14 ms·

Linus Torvalds: Make 2560x1600 the new standard laptop resolution

• sliverstorm 14y ago
  One nice thing about the choice of 2560x1600 as a standard pick is, it to my knowledge is the largest resolution supported by DVI, and specifically DVI dual link at that. This might start pushing the market towards DisplayPort, which used to be limited to 2560x1600, but is allegedly being expanded upwards. (DisplayPort is my favorite display connector to date, and I hope to see adoption grow)
• dsirijus 14y ago
  For all manufacturers, this would reduce time of autonomy, and for many, significantly so. And obviously, price range. It's a trade-off between various things, as usual. What Linus thinks may work for him (I happen to agree), but I can easily see someone wanting an ultraportable with basically VGA resolution and battery lasting entire day of active usage.
  • rorrr 14y ago
    If an iPad can last 10 hours with that resolution, a laptop should be able to.
    • dsirijus 14y ago
      By what stretch of imagination is iPad's architecture similar to your average workstation war horse laptop in 2012?
      • Osmium 14y ago
        It's not that ridiculous. Intel integrated graphics can acceptably run a laptop of that resolution (see the Retina MBP). When Intel's new IGPs come out next year, it really should be a non-issue.
        • dsirijus 14y ago
          It is ridiculous in a sense that basically only the latest Intel's IGPs can run it acceptably. There's a whole plethora of quality ranges laptops provide for various purposes, it would be incredibly silly making such an incredulous resolution "a standard". Also, app ecosystem is not even on Macs supportive of those high res, imagine what mess would there be in Windows applications. Augh.
          • Osmium 14y ago
            Windows is actually not too bad. I'm running Windows 8 on my Retina MBP in high-DPI mode, and it looks crisp and most apps degrade gracefully (some look absurdly small, but that's rarer). Admittedly, this isn't something that could happen today. But Intel's IGP are the low end. In a few years, they'll be everywhere. It's difficult to argue that something that requires a modern integrated graphics chip is anything too demanding, when you look at how far ahead dedicated chips are.
      • lovskogen 14y ago
        Why does it need to be?
        • dsirijus 14y ago
          It doesn't. I'm just refuting the argument that if iPads can do it, laptops can too. Those are two wildly different architectures that are only beggining to converge, touch interface and resolution being prime candidates for feature convergence.
      • Retric 14y ago
        It's not a question of architecture. The real issue is batteries are expensive, heavy, and few people buy laptops based on battery life. So, while a you can take an ultra thin laptop w/ SSD add 2 lb's of battery's and be good to go it's now just a normal laptop with poor specs and a long battery life that few people actually care about when they can just plug in or use an external battery. iPad's on the other hand are highly dependent on battery life. And they get to sacrifice a lot of specs and get to use worse hardware than a typical 'ultra portable' without people really noticing as it's a different type of device. Still, you will find plenty of Android tablets that get stuck in the spec wars and end up with terrible battery life.
• oneandoneis2 14y ago
  Not just laptops - I'm sick of the standard PC monitor being such crappy resolutions as well. Even with dual screens on my work PC, there's not enough room for the xterms I need at a decent font size. Computer displays have stagnated for too long.
  • ars 14y ago
    You are confusing resolution with screen size. > a decent font size This is a function of screen size, not resolution.
    • Garoof 14y ago
      I don't know what oneandoneis2 meant. But I suppose what font size is decent might depend a little on the resolution.
    • oneandoneis2 14y ago
      No, I'm not. I'm talking about the actual physical size of the font, which is about 5mm. If I make my font size any smaller, because the resolution is crap, the font is unreadable. Higher pixel density would mean I could make the font size smaller and it would still be clearly legible.
  • akurilin 14y ago
    Agreed, screens need to gain higher resolution across all form factors. I would be ok with terrible frame rate for 1-2 years while the hardware catches up with 4x the pixels.
  • dfox 14y ago
    What is even more sad is that about 4 years ago resolution of average new desktop TFT was higher than today.
    • morsch 14y ago
      I doubt it. The average resolution today is probably 1920x1080. I guess you're referring to the fact that 4 years ago, 24" displays often came with 1920x1200 instead. But I doubt enough people bought them back then to make it the average resolution (don't blame me, I bought two). Most people probably bought craptastic 22" TN displays with resolutions worse than 1920x1080; I know I talked my share of acquaintances out of it. 1920x1200 displays are still available, incidently. And overall, the desktop TFT market is much higher quality these days. TN panels are going out of style, for one thing, thank god. You can now get a 22" Full-HD display with an MVA panel for around 150 USD. Still pathetic compared to tablets, but we're getting there.
• staunch 14y ago
  I'm so damn happy people are starting to realize how awesome resolution is. I've been buying 1920x1200 15" Dell laptops for 10 years now, and never bought a Mac because they've always had terrible resolution. I run Linux anyway, but I'm going buy Mac hardware next, unless a PC maker creates a competitive display (which I assume they will). Next up: IPS LCDs everywhere.
  • Osmium 14y ago
    1680 by 1050, which is the best you could get on a 15" Mac previously, isn't exactly "terrible resolution" (by historical standards anyway). But otherwise agreed. My main machine is a 15" Retina, and I don't think I could ever go back to a lower-PPI laptop.
    • evoxed 14y ago
      I bought the first generation MacBook Pro, a 17", for that reason. Other resolutions were just too small for what I was doing, and 1680 seemed like just enough. Eventually when they started offering the resolution upgrades on 15" models I upgraded to my current machine. The way I see it, there's no way I can be disappointed by the resolution of my next machine. No more pains over spending $100-300 for just a small bump to make things usable. Of course, the downside is that I can't let myself even try out the retina MacBook in store for fear that I won't look back– I'll wait until I can afford it.
      • peteri 14y ago
        Last time I went shopping for a machine 1680x1050 was my target resolution for a 17" screen with dual hard drives, I'm still using it four years later (it has had HD upgrade to 2x500gb 7200RPM drives) It happens to have a couple of GeForce 8600M GPUs in there so its just about usable for gaming too. After I dropped it (laptop bag strap broke) and smashed the corner I looked around for a replacement (The mac book pro was tempting but oh the $$$) and couldn't find one for sensible money. So I bought some new plastics, redid the thermal paste on the CPU (it had started thermal throttling during long compiles) bought a second hand screen (and a new 4 port USB pcb that got damaged during the fall) off ebay to replace the broken clips that hold it together when its closed. So I also have a spare screen now. I'm dreading replacing it but I reckon I'm probably still good for a year or two yet.
• ghshephard 14y ago
  The 13" MacBook Pro is now 2560x1600. Give it 18 months the entire Apple line will be a minimum 2560x1600. That's fine if you are willing to drop $1000 on a laptop, I don't expect we'll see $400 laptops @2560x1600 for several years - the Tablets have the advantage of free operating system, lower computing requirements, smaller physical screens, and, in the case of Amazon/Google, a willingness to subsidize the hardware sales in order to capture downstream Content/Search revenue.
  • Samuel_Michon 14y ago
    "Tablets have the advantage of free operating system" Which tablets do you mean? Certainly not those running Android, iOS or Windows. In the case of Android, manufacturers pay Microsoft for the privilege. Android users pay with their personal information and by looking at ads. iOS isn't free either, development of the OS is included in the hardware price. And Windows RT is certainly not free, manufacturers license it from Microsoft.
    • Osmium 14y ago
      Except in the case of Windows, it's not the case that OEMs have to pay licensing fees to put an OS on their tablet, and considering the state of Windows right now I can't imagine even its fees are prohibitive.
    • ghshephard 14y ago
      The Tablet that Linus is referring to, the Galaxy Nexus 10, has no marginal license fee per device. Apple, likewise, doesn't pay marginal license fee's, nor does Microsoft. Laptop Makers end up paying fees per device - typically to Microsoft. OEM Fees are around $50 for Windows XP/Windows 7.
    • SquareWheel 14y ago
      >Android users pay with their personal information and by looking at ads. Are you suggesting ads are built into the Android software? I was considering getting a Nexus 7 but this would totally change my mind.
• easy_rider 14y ago
  I used to have a "huge" 22" Iiyama CRT (20" Effective) boasting 2048x1152. I have forever been confused why current desktop screenS try to satisfy you with 1080p. This crap was getting hyped up On screens years after I was already enjoying higher resolutions at good refresh rates. And guess what? My 2 screens ay work are two 27" iiyamas LCD. And they don't go over 1080p... shouldn't it be even easier to get a better pixel density with lcds in bigger screens ? I agree with the "tiny font" bit. As a patient with severe myopia my mac air is a lot more comfortable on the eyes than my 16" widescreen acer.
  • aristidb 14y ago
    Well there's at least 27" TFTs with 2560x1440 and 30" TFTs with 2560x1600. I guess part of it must be that single-link DVI and older HDMI doesn't allow for more than 1920x1200, and cheaper graphics units would be overwhelmed with anything over 2560x1600.
    • masklinn 14y ago
      Meh. > The IBM T220 and T221 are LCD monitors with a native resolution of 3840×2400 pixels (WQUXGA) on a screen with a diagonal of 22.2 inches http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_T220/T221_LCD_monitors http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_T220/T221_LCD_monitors This was back in 2001, the screen ran off of a G200 (which was bundled with the T220) (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matrox_G200 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matrox_G200). A "modern" IGP is perfectly able to drive desktop and desktop application at that resolution (hell, an eyefinity card supports 6 screens to at least 1920x1200 in 3x2 configuration, that's a total resolution of 5760x2400... and you can play games on that)
      • aristidb 14y ago
        A card with 6 outputs costs a few bucks. The Intel HD4000 I believe has support for 2x2560x1600 I believe. Note that you're also comparing components with vastly differing prices. Maybe the market for $2000 monitors just isn't big enough. EDIT: Eizo offers 30" displays with 4096 x 2560 resolution. However, they are not exactly cheap. About $20-$30K. Meanwhile a 27" 2560x1440 display goes for $600, or as an import from Korea even for $300.
• baq 14y ago
  this may not be a constructive comment, but oh god yes please. integrated graphics are good enough these days and you can always drop down to 1280x800 without scaling problems if you want framerate.
  • akurilin 14y ago
    I was going to post the same thing, but I'm just going to hook onto your post. I've been roaming the web for a good high res desktop monitor for development purposes for a couple of months and there's simply nothing out there. Based on my research, there hasn't been enough motivation for monitor makers to increase the resolution. I think, and I might be missing a very obvious demographic, that developers trying to cram in 12 vim buffers on one screen would be the main use-case, and that's just not large enough of a market to justify developing ultra-high-res panels at 24" or 27" at an affordable cost. I'm sure you can make and outrageously expensive monitor of that quality, similar to that 28" that John Carmack paid 10k for in 1995, but not that many people would be able to justify the purchase.
    • Filligree 14y ago
      Photography.
      • sukuriant 14y ago
        Color accuracy is infinitely more important than the number of pixels I can push on a screen for photography. My color-accurate monitor is 1440 x 900. If I need to check for sharpness, I zoom in anyway (and I would zoom in if I were in a retina display, too, practically until I could see the pixels)
        • Filligree 14y ago
          Fortunately, the Retina screen also has very good color accuracy, at least so long as you want sRGB. It's pretty nice.
• Thibaut 14y ago
  You can't put 2560x1600 on anything but an 11-13" display, though. I have a 13" Retina MacBook Pro and scaled resolutions look blurry, so I'm stuck with 1280x800.
  • ghshephard 14y ago
    Except that your Retina "aware" apps can display at a native 2560x1600. Aperture (the latest version), for instance. But yes, it's sad how the Retina MacBook Pro has the capability, but other than doing really, really sharp fonts (when it's using the built in font renderer) - it goes unused in most situations. That will change. Somebody needs to write a Retina aware Terminal App.
    • masklinn 14y ago
      Isn't apple's bundled terminal retina-aware?
      • ghshephard 14y ago
        Not that I could tell - it did the typical screen doubling trick, and presumably renders the fonts nicely - but I couldn't get extra screen real-estate the way I would if the screen was 2560x1600. The 15" MacBook Pro Retina actually felt _smaller_ than my 2010 MacBook Air. It screen shrinks back to 1280x800, and my 2010 MacBook Air runs at 1440x900. Or maybe it was the Font Handling - I was hoping that it would look okay (just small) at Andale Mono 4 - but it pixelated. Regardless - In my 5 minutes of futzing at the apple store I could get it to do what I wanted (Basically, make the Screen look 2560x1600 to Terminal.app, but have the OS treat it as 1280x800)
        • masklinn 14y ago
          I'm sorry, but I just don't get what you're saying. > I couldn't get extra screen real-estate the way I would if the screen was 2560x1600 The resolution of the 15" is 2880x1800, not 2560x1600 (that's the 13", is that the one you're actually talking about? I'll go with that for the rest as what you say doesn't seem to make sense for the 15"). You don't get access to the native resolution of the screen with the built-in tools as far as I know, there always is some scaling applied. > It screen shrinks back to 1280x800, and my 2010 MacBook Air runs at 1440x900. That's just the default scaling (1:2), if you go into the display settings you can change the virtual resolution to 1680x1050, 1440x900 or 1024x640. > Or maybe it was the Font Handling - I was hoping that it would look okay (just small) at Andale Mono 4 - but it pixelated. Andale Mono 4? As in 4 points? > Basically, make the Screen look 2560x1600 to Terminal.app, but have the OS treat it as 1280x800 I fear I don't get what you mean anymore than previously.
• jaseemabid 14y ago
  Seems like this guy is not bothered about battery. I have a 1366*768 display which just works fine. Most of the times I'm just running a terminal and this resolution saves quite some battery.
  • epaga 14y ago
    "This guy" is Linus Torvalds. I assume he's often running a terminal as well... ;)
  • lloeki 14y ago
    The brand new 1700€+ 1080p 17" Dell XPSes around me at work barely manage to get 2h idling. For my colleagues it's basically an embedded UPS, while my MacBook Pro still handles 5+ hours after three years. Like my MBP, Retina Macs still have 7 hours of battery, so I don't see the landscape changing much: many laptops, retina-class or not, cheap or not, will get crappy battery life, and a few will get it right.
• SparrowOS 14y ago
  640x480 for SparrowOS. God said that at one point. Might not be set in stone, but actually with no GPU, it's a good idea to stick to 640x480 God says... equals They dissoluteness assign Rest watched difficulties magnified happens dismiss renew'd commandeth tumultuously sailors boundary Welcome torments you_hoser sustenance Orestes Shhh lacking natures bared refreshment subtile casting credibility avoid peace changeable choice beholdeth disturbed existence avenues thunder occurs demands gambling broad Great socalled derive transferring proceed sinks wives' enough struck I'm_bored smoothed I'm_impressed spectator silently wounded devised expects steep grossness proportions bosom secret lifts opinion antidote momentous Indiana embarrassments digest continence hearers carefully breathing-time O deceived harmoniously quitting choleric openly
• ekianjo 14y ago
  Mouahah, more pixel nonsense. Yeah, sure, put this resolution on a 11' screen, and have a sluggish GPU handle what's moving on screen on a 300-400$ laptop. This is nonsense. You need pixels to a certain amount to have a good looking picture, but the benefit of having way larger resolutions is like a log curve: it stagnates as you go up and up, since you would notice the pixels less and less. I am surprised to see Linus making this kind of claim, he used to be more practically-focused. Now he sounds like a marketing guy from Apple. I say, why stop at 2560 * 1600. This is ridiculously low. Make 10 000* 7000 the new standard laptop resolution. Yes, we can. Tomorrow, please. Even if the capacity and the plants to make it do not exist, yet. BS if I ever see it.
  • drivebyacct2 14y ago
    Pfft. I run a 27" 2560x1440 display on Intel HD4000 all the time. I don't know where your comment is coming from, but in case you didn't read the post, the technology is here. The tablets, you know, with these 2560x1440 screens, have GPUs that power them. Meaning the technology is available and could (ought) to be in laptops as well.
    • ekianjo 14y ago
      I dont know if you read MY comment but the capacity is not there. It will take years until you can supply this resolution for all standard displays on the market. It requires new lines and only Apple can do it now because they only make one model of everything so it helps them scale in volume. Get real. And try running games in that resolution with your crappy GPU and you ll have a nice slideshow that make you feel like you have a 286 playing Doom all over again.
    • brigade 14y ago
      I really wonder about the people complaining about running 2560x1600 on a HD4000. Four years ago I was happily driving both an external 2560x1600 monitor and the built in 1440x900 panel with a 8600M, which was a good bit slower. People really underestimate how far Intel has come.
    • eertami 14y ago
• drivebyacct2 14y ago
  Sadly, Torvalds is wrong: >Christ, soon even the cellphones will start laughing at the ridiculously bad laptop displays. They've been beating the pants off of them for some time now.
  • masklinn 14y ago
    In pitch clearly, but not in raw resolution yet (except maybe the 4.7 inchers, not sure about those). But they're inching closer and closer, the standard android resolution is 720p which is only a step away from the "standard" bullshit 1366x768 laptop standard.
    • lucian1900 14y ago
      The Nexus 4 beats my 13" laptop in just raw resolution. Extremely sad.
    • weiran 14y ago
      But in other areas (colour accuracy, viewing angles, contrast) they're already miles ahead. I think this is mainly because of Apple's aggressive use of high quality displays in their iOS devices, competitors had to try to match or surpass them and the competition has given most phones really nice displays. Hopefully once "Retina" displays in the MacBook Pros become slightly more affordable this will have the same effect on the laptop market.
• trotsky 14y ago
  Now that windows 8 and mountain lion both for the first time credibly handle HiDpi I agree, it's about time we switched. But laptop makers are hardly to be roundly chastised for not going super density until now (though higher than 1386x was always workable) since the windows experience of hidpi was pretty broken. Fonts would get clipped inside too small bounding boxes, things wouldn't line up, chroming would be too small and so on. Now all we need is linux to credibly support it as well, or at least a linux built for mouse use. There are still many, many usability issues in gnome with a high ppi screen. Also, lets not forget how far mobile gpus have come in the last few years, it would have been impossible to push that many pixels with anything but the most minimal of 3d use cases. It's a much more complex problem than linus would suggest by simply having oems switch panels. Witness how relatively complicated apple's solution is, which came after years of supposedly "somewhat" supporting hidpi. Use the hidpi macbook pro at 1920x on the ivy bridge gpu and it's still noticeably laggy at some 3d operations.
  • josteink 14y ago
    Now that windows 8 and mountain lion both for the first time credibly handle HiDpi I agree, it's about time we switched. I made that decision back in 2004 when my laptop had 1680x1050 resolution. Since then I've only gone higher and I've yet to have problems. Windows seems to have handled this pretty well long, long ago so I have no idea what people are complaining about.
    • ghshephard 14y ago
      Windows XP at 2560x1600 is ok on my 30" monitor, but it would be next to unusable on a 15" display. The Icons didn't scale to the resolution, so they would have been tiny. Lots of screen real estate though.
      • Flow 14y ago
        2560x1440 on my 27" iMac is ok, but I have to use CMD-+ on almost all web pages. Only in Safari is Magic Touchpad zooming smooth and iOS like, but I'd like to use Chrome. With 175% zoom I get some weird(and reported) errors in Chrome: http://imgur.com/TCDMj http://imgur.com/TCDMj The HiDPI solution in ML is not really a solution for resolutions that are somewhere in-between normal DPI and HiDPI.
• zephyrfalcon 14y ago
  Can somebody explain what is so bad about seeing individual pixels? Serious question from an oldschooler.
  • walrus 14y ago
    Fonts are clearer and, assuming your vision is up to the task, you can fit more on the screen. Other people may have other reasons for higher density displays, but those are mine.
  • Filligree 14y ago
    Fonts are clearer, it stops me from getting eyestrain (because I don't register everything as slightly blurred), and it is a great help when working on photos.
  • electrograv 14y ago
    It's fine if you're okay with gigantic fonts that are usually seen on laptops. A lot of us prefer much smaller fonts to fit more code on the screen. For example the equivalent of 9pt on a 900p display allows actually reasonably split-screen editing. On an actual 900p display though, it's much too blocky to be easily read without straining the eyes. At 1600p though, it's crystal clear.
  • glhaynes 14y ago
    I sure wouldn't want to spend my whole waking life wearing glasses that slightly-pixelized everything I saw. And since I spend a large amount of my waking life looking at "glowing rectangles", I'd rather they not be slightly-pixelized either.
  • jfb 14y ago
    Pixels are an artifact of our crappy technologies. They do nothing but detract from the actual point of a display.
• Aissen 14y ago
  His not the only one to think so: http://andrew.huang.usesthis.com/ http://andrew.huang.usesthis.com/ http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/2007/06/where-are-the-high-resolution-displays.html http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/2007/06/where-are-the-high-... And about every other hacker I know.
  • Aissen 14y ago
    s/his/he is/
  • Pwnguinz 14y ago
    Interesting to note that Jeff was so very wrong with his prediction. Only half a decade after his prediction, we're already past 2560 x 1600 on the MBP Retina displays :). Pretty soon PC manufacturers will also catch up. Technology generally improves faster than one presumes (accelerating returns and all).
• bornhuetter 14y ago
  TBH I'm not sure if I want 2560x1600 yet if there is going to be a significant drop in battery life. I have an IPS 1366x768 on a 12.5" screen and it looks great. Fonts already go smaller than I can reasonably see for programming - I can't imagine a higher resolution would materially improve my workflow. Personally I'd like to see a higher refresh rate. Even with triple buffering I don't think that horizontal scrolling is smooth enough. I'd love to have a 120hz laptop screen. The new Windows 8 start screen, and switching between workspaces in Linux would be so much nicer. Still it's not exactly necessary, just a nice to have.
  • berntb 14y ago
    >>IPS 1366x768 on a 12.5" screen and it looks great Some money advice: Don't use a retina display. :-) I recently saw my old iPad 1 at my ex gf. It was the best screen I had ever used -- now after an iPad 3, it was just horrible.
    • bornhuetter 14y ago
      Do you think that's just the resolution, or also the quality of the display? I think the iPad 3 is a better quality screen as well as higher resolution. I tried a lot of latpops when I was in the market, and I found the ones with a higher resolution TN panel were worse (to my eyes) than lower resolution on a high quality IPS.
      • berntb 14y ago
        Yeah, the colour range is much better on the iPad 3 than on the iPad 1. That is a bit irrelevant. I'd rather have 256 levels of grey on a retina than a good colour non-retina. I can't get good readability of text (both web and A4 documentation) together with quick page turns (no eInk) otherwise. I could use something else to watch movies, etc.
      • CrankyPants 14y ago
        Related aside: the consistency of lighting across the viewing angle on my iPad 2 was far better than on the 3. (It was scarily uniform on the 2.)
• mtgx 14y ago
  I've been thinking the same thing lately. 2560x1600 needs to be the standard resolution for all laptops from 11"-15". In fact the 15"+ ones can start having 4k resolution (300 PPI) about 2 years from now, as both Intel integrated GPU's and ARM GPU's will support that resolution.
• UnoriginalGuy 14y ago
  I disagree with Linus on this one. In an ideal world I would agree completely, a better DPI is amazing both in terms of font readability AND for watching full screen media (movies, TV shows, games, etc). But in the real world higher resolution means small screen elements. At 1600x900 fonts are readable at 125%, at 1920x1080 even at 125% fonts and some elements are literally too small to be comfortable read (you get eye-strain after less than an hour). Now I would turn it up to 150% "text size" but that breaks SO many native Windows applications (e.g. pushing text off the viewable area) and does the same on Linux too (Ubuntu). Ideally everything should remain the same size no matter what the resolution, and the DPI should just grow upwards. This is how it works on platforms like the iPad. So, I disagree with him, I don't want higher resolution displays because Windows, Linux, and OS X still suck at handling resolution (and if you use a non-native resolution it hurts the performance since the GPU has to re-scale constantly). http://i.imgur.com/RqL6v.png http://i.imgur.com/RqL6v.png
  • Leynos 14y ago
    One would hope that if screens of this resolution became ubiquitous, people would start to notice which apps behave poorly and fix them. It might also push forward an ecosystem for supporting such displays. E.g., tools to allow per app dpi settings to isolate badly behaved legacy apps for which the source is not available and on which no active maintenance is done.
  • lucian1900 14y ago
    Most Linux DEs have actually been pretty good at high DPI, and OS X (now) handles it pretty well. Only holdout is desktop Windows.
    • UnoriginalGuy 14y ago
      I know people who tried Ubuntu on the new Macbook Pros (2880x1800) and everything was so tiny they were literally unable to alter the resolution using the GUI. They could not even click individual elements. They had to manually do it via the shell and even then they weren't able to see what they were doing... I wouldn't call that "pretty good." In fact I would call that shockingly bad. Linux still falls in the trap of re-sizing things to meet the resolution. As you increase the resolution things get small, and as you decrease the resolution things get bigger. This is a broken design. Zooming should have no relationship to resolution. Resolution should increase DPI, not zoom or scaling (or however you wish to word it). A font should be the same size on 1600x900 as it is on 1080p.
• wilhil 14y ago
  Sorry to sound silly, but, what laptop can do 2560x1600 for $399? I feel out of the loop!
  • bencoder 14y ago
    He's talking about the new Google Nexus 10 tablet.
• chj 14y ago
  Resolution matters when you need to work with text. For me, Macbook Pro 15" retina is the best thing ever happened, and it is impossible to look back now.
• flyinRyan 14y ago
  Would someone mind posting the text in here? Google+ is blocked in many work places. :)
  • orjan 14y ago
    "So with even a $399 tablet doing 2560x1600 pixel displays, can we please just make that the new standard laptop resolution? Even at 11"? Please. Stop with the "retina" crap, just call it "reasonable resolution". The fact that laptops stagnated ten years ago (and even regressed, in many cases) at around half that in both directions is just sad. I still don't want big luggable laptops, but that 1366x768 is so last century. Christ, soon even the cellphones will start laughing at the ridiculously bad laptop displays. And the next technology journalist that asks you whether you want fonts that small, I'll just hunt down and give an atomic wedgie. I want pixels for high-quality fonts, and yes, I want my fonts small, but "high resolution" really doesn't equate "small fonts" like some less-than-gifted tech pundits seem to constantly think. In fact, if you have bad vision, sharp good high-quality fonts will help. #noexcuses"
    • flyinRyan 14y ago
      Thanks. From what was discussed here, I was expecting him to go into the benefit of the higher resolution a bit more.
• buster 14y ago
  Yes please!!! I can't say how much i am disappointed by that 1366x768 crapsolution.. before my current laptop i had a FullHD laptop and that was faaar better.. Even my first laptop from over 10 years ago had a better resolution then most standard laptops have, how is that?! (i had a 15" 1400x1050 display, then a 16" FullHD and now a 13" 1366x768)
• zokier 14y ago
  Intel is also pushing for higher resolutions for some time now. eg. Ultrabooks were supposed to have higher resolution screens. http://liliputing.com/2012/04/intel-retina-laptop-desktop-displays-coming-in-2013.html http://liliputing.com/2012/04/intel-retina-laptop-desktop-di... http://vr-zone.com/articles/from-idf-retina-quality-2560x1600-hd-panels-on-ivy-bridge-ultrabooks/13689.html http://vr-zone.com/articles/from-idf-retina-quality-2560x160...
• Zoophy 14y ago
  I find it fascinating how Linus gets away and is actually awarded for flaming and bashing other users their opinions.
  • cheema33 14y ago
    He has earned it.
• dendory 14y ago
  No. My screen is 1440x900 and it's honestly as big as I want it to go. See, what usually happens is that when you increase resolution, everything becomes smaller. Desktop icons, text in apps, web sites. Yes you can manually resize everything but it's a pain and it doesn't always work right. Web pages get deformed since you're only changing the fonts. And it's not like I'm ever watching movies in higher resolution than HD. So I'll keep my 'low' resolution screens.
  • jswinghammer 14y ago
    Couldn't you just lower the setting?
    • _delirium 14y ago
      Laptop screens typically look fairly bad when at anything other than their "native" resolution. A bit less flexible than ye olde CRTs in that respect.
      • jonknee 14y ago
        Though this is much less the case with high res screens, Apple's retina laptops for example are usabe at different resolutions.
        • mertd 14y ago
          The difference is how the signal is sent. When you change the resolution in XP for instance, a low res picture gets sent to the display which then has to up sample it, and it looks sucky. On the new MBP the picture sent is always the native resolution of the monitor, you just change the size of the UI elements according to your preference.
  • zephod 14y ago
    Did you even read as far as the "atomic wedgie" part?
  • adestefan 14y ago
• DanBC 14y ago
  Honest question here: When will I notice? Maybe some games? Maybe some designery stuff? Maybe some video creation stuff? (It might be useful for doctors and medical images, but I kind of hope they're using special purpose monitors for that stuff). And does pushing those extra pixels have a cost in energy use?
  • regularfry 14y ago
    > Honest question here: When will I notice? That kinda depends on what you use your computer for, doesn't it?
    • DanBC 14y ago
      Yes, it does. A great answer would have included a list of things that people use their computers for where they need this higher resolution, or where they do notice it and it makes a significant difference. Or maybe someone who has this extra resolution but who doesn't find it any better than a lower resolution, with a list of what they use their machine for. Or perhaps someone has links to great information. Because while that stuff is findable with a bit of www searching it can be tricky to sort the wheat from the chaff. If we're limiting the question to the specific "me" (rather than a general hypothetic user) - I do a lot of work with text. Text in web browsers and text in word processors. I do a little bit of film watching - just DVDs. I don't particularly care about battery life, but I'm happy with lower performance if there's a clear eco benefit.
  • chuppo 14y ago
    When you lay your eye on it? When you look at any website? When you read any book or text? The amount of scrolling you have to do on x768 to just read a text or webpage is ridiculous. You cant even get a good overview of a PDF.
  • wtetzner 14y ago
    One place you might notice is with clearer fonts. That's why I want higher resolutions.
    • 14y ago
• tluyben2 14y ago
  Nexus 10 with a keyboard (and battery) casing and some desktop linux on it sounds like a good cheap high res laptop. Performance wise it would be fine for the stuff I personally do, guess that would scare other coders off.
  • stcredzero 14y ago
    Compile in the cloud, or use a dynamic language or use Go?
    • tluyben2 14y ago
      Yes, for some an option, but usually cloud doesn't fly here (I live in the mountains) and the languages are usually not the problem, the environment is. I like my tools :) On my Pandora I do scala/clojure/java (yep, Swing) coding (the new JVM for ARM by Oracle is really good, I never thought I would say that, but it's an amazing piece of work for such 'small' memory and performance footprint as the OpenPandora), Haskell works well, the whole linux build chain works well, LAMP stack works well, I can run Rails, Django, Apache, Node.js. And amazing batterylife with the option to swap out batteries on the go. Only, the screen is way too small and doesn't work under anything more than almost darkness :) The iPad 3 works fine everywhere, but I cannot do much work on it and I haven't found an Android pad which works well enough for fulltime coding nor have I found a good enough case to work with for any of those. Most cases are really bad chinese things which have a broken power supply (batteries or anything in between loading and the batteries) after a few weeks usage. Anyone? :) If the Nexus 10 sells anywhere near the amount the Nexus 7 does, there might finally be some good accessories. I would almost do a Kickstarter to make different form factor clamshell keyboard/battery/connection docks for android phones and pads. Almost...
      • sswezey 14y ago
        Could you elaborate more on how you develop on a Pandora? I'm quite interested. Do you hook up an external monitor and keyboard?
        • 14y ago
• hactually 14y ago
  I think a good solution could come from review websites. If they all agreed that any screen size below 2560x1600 (or maybe a little less) would only score a maximum of 5/10 it would certainly rock the boat.
• eumenides1 14y ago
  16:10, a man after the aspect ratio of my heart
• otakucode 14y ago
  IBM invented a 2000ppi monitor over a decade ago, but it was useless because software and video cards couldn't handle it. Roll it out. Stop with this incremental horseshit for sciences sake and make a LEAP.
  • gergles 14y ago
    But they can make so much more money dripping out advances. Look at Apple, that's been their entire MO with the iPhone.
  • sukuriant 14y ago
    Why do you need 2000 pixels per inch? No really. Photographs are between 300 and 600. Are you making scans from the screen?
• regularfry 14y ago
  2560x1920 (or even 2132x1599) would be better, but I guess that fight was lost long ago.
  • mindslight 14y ago
    I still have no idea why people bought into shortscreen laptops hook, line, and sinker - I guess that's marketing for you. Maybe we're just in a minority of people that want laptops, and not expensive DVD players? I'll never buy a laptop with that bottom seventh of screen real estate missing.
    • nuclear_eclipse 14y ago
      Where do you even look to find something otherwise? As far as I could tell the last time I was able to buy a laptop with a 4:3 ratio screen was in 2006, and they were significantly more expensive than 16:10 models. Since then I haven't ever even seen the option.
      • mindslight 14y ago
        NOOOOOO! Well the last time I bought a new laptop was 2007. I figured there had to still be some Thinkpads Ts with 4:3 screens (given that they're used by people who are in touch with the realities of traveling and all), but alas I see that's one more thing Lenovo has crapped up. Yet another reason to keep this IBM-branded T60 going as long as possible (despite the periodic keyboard swaps). How do those spacers on the sides of keyboards not just scream waste needing optimization? I guess that 7% area savings for LCD manufacturers overrides common sense. Well okay, I see the writing on the wall - time to learn to use ed(1).
• hnriot 14y ago
  I don't get what point he's trying to make at all. And I don't know why it makes either a blog post, or top story on hn, who cares what screen resolution Linus has his laptop set to. I can work just fine on my 2009 MBP with 1280x800 (or whatever it is) the text is perfectly readable, there's no noticeable pixelation at distances past a few inches from the screen and having everything shrink, as a result of increasing the res, would make it unusable. He's probably exaggerating for effect, but it's not even remotely true that laptop resolutions have stagnated. They have steadily increased to the point where we now have retina screens on regular work laptops. I think if Linus created a blog post saying he'd just set his background color to blue, it would make the top spot here! It's a shame to see Linus stooping to mock apple's use of the term retina. They (Apple) name everything, like the fusion drive or any number of previous technologies. It's to humanize the tech so the average person walking into the apple store doesn't have to talk in tech-speak. It's just a marketing term, and every company has them. The definition of "reasonable resolution" changes over the years, VGA seemed reasonable compared to EGA.
  • driverdan 14y ago
    Like most things you don't realize the difference until you use it. If you spent a week working on a retina MBP at 1920x1200 you'd never want to use 1280x800 again. 4 vim splits at useable width, 1000px+ browser viewport width with inspector open to the right, etc.
    • jfb 14y ago
      I'm really happy with the 1440x900 quadrupled. Text is unbelievably gorgeous, and when I pop open QuickTime Player to check out video, I see my 1920x1080 data unscaled. STUPENDOUS.
• mark-r 14y ago
  One of his comments far down the page just struck me: "It's ignorant people like you that hold back the rest of the world. Please just disconnect yourself, move to Pennsylvania, and become Amish. The world does not need another ignorant web developer that makes some fixed-pixel designs. But maybe you'd be a wonder at woodcarving or churning the butter?"
  • hcarvalhoalves 14y ago
    Just Linus being Linus.
  • tadfisher 14y ago
    I, for one, am shocked and appalled. The Amish live in places other than Pennsylvania.
    • csours 14y ago
      Like Belize, for instance. (Mennonites, but similar idea.)
  • Karunamon 14y ago
    Eeeeyup, that's Linus alright. He has absolutely no problem calling out stupidity when he sees it, and I love him for it.
• sjs382 14y ago
  The primary PC I use at home is a netbook with 1024x600 resolution. My phone (Galaxy Nexus) is 1280x720. Crazy world.
• abhimishra 14y ago
  Seeing as how Apple's "retina" displays are actually made by other folks (Samsung and LG for the 15" rMBP), I suspect we will see high-res panels on other laptops very soon. In fact, Samsung recently demoed a few Series 9 prototypes at IFA with WQHD resolution (2560 x 1440, which is the 16:9 resolution you get from most 27" panels): http://www.theverge.com/2012/8/31/3282360/samsung-wqhd-2560-1440-dual-display-laptop-prototypes http://www.theverge.com/2012/8/31/3282360/samsung-wqhd-2560-...
• aleem 14y ago
  Is there any reason why kernel code still wraps at 80 characters? Or is that not true anymore?
  • munchor 14y ago
    Yeah of course, most terminals are at 80 characters, nobody can expect most Linux developers to have big ass monitors. It will be the standard for a long time, I'm sure.
    • wtetzner 14y ago
      Also, at least for me, it's more difficult to read long lines.
  • bitwize 14y ago
    The stated reason is to prevent excessive block nesting.
• ChuckMcM 14y ago
  It is an interesting rant. Pixel density affects many aspects of a system; Storage - it affects the size disk you need/want because high resolution images / video take up much more space. Memory - You need more memory to build up screens for a higher density display. Further you need the bandwidth to shove that data around. Compute - If you want to 'render' to the display rather than just copy bitmaps around, or composite complex bit maps, you need to spend a lot of time computing which can make other things slow. So when you look closely at tablets you will see interesting places where they have been adapted to support these densities. But more importantly there is 'change' in the systems where there is new money being invested. So tablets are getting all of the 'change' now, less so with laptops, and hardly at all with desktops. The reason this will change though is that I expect we've convinced display manufacturers that 'regular users' (the bulk of the purchasers) want 'high dpi' displays. Its not easy communicating with an entire industry but success Apple has been having with 'retina' displays, and the more recent Android tablets with higher resolutions, means more people will jump in to support them. And more importantly when the choice is available folks reject lower density displays. So in the great 'tuning' these guys do where they calculate how to get the most money out of each hour of running their factories, the equation is tipping in favor of high dpi displays. That said, I'd love to have a couple of 32" 2560 x 1600 displays for my desktop, but I think that is still a couple of years off from being 'mainstream'
  • kaolinite 14y ago
    "That said, I'd love to have a couple of 32" 2560 x 1600 displays for my desktop, but I think that is still a couple of years off from being 'mainstream'" Overclockers have a sale on 27" 2560x1440 displays today. They're selling for £311. I bought one about a year ago for £450 - worth every penny. http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=MO-019-HO http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=MO-019-... That's not a high-DPI/retina display though, just a regular DPI.
    • bvdbijl 14y ago
      Ah yes, Korean IPS monitors. They are really amazing I have one myself and they give amazing bang for your buck. Read more about them here: http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/2012/07/the-ips-lcd-revolution.html http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/2012/07/the-ips-lcd-revolut...
• seanalltogether 14y ago
  While we're on the topic, why are we still on 60hz displays?
  • TazeTSchnitzel 14y ago
    I'd assume because there's little need for higher framerate displays. Videos are usually 30fps at the max, your cursor doesn't need to blink that fast, and games are perfectly playable at 60fps.
    • seanalltogether 14y ago
      smoother scrolling, smoother zooming, smoother gameplay, yes even smoother video playback for 24 fps videos.
      • TazeTSchnitzel 14y ago
        Many applications (like Chrome, for instance) don't support smooth scrolling as it is, let alone 120hz smooth scrolling.
        • jordanthoms 14y ago
          go to chrome://flags and turn on smooth scrolling, It's much better
          • TazeTSchnitzel 14y ago
            Thanks; didn't know about that. Works great! :)
  • sp332 14y ago
    Because LCDs have much better persistence of vision than old CRTs? On CRTs, I would sacrifice resolution to get to a minimum 85 Hz refresh, because 60 was unusable and gave me headaches. But 60 updates per second on an evenly-lit LCD screen is pretty tolerable. That said, more precise motion would be awfully nice!
• zobzu 14y ago
  Every now and then Linus says something slightly stupid, maybe even on purpose. The "shock title" effect. Obviously 2560x1600 on 11" is utterly useless as it is on tablets. 1366 is equally dumb. Whatever goes in between is generally fine. I start being happy at around 1920 for 13" (and it's 4:3 friend) since, after that, i can't see pixels at all and in native mode I can't see the text too well either. I don't think that's a personal thing.
  • rogerbinns 14y ago
    I am currently reading books from the Humble Bundle ebooks collection. Just plain regular text books on my tablet is fine, but the comic ones (SMBC, XKCD) are not readable. It is nothing to do with the size, and everything to do with the tablet screen being 150 ppi. Being able to read that is not "utterly useless". As you can see from many of the comments, people do want to buy higher pixel density screens on their laptops. Apple even came out with laptops where that is the distinguishing feature. But if your choices are outside of Apple then simply cannot buy high pixel density screens. Laser printers when they first came out were 300 dpi. That is a very good indication that those kind of pixel densities make for better legibility. Sure you can read stuff at 75dpi, but it isn't as productive.
    • zobzu 14y ago
      theres a jump between 75dpi and 300dpi+ For example my screen has 150 DPI That's pretty good. I can't see pixels. I can see small text. What I mean is that the resolution listed is overkill. Heck, not only it's what i meant but also exactly what I wrote ;-)
      • rogerbinns 14y ago
        GUIs go to great lengths to work around the low ppi, using anti-aliasing, (auto) hinting, subpixel rendering and various other techniques. This kind of thing generally isn't available for bitmaps such as the comics in the Humble eBook Bundle which are consequently extremely difficult to read (the images are a higher dpi than the screen so it is a screen problem not a source problem). You are right that there are people for whom extra ppi, extra cpu, extra memory, extra power saving, better colour gamuts etc won't make a difference. But there are also a group who do want ppi improvements and Apple has done so across their laptop and tablet lines, Asus has done for some of its tablets, and the Nexus 10 has done so too. If nobody bought those then it would demonstrate lack of demand, but people have been buying them. And people really want them for non-Apple laptops too as Linus stated and others have concurred.
• WalterBright 14y ago
  I can vouch for the retina display making text significantly more readable to those who need reading glasses, even if the text is exactly the same size.
• Xcelerate 14y ago
  I've always been a sucker for high-quality displays. Apple's Retina MBP is what finally converted me from being a Windows user. I have to say, I really love it. And... I may be the only one here... but I think they should go a little higher than 2880x1800. I know normal viewing distance is something like 15 inches, but I like to sit closer to my screen when coding and it sure would be nice to have all semblance of "pixels" completely disappear. How cool what that be? And if they started using AMOLED screens instead of IPS, then that would really be the perfect screen.
  • weiran 14y ago
    > And if they started using AMOLED screens instead of IPS, then that would really be the perfect screen. Why? AMOLED would just make the colours ridiculously unrealistic without many other benefits.
    • Xcelerate 14y ago
      It depends on what primaries you choose for your OLEDs. AMOLED has perfect black levels (LCD technology does not) and near-perfect viewing angles. Unrealistic colors are a problem of reproducing the information you acquire correctly. All of the colors humans can see are represented on the CIE 1931 chromaticity diagram. Choose any three points within that color space and draw a triangle between them. This colors within the triangle are those that the primaries at the vertices of the triangle can reproduce. The rest is just a software issue (controlling the correct voltages to each LED).
• com2kid 14y ago
  Before this happens, it would be really nice if Windows supported different DPIs on different screens. IIRC Linux can already be hacked to do this. Windows cannot. The result of this is I have a 21" 1080p desktop screen sitting next my 14" 1080p laptop screen and I cannot read text on my laptop screen! (I'd move the laptop dock closer but then it'd be sitting on top of my working space.) As for Windows 8 doing high DPI, Tech Report has a decent article (http://techreport.com/review/23631/how-windows-8-scaling-fails-on-high-ppi-displays http://techreport.com/review/23631/how-windows-8-scaling-fai...) on the lackings of Win8 high DPI settings even in Metro. Though feel free to ignore their complaints about browser scaling, each browser takes a different approach to how they break web pages when scaling. (Suffice to say 1 pixel borders and non-integer scaling don't go together well!) They go into detail about the different scaling options, but the scaling options are all things that the user has to manually enable! Hardly auto-DPI. There is a balance to be struck between "more information on screen" and "better displaying information on screen" that Microsoft apparently decided to not even attempt, instead giving the user a blunt instrument with which to toggle between "way too big" and "way too small".
• scottrb 14y ago
  > In fact, if you have bad vision, sharp good high-quality fonts will help. As someone with absolutely terrible vision, I'll have to disagree with this point. I've been keeping my screen res around 1024x768 for years because moving it higher just makes it so darn hard to see. I've now come to the point where some monitors and video cards won't even go that low. I'm probably a unique case. Still, I do wish accessibility was better for visually impaired users. FWIW, Macs do magnification the best out of the box. Zoomtext on windows costs a bit, and I'm not sure anything exists for Linux that's even comparable to MacOSs magnifier abilities. Even with a mac, there's too much mouse movement involved for my tastes.
• robomartin 14y ago
  The one issue that cannot be ignored is that a higher resolution display will consume significantly more power and cause the GPU to consume more power and generate more heat. The relationship is roughly linear to pixel count, in other words 2x more pixels is equal to 2x more power and heat. From 1366 x 768 to 2560 x 1600 it's roughly 4x more power/heat.
• kgill 14y ago
  It WILL indeed be the new standard resolution, very soon, especially considering the "push" the PC industry is getting from Apple's Retina Macbook Pros. The demand for high res panels is just to darn high and it has to be met. Like in Apple's situation, the cost can be taken care of by charging a premium and then using economies of scale to bring down production costs and making these kind of displays the new norm. But exactly when this will happen? Well, it sort of already has: http://www.engadget.com/2012/08/31/samsung-Series%209-WQHD-Ultrabook-matte-display/ http://www.engadget.com/2012/08/31/samsung-Series%209-WQHD-U... However, I believe we're going to see a huge blast in these super high-res panels right after Intel Haswell is released. It'll provide the Ultrabooks with graphic performance capabilities that'll be good enough for these high-res panels.
  • calitrir 14y ago
    Nice to see; but obviously it is just a small step where a larger one is needed. They'll never scale it bigger to compete with their own 1080p hypnotoads.
• calitrir 14y ago
  Totally, BUT, it will trash an admittedly imperfect economic sector. I've been following this for a few months; and that the market hasn't moved is incredibly harmful. The laptop market has basically stagnated, meaning a lot of pent-up demand that people are not likely to commit to other personal productivity improvements. So, in my opinion, in order to preserve inventory values, these guys fight as hard as possible to hold back technical development. I.O.W. If this valuation structure were ever to break, the corporates involved could take huge hits. Someone with more knowledge will have to take it from there.
• chris_wot 14y ago
  Funny how its called dpi... Wouldn't ppi be a better metric?
• b3b0p 14y ago
  Currently there are 311 comments in this story. It's hard to find any mention of it, but does anyone actually run their Retina Macbook Pro at native resolution for every day usage, coding / programming, etc? I have mine hooked up to an external 2560 x 1440 Apple Cinema Display.