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I definitely do not remember 800x600 as spacious and comfy. The best I could call it is "slightly better than 640x480". I had to get to 1024x768 before I actual

I definitely do not remember 800x600 as spacious and comfy. The best I could call it is "slightly better than 640x480". I had to get to 1024x768 before I actually felt like the screen was no longer cramped. And I had to get to 2560x1440 before I felt like I really had enough room for more than one window at a usable size and placement at the same time. (Not really surprising, as it's finally big enough to put 1280x720 windows next to each other.)

strken 3y ago
This is a comparison of two generations of UI running at 800x600. The claim seems to be about the relative spaciousness and comfiness of the old UI at low resolutions, not the resolution itself.
skissane 3y ago
> I definitely do not remember 800x600 as spacious and comfy. It is all relative. Someone who grew up in a tiny apartment may consider an average-sized house spacious, someone who grew up in a mansion may consider it cramped. When all I had was 640x480, it didn't feel cramped, because it was all I knew. And then 800x600 came along, and "wow this is huge". And now I start Windows 3.1 in a VM, and "I don't remember it being this small?" When I was a little kid, I thought our house and backyard were enormous. Then my parents sold that house and we moved to another city, and I haven't been inside it for over 30 years now. I bet if I went back tomorrow, it would look a lot smaller than I remember it being
- Dalewyn 3y ago
  We have to remember we were also using CRT monitors, which don't have "pixels" per se like the LCD monitors of today do. 800x600 on a CRT back then really did feel as big as 1920x1080 today.
  - danparsonson 3y ago
    > We have to remember we were also using CRT monitors, which don't have "pixels" per se like the LCD monitors of today do. How so? CRT pixels aren't active, is that what you mean? They are still distinct picture elements ("pix-els").
    - phyrex 3y ago
      Ooooh that’s where it comes from?? Thanks!
      - chaxor 3y ago
        Next they're going to be telling me the 'save' button isn't a refrigerator. Pfft. Where else would you put something you want to save?
        Dalewyn 3y ago
        I'm pleasantly surprised the save icon hasn't been replaced by something else (eg: a piggy bank), in this current era of Accessibility to the Point of Inaccessibility.
        nirimda 3y ago
        It has been - on my computer at least I have a hard drive with a down arrow on it for save.
        chaxor 3y ago
        This is a striking way to state the awful state of things in this era.
        cout 3y ago
        I dunno, but I certainly wouldn't put it on a floppy, considering how quickly the physical media can degrade.
    - chowells 3y ago
      Eh. It's sort of true. While the screen has individual phosphors, they're not individually addressable. What is sent is an analog signal that indicates intensity (of a specific channel) at the current time. As an analog signal, it cannot change instantaneously. Instead you get a bunch of waves indicating varying intensity of each channel over time. Pixels in frame buffers get mapped to time slices in that signal. The DAC attempts to create the correct wave to match the framebuffer data, but it's always going to have analog fuzziness at the physical level. And if you have a higher-frequency DAC, you can map more pixels to the same amount of time, and then get higher horizontal resolution. Of course, that's all for horizontal lines. The number of vertical lines is actually part of the signal. It's just that there's a lot of fuzziness in how many times you can subdivide an individual line.
  - pilif 3y ago
    maybe for you, but not for me. 800x600 was still very cramped and the first time I felt I could comfortably do development was on a 21" Sony CRT at 1600x1200, though that was pushing the monitor resolution-wise and it lost a bit of sharpness compared to lower resolutions. Also, I'm unsure as to how the monitor type would have any impact on the screen real-estate available to the OS. If the OS is rendering an 800x600 screen, then there are 800 pixels of room available horizontally and 600 vertically, no matter the screen technology. Given a 32 pixel size of an icon for example, there's would be room for 25 icons horizontally with a 800x600 resolution but 50 icons on a 1600 resolution. The screen technology does not factor into this at all. What I do give you that it's probably possible to drive a CRT monitor of a relatively small size with larger resolutions because pixels can be infinitely small, though, as I said in the beginning of the comment, at some point you will get issues with sharpness and things become blurry.
- NovaDudely 3y ago
  In an age when the average desktop was 800x600, it was astounding the first time I saw Win 98 running at 1600 x 1200. I mean, how could we ever fill that space? It was like when we jumped from software rendering 3D at 320x200 unfiltered textures struggling to get to 30FPS to 3D accelerated 640x480 at 60FPS... WOW! We don't see those kind of jumps much any more but you do cherish them when they turn up.
  - bmitc 3y ago
    I have a 40" ultrawide, and it honestly feels small at times. It's crazy how much space, both vertical and horizontal is wasted in UIs.
bluedino 3y ago
You never experienced 1600x1200? It was glorious! 1280x1024 was pretty nice on early LCDs as well.
- micahdeath 3y ago
  I'm using 1600x900 on my Laptop now and I use 1366x768 on my 24" monitors. It used to be faster before they started 'scaling' the display.
- CyberDildonics 3y ago
  Oh, but we've moved past that into much better resolutions, of course more resolution is better.

strken 3y ago

This is a comparison of two generations of UI running at 800x600. The claim seems to be about the relative spaciousness and comfiness of the old UI at low resolutions, not the resolution itself.

skissane 3y ago

> I definitely do not remember 800x600 as spacious and comfy. It is all relative. Someone who grew up in a tiny apartment may consider an average-sized house spacious, someone who grew up in a mansion may consider it cramped. When all I had was 640x480, it didn't feel cramped, because it was all I knew. And then 800x600 came along, and "wow this is huge". And now I start Windows 3.1 in a VM, and "I don't remember it being this small?" When I was a little kid, I thought our house and backyard were enormous. Then my parents sold that house and we moved to another city, and I haven't been inside it for over 30 years now. I bet if I went back tomorrow, it would look a lot smaller than I remember it being

Dalewyn 3y ago
We have to remember we were also using CRT monitors, which don't have "pixels" per se like the LCD monitors of today do. 800x600 on a CRT back then really did feel as big as 1920x1080 today.
- danparsonson 3y ago
  > We have to remember we were also using CRT monitors, which don't have "pixels" per se like the LCD monitors of today do. How so? CRT pixels aren't active, is that what you mean? They are still distinct picture elements ("pix-els").
  - phyrex 3y ago
    Ooooh that’s where it comes from?? Thanks!
    - chaxor 3y ago
      Next they're going to be telling me the 'save' button isn't a refrigerator. Pfft. Where else would you put something you want to save?
      - Dalewyn 3y ago
        I'm pleasantly surprised the save icon hasn't been replaced by something else (eg: a piggy bank), in this current era of Accessibility to the Point of Inaccessibility.
        nirimda 3y ago
        It has been - on my computer at least I have a hard drive with a down arrow on it for save.
        chaxor 3y ago
        This is a striking way to state the awful state of things in this era.
      - cout 3y ago
        I dunno, but I certainly wouldn't put it on a floppy, considering how quickly the physical media can degrade.
  - chowells 3y ago
    Eh. It's sort of true. While the screen has individual phosphors, they're not individually addressable. What is sent is an analog signal that indicates intensity (of a specific channel) at the current time. As an analog signal, it cannot change instantaneously. Instead you get a bunch of waves indicating varying intensity of each channel over time. Pixels in frame buffers get mapped to time slices in that signal. The DAC attempts to create the correct wave to match the framebuffer data, but it's always going to have analog fuzziness at the physical level. And if you have a higher-frequency DAC, you can map more pixels to the same amount of time, and then get higher horizontal resolution. Of course, that's all for horizontal lines. The number of vertical lines is actually part of the signal. It's just that there's a lot of fuzziness in how many times you can subdivide an individual line.
- pilif 3y ago
  maybe for you, but not for me. 800x600 was still very cramped and the first time I felt I could comfortably do development was on a 21" Sony CRT at 1600x1200, though that was pushing the monitor resolution-wise and it lost a bit of sharpness compared to lower resolutions. Also, I'm unsure as to how the monitor type would have any impact on the screen real-estate available to the OS. If the OS is rendering an 800x600 screen, then there are 800 pixels of room available horizontally and 600 vertically, no matter the screen technology. Given a 32 pixel size of an icon for example, there's would be room for 25 icons horizontally with a 800x600 resolution but 50 icons on a 1600 resolution. The screen technology does not factor into this at all. What I do give you that it's probably possible to drive a CRT monitor of a relatively small size with larger resolutions because pixels can be infinitely small, though, as I said in the beginning of the comment, at some point you will get issues with sharpness and things become blurry.
NovaDudely 3y ago
In an age when the average desktop was 800x600, it was astounding the first time I saw Win 98 running at 1600 x 1200. I mean, how could we ever fill that space? It was like when we jumped from software rendering 3D at 320x200 unfiltered textures struggling to get to 30FPS to 3D accelerated 640x480 at 60FPS... WOW! We don't see those kind of jumps much any more but you do cherish them when they turn up.
- bmitc 3y ago
  I have a 40" ultrawide, and it honestly feels small at times. It's crazy how much space, both vertical and horizontal is wasted in UIs.

bluedino 3y ago

You never experienced 1600x1200? It was glorious! 1280x1024 was pretty nice on early LCDs as well.

micahdeath 3y ago
I'm using 1600x900 on my Laptop now and I use 1366x768 on my 24" monitors. It used to be faster before they started 'scaling' the display.
CyberDildonics 3y ago
Oh, but we've moved past that into much better resolutions, of course more resolution is better.