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

[Alan McKinnon]

Apparently, though unproven, at 17:18 on Sunday 05 September 2010, Grant 
Edwards did opine thusly:

> On 2010-09-05, John Blinka <john.blinka@×××××.com> wrote:
> > Hi, all,
> >
> > My trusty Inspiron 8200 is on death's door and so I'm looking for a
> > new laptop - one that will run Gentoo straightforwardly, of course.
> >
> > I really liked the 1600x1200 display on this machine, which I greatly
> > prefer to the 1600x900 display on the more modern Inspiron 1545 I own.
> >
> >  Most of what I do now is through a web browser, and I can see much
> >
> > more of a web page with 1200 lines of display than I can with 900.
> > And I dislike the massive width of the 1545 which makes it much less
> > portable than the old 8200.  I'd love to replace my 8200 with a
> > machine of similar dimensions, but thinner and lighter.  However, I
> > cannot find any machine on Dell's website with a 4x3 aspect ratio -
> > they all seem to be approximately 16x9 now.
> >
> > So,  is 16x9 all that's available now in laptops?
>
> Yup, and 16x9 sucks -- it's just an excuse to ship smaller,
> lower-resolution displays labelled with bigger numbers.
>
> Complete ripoff.


If you have 16:9 at 1280*720, then yes, it is going to suck. There is nothing 
inherently wrong with the aspect ratio, please desist from trying to make it 
so.

There are good reasons for it. It most easily fits the overall dimensions of 
the machine, you have a wide and not very deep keyboard plus space for a 
touchpad and palm rests. It's all approximately 16:9. I paid the extra to get 
16:9 @ 1920x1200. Best thing I ever did laptop-wise - I can get two webpages 
side by side on the screen looking very natural.

Did you know that 16:9 is the eye's natural aspect ratio? Test it sometime 
with outstreched fingers.


-- 
alan dot mckinnon at gmail dot com