Miscellaneous Operating Systems/Hardware

Trippynet wrote: Also worth noting is that the move to 16:9 has generally arrived with a reduction in screen resolution. When laptops went from 4:3 to 16:10, a 1600x1200 screen became 1920x1200 (same vertical resolution, and extra space at the sides). However, over the last few years this has then been cut to 1920x1080. And it's crazy! At work, we're refreshing old Dell workstations with 1920x1200 screens with new ones that have a lower screen resolution, a fatter bezel, and less screen area than the old ones. And all because it's cheaper for Dell. I wouldn't mind on a budget laptop, but these are £2,000 professional mobile workstations. And it annoys me intensely seeing Dell sticking a deliberately worse screen onto a two grand laptop, just to save a few quid in construction costs.

Personally, I despise 16:9. It's a nasty and unpleasant aspect ratio designed for watching TV on, not for doing proper work. If Lenovo finally decide to buck the current trend and design a new laptop for proper work, rather than just watching Netflix on then I think that would be fantastic. Currently, if you want a new laptop with a screen designed for proper work, the only company making them still is Apple (the Macbook Pro is 16:10, as is the new Macbook).

If it makes you feel any better you can buy Dell Precisions with 4K displays on them. Added bonus the M4800 does *NOT* use a chicklet keyboard.

guardian452 wrote:

Personally, I despise 16:9. It's a nasty and unpleasant aspect ratio designed for watching TV on, not for doing proper work. If Lenovo finally decide to buck the current trend and design a new laptop for proper work, rather than just watching Netflix on then I think that would be fantastic. Currently, if you want a new laptop with a screen designed for proper work, the only company making them still is Apple (the Macbook Pro is 16:10, as is the new Macbook).

Right, but we are talking thinkpad here, which means windows, which means games (at least to me). Most games are made for 16x9. I love the streaming feature in the new xbox app and that alone makes up for all of the thinkpad's other shortcomings.

People generally don't buy Thinkpads for games. Thinkpads have a long history of a lot of OS choices - Windows, Linux, AIX, DOS, and OS/2. I don't equate the Thinkpad line nor the Dell Precision line to gaming, especially if you buy a Thinkpad W series.

Final note - who in their right mind streams from an XBox to a PC? ( See also: why would someone want an XBox?)

ClassicHasClass wrote: Macs used to face the user also, and then Steve-O somewhere around the G3 era realized it was bad marketing.

The logo on the Pismo faces the user, and it started facing the other way on the Powerbook G4.
The iBook also changed direction from the G3 to the G4.

guardian452 wrote: Right, but we are talking thinkpad here, which means windows, which means games (at least to me). Most games are made for 16x9. I love the streaming feature in the new xbox app and that alone makes up for all of the thinkpad's other shortcomings.

Ironically a lot of modern games are still NOT designed to work properly on a 16:9 computer screen. This is because a lot of game designers still lock the field of view at a low figure such as 75 (or even less in some cases). This displays fine on a 4:3 computer monitor, and also looks fine on a TV when you're sat 6 metres away from it on a sofa. But on a widescreen computer monitor where you're typically less than a metre away, it's awful and can cause motion sickness, headaches, nausea etc.

Slowly but surely some games are coming with options to tweak the FOV, but they're still in the minority as most are just quick console ports. Most games therefore still require unofficial fixes such as tweaking ini files, typing commands into the game console, or in some cases even modifying data files before they'll properly support the necessary FOV on a widescreen PC monitor.

Resolution wise, games are designed these days to support a range of resolutions. My 16:10 monitor has had full resolution support from every single modern game I've played on it. Add in a FOV tweak here and there as necessary, and I have never felt that I'm missing anything by not having a 16:9 screen. The only thing I'd lose is vertical resolution (1920x1200 compared with only 1920x1080 for 16:9). Actually, there's another benefit as well, which is that older games that don't support widescreen display pixel perfect on it (1600x1200 in the centre of a 1920x1200 screen).

However, as armanox rightly said, ThinkPads are supposed to be professional machines for work, not gaming machines. If you want a gaming laptop, you'd be better off with an XPS, or a cheaper "consumer grade" laptop than a ThinkPad. And if you just want to watch TV and play the odd game, then of course a cheaper 16:9 laptop will be fine. But if you're trying to do proper work (coding and whatnot), the lack of vertical space on a 16:9 laptop is really annoying.

All the games worth playing were designed when 4:3 was the rule.

Well, except for the Gameboy ones.

why would someone want an XBox?

Well, I bought an Xbox 360 for three reasons:

- it was cheap (garage sale on a slim)
- it came with Portal, which is a delight to play
- it's PowerPC based and I wanted to hack it

Go UltraBay, or go home.

Also, none of your rootkit-level BS like you just got caught doing.

Last valuable Thinkpad IMHO was the W520. I still use it at home. The following models (W530/540/550) all have various design flaws. Worst of all they became very fragile. I see everyday at work meetings people with W540 that are missing outer plastic parts or with the whole case flexing and squeaking. I fear any new Thinkpad won't be worth of consideration anyway.

hamei wrote: May as well use DOS. i also think 16:9 sucks, especially with that dumb taskbar wasting an inch off the bottom.

So move it to the side, leaving the remainder of the screen closer to a 16:10 ratio, maybe better if you use a large taskbar.

Yeah, and throwing the entire screen off-balance because (AFAIK) neither Windows nor OSX allow you to have a corresponding bar on the other side of the screen to make the space symmetrical?

commodorejohn wrote: Yeah, and throwing the entire screen off-balance because (AFAIK) neither Windows nor OSX allow you to have a corresponding bar on the other side of the screen to make the space symmetrical?

Oddly enough this used to be doable (I had it in Windows 98), but by Windows 7 the way I used to do it seems to no longer work.

Windows 8.1 (&8) will mirror (one is primary containing clock etc) the task bar across both screens if that's what we are talking about here?

uunix wrote: Windows 8.1 (&8) will mirror (one is primary containing clock etc) the task bar across both screens if that's what we are talking about here?

I'm referring to multiple system panels (since not all contain a task bar) on the same screen.

Apparently the functionality was still in XP - this is what I'm referring to

armanox wrote:

uunix wrote: Windows 8.1 (&8) will mirror (one is primary containing clock etc) the task bar across both screens if that's what we are talking about here?

I'm referring to multiple system panels (since not all contain a task bar) on the same screen.

Sorry, guilty of just butting into a thread there..

IIRC, the feature was removed in Windows 7 .

Trippynet wrote: However, as armanox rightly said, ThinkPads are supposed to be professional machines for work, not gaming machines. If you want a gaming laptop, you'd be better off with an XPS, or a cheaper "consumer grade" laptop than a ThinkPad. And if you just want to watch TV and play the odd game, then of course a cheaper 16:9 laptop will be fine. But if you're trying to do proper work (coding and whatnot), the lack of vertical space on a 16:9 laptop is really annoying.

Bullshit, my thinkpad plays games and movies great. I may have a love/hate relationship with it but it is waaay better than some crappy dell

Anyways I've decided to order a macbook (in gold of course) for personal use. If you want a decent classic thinkpad replacement you can get a macbook in dark grey which is similar to black if you squint. It's not as black as the old black macbooks, tho.

ajw99uk wrote: So move it to the side, leaving the remainder of the screen closer to a 16:10 ratio, maybe better if you use a large taskbar.

I don't have this problem. I use Irix. Every day, all day

hamei wrote: I don't have this problem. I use Irix. Every day, all day

All Irix and no play makes hamei a dull boy...

guardian452 wrote: Bullshit, my thinkpad plays games and movies great.

I never said they couldn't do it, I said it's not what they're primarily designed for.

I watch movies and play games on my ThinkPad as well from time to time, and it does a surprisingly good job too. But when I stop doing that and fire up some real work such as programming on it, the extra screen height of the 16:10 screen makes a real difference over the crappy 16:9 panel in my work laptop.

Apple laptops aren't too bad, but I have gone off them somewhat lately after they started soldering everything in and sealing them together with large quantities of glue. I like to be able to meddle and tweak with my computing kit