's screens. Still, I prefer matte screens, as the reflections on glossy screens are too much of a distraction for me. Speaking of "out of touch" another issue with new screens is the format: On my old IBM/Lenovo X41 and X61s laptops the 4:3 screen format was perfect for the 12" screen. Although the screen was small I used the X41 as my main laptop for about half a year (without an external monitor). On my current X201 the 16:10 format is much worse: I'm a programmer, I don't need horizontal space, but vertical space. Even for non-programmers I guess that for reading web pages or other documents vertical space is also more important than horizontal space. With Lenovo's new X210 they've introduced a further step in the wrong direction by switching from 16:10 to 16:9.

uast23 15y ago
I did not understand seriously what kind of robustness you are talking about? Do glossy screens last longer than the matte ones? At least from the look of it, matte looks less fragile compared to glossy, although I am not sure if either of them is less fragile than other. Looking at matte is much easier to eyes. And as far as cleaning goes, cleaning the glossy one with towel will leave scratch everywhere! Isn't it?
- chromic 15y ago
  It depends on the screen. A cheap glossy screen might scratch easy, but something like a macbook screen probably has a pretty good anti-scratch layer. Glossy screens tend to get dirty easier, but also clean a bit easier with readily available materials (e.g. paper towel + water).
  - ugh 15y ago
    It’s glass – not easy to scratch, at least compared to plastic. That’s at least true for all of Apple’s laptops except the Air.
- ugh 15y ago
  I think glass is appropriate for touch screens – I wouldn’t really want to touch a plastic screen. I would never want a glossy laptop screen.
- gst 15y ago
  With a matte screen you have your thin matte layer directly over the screen. The matte layer itself offers no protection. So if something hits a little bit too hard against the screen, your screen will look like this: http://goo.gl/qSQxl http://goo.gl/qSQxl Cheap glossy screens have exactly the same issue, but more expensive glossy screens such as the ones in Apple's Macbooks or Lenovo's X1 laptop are basically a glass board right in front of the screen. So they are much more resistant against scratches and against other types of physical abuse.
  - uast23 15y ago
    Oh I get it. You meant the screen/cover which goes till the edges, as in MBP. Yeah, compared to that, matte sounds more touchable.
hcurtiss 15y ago
Though I believe it's been covered here before, and a little off topic, I totally agree that screen proportion is another huge issue. It's for this reason that I can't bring myself to upgrade my Lenovo X61t. A 4:3 1440x1050 12.1" screen is vastly superior to anything available today. God, how I wish the new Lenovo tablets came in 4:3.
- candeira 15y ago
  I am still running a Toshiba Portege m200 for the same reasons: a 4:3 1440x1050 12.1" screen, a discrete gfx card (32M Geforce 5200). It's getting a bit long in the tooth, as it is a 2005 computer, but two keyboards and three batteries later, it still runs as new. God, how I wish there were new 12" laptops in 4:3.
jeffool 15y ago
The question this brings to mind for me: When will we be able to rotate laptop screens? Obviously it's not a tech problem, and instead a matter of convincing someone this is a wanted feature. How do you go about such a campaign?
- jimbobimbo 15y ago
  It's called "tablet convertible" and been there forever.
  - jeffool 15y ago
    Amazingly, I hadn't heard of that... Thank you!
MichaelGG 15y ago
I love my X201 tablet. It's the first laptop I've been physically attracted to. It's my first ThinkPad, and Lenovo totally won me over. At $2000 retail, I was hoping they'd keep such a professional work tablet going. But alas, no, the X220 tablet is a massive loss: - Glossy screens (choose between touch and reflections, or less reflections but no touch) - Loss of 32 pixels vertically, for even wider display. No thanks. - Wider body. The keyboard was already full-size, a wider body helps nothing. - New battery that pops the laptop up in the back, instead of the nice flush battery that gave you a spine to grab onto in tablet mode. - Loses backcompat with the X201 UltraBase docking station - And still no HDMI. And yet, if I want Sandy Bridge (instant gain of 20% clock speed), what're my options? I was really looking forward to buying an X220 when they came out. Now, I'll sit and wait for some other vendor to get a proper lightweight work tablet out.
- Adaptive 15y ago
  I have the x220 tablet (arch linux on it) with the multitouch option and it's definitely matte. I can't compare it to the build quality of the x201, but I'm pleased with the performance and display. 10W power consumption with wifi on after a bit of powertop2.
  - Adaptive 15y ago
    I've had some questions about the matte screen and will post this here for reference. I've compared it to my matte cinema display and my glossy cinema display. It's not as matte as the 'actual' matte display, but the x220 with multitouch layer would definitely count as a matte screen in my book. I'll try to get a picture up on the arch wiki.
makmanalp 15y ago
In my experience colours look more vivid on glossy screens than on matte ones. Although usually, especially for laptops that move around, I'd rather have the matte one. I wish every manufacturer offered both.
bluekeybox 15y ago
> I'm a programmer, I don't need horizontal space, but vertical space Mostly agree, but my opinion on this matter was somewhat swayed after I started using :vsp in Vim on my 13" widescreen notebook (combined with a full-screen mode in iTerm). Not only had splitting the screen vertically right in the middle helped me recover the "lost" space, but it also forced me to wrap my code consistently to 80 characters, so now it looks/prints better. I guess the moral is that sometimes a bad thing can lead to something good.
- jerf 15y ago
  On my 1920x1080 laptop screen, I can comfortably fit 3 emacs sessions side by side, all windows on the same process, all frequently further split one level horizontally. This is a lot of code. I generally only use 2 and have a shell on the left, which also comfortably fits, but if I need 3 I have it. (I would generally consider the need to have 6 views of your source to get your job done a code smell, but it isn't always my code, and lately we've been doing some client/message-bus/server code where 6 starts to feel a bit constraining.) Technically I'm still neutral on the emacs v. vim wars and they're both good editors. But looking around me, the vim users in my office really need to get better about buffer management. I'm sure vim can technically do everything emacs can do with buffers and splitting and windowing, but "nobody" seems to do it.
  - ScottBurson 15y ago
    Ah! Another Emacs user who likes to spread 6 windows across a 1920-wide display. I knew I couldn't be the only one :-) I use XEmacs with the 6x10 font, and can get three windows across, each 100 characters wide, all in the same frame (it takes a little fiddling to set up, but then I keep the session around a long time).
    - nunb 15y ago
      I use some revive mode code a friend wrote to revive my frame config. Just like desktop-save, I do C-x S instead, and it saves all open frames, and the buffers they contain (no frame size or position though, afair). C-x F to load in the rare event I need to restart emacs. The code is at https://github.com/nunb/revive-mode-config https://github.com/nunb/revive-mode-config

by gst 15y ago

uast23 15y ago

I did not understand seriously what kind of robustness you are talking about? Do glossy screens last longer than the matte ones? At least from the look of it, matte looks less fragile compared to glossy, although I am not sure if either of them is less fragile than other. Looking at matte is much easier to eyes. And as far as cleaning goes, cleaning the glossy one with towel will leave scratch everywhere! Isn't it?

chromic 15y ago
It depends on the screen. A cheap glossy screen might scratch easy, but something like a macbook screen probably has a pretty good anti-scratch layer. Glossy screens tend to get dirty easier, but also clean a bit easier with readily available materials (e.g. paper towel + water).
- ugh 15y ago
  It’s glass – not easy to scratch, at least compared to plastic. That’s at least true for all of Apple’s laptops except the Air.
ugh 15y ago
I think glass is appropriate for touch screens – I wouldn’t really want to touch a plastic screen. I would never want a glossy laptop screen.
gst 15y ago
With a matte screen you have your thin matte layer directly over the screen. The matte layer itself offers no protection. So if something hits a little bit too hard against the screen, your screen will look like this: http://goo.gl/qSQxl http://goo.gl/qSQxl Cheap glossy screens have exactly the same issue, but more expensive glossy screens such as the ones in Apple's Macbooks or Lenovo's X1 laptop are basically a glass board right in front of the screen. So they are much more resistant against scratches and against other types of physical abuse.
- uast23 15y ago
  Oh I get it. You meant the screen/cover which goes till the edges, as in MBP. Yeah, compared to that, matte sounds more touchable.

hcurtiss 15y ago

Though I believe it's been covered here before, and a little off topic, I totally agree that screen proportion is another huge issue. It's for this reason that I can't bring myself to upgrade my Lenovo X61t. A 4:3 1440x1050 12.1" screen is vastly superior to anything available today. God, how I wish the new Lenovo tablets came in 4:3.

candeira 15y ago
I am still running a Toshiba Portege m200 for the same reasons: a 4:3 1440x1050 12.1" screen, a discrete gfx card (32M Geforce 5200). It's getting a bit long in the tooth, as it is a 2005 computer, but two keyboards and three batteries later, it still runs as new. God, how I wish there were new 12" laptops in 4:3.

jeffool 15y ago

The question this brings to mind for me: When will we be able to rotate laptop screens? Obviously it's not a tech problem, and instead a matter of convincing someone this is a wanted feature. How do you go about such a campaign?

jimbobimbo 15y ago
It's called "tablet convertible" and been there forever.
- jeffool 15y ago
  Amazingly, I hadn't heard of that... Thank you!

MichaelGG 15y ago

I love my X201 tablet. It's the first laptop I've been physically attracted to. It's my first ThinkPad, and Lenovo totally won me over. At $2000 retail, I was hoping they'd keep such a professional work tablet going. But alas, no, the X220 tablet is a massive loss: - Glossy screens (choose between touch and reflections, or less reflections but no touch) - Loss of 32 pixels vertically, for even wider display. No thanks. - Wider body. The keyboard was already full-size, a wider body helps nothing. - New battery that pops the laptop up in the back, instead of the nice flush battery that gave you a spine to grab onto in tablet mode. - Loses backcompat with the X201 UltraBase docking station - And still no HDMI. And yet, if I want Sandy Bridge (instant gain of 20% clock speed), what're my options? I was really looking forward to buying an X220 when they came out. Now, I'll sit and wait for some other vendor to get a proper lightweight work tablet out.

Adaptive 15y ago
I have the x220 tablet (arch linux on it) with the multitouch option and it's definitely matte. I can't compare it to the build quality of the x201, but I'm pleased with the performance and display. 10W power consumption with wifi on after a bit of powertop2.
- Adaptive 15y ago
  I've had some questions about the matte screen and will post this here for reference. I've compared it to my matte cinema display and my glossy cinema display. It's not as matte as the 'actual' matte display, but the x220 with multitouch layer would definitely count as a matte screen in my book. I'll try to get a picture up on the arch wiki.

makmanalp 15y ago

In my experience colours look more vivid on glossy screens than on matte ones. Although usually, especially for laptops that move around, I'd rather have the matte one. I wish every manufacturer offered both.

bluekeybox 15y ago

> I'm a programmer, I don't need horizontal space, but vertical space Mostly agree, but my opinion on this matter was somewhat swayed after I started using :vsp in Vim on my 13" widescreen notebook (combined with a full-screen mode in iTerm). Not only had splitting the screen vertically right in the middle helped me recover the "lost" space, but it also forced me to wrap my code consistently to 80 characters, so now it looks/prints better. I guess the moral is that sometimes a bad thing can lead to something good.

jerf 15y ago
On my 1920x1080 laptop screen, I can comfortably fit 3 emacs sessions side by side, all windows on the same process, all frequently further split one level horizontally. This is a lot of code. I generally only use 2 and have a shell on the left, which also comfortably fits, but if I need 3 I have it. (I would generally consider the need to have 6 views of your source to get your job done a code smell, but it isn't always my code, and lately we've been doing some client/message-bus/server code where 6 starts to feel a bit constraining.) Technically I'm still neutral on the emacs v. vim wars and they're both good editors. But looking around me, the vim users in my office really need to get better about buffer management. I'm sure vim can technically do everything emacs can do with buffers and splitting and windowing, but "nobody" seems to do it.
- ScottBurson 15y ago
  Ah! Another Emacs user who likes to spread 6 windows across a 1920-wide display. I knew I couldn't be the only one :-) I use XEmacs with the 6x10 font, and can get three windows across, each 100 characters wide, all in the same frame (it takes a little fiddling to set up, but then I keep the session around a long time).
  - nunb 15y ago
    I use some revive mode code a friend wrote to revive my frame config. Just like desktop-save, I do C-x S instead, and it saves all open frames, and the buffers they contain (no frame size or position though, afair). C-x F to load in the rare event I need to restart emacs. The code is at https://github.com/nunb/revive-mode-config https://github.com/nunb/revive-mode-config