Almost all laptops have widescreens. Why?

[DeanOlicious]

I'm all for the widescreen and my next lappy is going to have one. The point that you make about the keyboard size is a good one though, why haven't they made adjustments to the keyboard size and feel? With that extra space they could make the board layout a little closer to that of a standard keyboard for those of us with extra large mitts.

[GV2NIX]

Originally Posted by DeanOlicious

The point that you make about the keyboard size is a good one though, why haven't they made adjustments to the keyboard size and feel? With that extra space they could make the board layout a little closer to that of a standard keyboard for those of us with extra large mitts.

Yeah, very good idea. Why waste space? I'm sure from an engineering perspective it might be more difficult to have varying keyboard sizes, but I'm sure people have complained about laptop keyboard widths before.

Either make a non-wide laptop and limit the width to the width to the width of the keyboard for maximum portability, or make the keyboard bigger to make use of the wide chassis. I would be perfectly happy if they had both. I'm not saying widescreen laptops should be eliminiated. I just wish 4:3/5:4 laptops weren't going extinct.

[gvblake22]

Originally Posted by GV2NIX

Games can be beaten into widescreen submission almost 100% of the time it seems.

True, but sometimes it will stretch the image or do wierd things with the field of view. I think the widescreens have a lot of potential, but I would just like to see better implementation of widescreen resolutions in games and better support from monitor manufacturers to make the screen run standard aspect ratios with 1:1 pixel mapping.

[GV2NIX]

Originally Posted by gvblake22

True, but sometimes it will stretch the image or do wierd things with the field of view. I think the widescreens have a lot of potential, but I would just like to see better implementation of widescreen resolutions in games and better support from monitor manufacturers to make the screen run standard aspect ratios with 1:1 pixel mapping.

Agreed. If they did that, then I would seriously consider a widescreen for my desktop.

[gvblake22]

Originally Posted by GV2NIX

Agreed. If they did that, then I would seriously consider a widescreen for my desktop.

The good news is though that most of the new widescreens coming out in the first half of 2007 (at least the 24" ones) should have 1:1 pixel mapping. So you could run 1600x1200 resolution on a 24" widescreen without any horizontal stretching. The Dell and Gateway 24" screens (and I think the most recent BenQ model) will all do this though.

Capper, could you confirm you can run games at 1600x1200 on the 24" dell without it stretching horizontally (it will place the the picture in the middle of the screen filling it vertically but with black bars on the right and left)?

[GV2NIX]

Originally Posted by gvblake22

Capper, could you confirm you can run games at 1600x1200 on the 24" dell without it stretching horizontally (it will place the the picture in the middle of the screen filling it vertically but with black bars on the right and left)?

You read my mind, that's awesome if it's true. I was always wondering why they never added that feature to adjust aspect ratios like LCD and plasma TVs. It would satisfy stufforn people like me, or incompatable software, and in general make monitors more versitile, you know?

[Lead Head]

Originally Posted by gvblake22

The good news is though that most of the new widescreens coming out in the first half of 2007 (at least the 24" ones) should have 1:1 pixel mapping. So you could run 1600x1200 resolution on a 24" widescreen without any horizontal stretching. The Dell and Gateway 24" screens (and I think the most recent BenQ model) will all do this though.

Capper, could you confirm you can run games at 1600x1200 on the 24" dell without it stretching horizontally (it will place the the picture in the middle of the screen filling it vertically but with black bars on the right and left)?

My laptop actually does that! Except the screen's native is res is 800x600 :P

It's a compaq armada with a 233Mhz Pentium 1

[GV2NIX]

Hahaha, nice! My first laptop was a TI TravelMate. Not exactly what I had, but you get the idea.

[Carl Martin]

I bought my laptop when I was working away from home and decided to go with a widescreen for watching DVDs. (Had no internet there so movies were about all I used it for. Kept me from going bonkers, I think.)

The other thing to consider is that a widescreen just looks a lot bigger, so of course we guys go for it!