Screen Death

[artela]

My TFT died yesterday (the "pre dying flicker" is probably what caused me to get a headache Sunday evening). So, new monitor needed. I have a choice (for the same price) and am wondering what the pros and cons are of 17" "standard 4:3 ratio" vs 17" widescreen. I need to know which one of the two to buy by lunchtime today. So, friendslist, if it

Comments

[alicephilippa]

If you are going for widescreen then get a 19", other wise you will lose significant screen real estate.

[uitlander]

You'll probably get more actual screen area in the widescreen. However, you may not like the new aspect ratio - for example if you like doing page layout type things you may not be able to see a full height A4 sheet on the widescreen at 100% magnification.

Personally I find the widescreen at work rather handy for screen hogging applications (I can check PDFs with odd and even pages displayed next to each other at 100% with it). Similarly, something like Photoshop with lots of palettes etc, works rather well in widescreen and my work desktop is rather cluttered with lots of different apps open in different areas. The only bugbear I have is the A4 page view one.

[bellinghman]

Assuming the 17" is the actual diagonal for both, for the same diagonal you'll get more area the squarer the rectangle is. (The extreme widescreen would be 17" wide, 0.0001" tall, and have no area worth talking about for a 17" diagonal.) So the widescreen gives you less actual area.

I'd concur with random and go for the highest native pixel count. If the widescreen is 1440 x 900 (which my laptop is), then that's 1.29 megapixels. The 17" square aspect one probably does 1280 x 1024 - 1.31 megapixels.

(Checks pages - as yes, my guesses were correct.)

The temptation is always to push the boat out and go for something like this 22" 1680 x 1050 one. It's taller than the 4:3, wider than the widescreen one, and as long as you don't mind that it doesn't quite reach "Full HD" TV resolutions, not a bad price

[artela]

Still out of my price range... I can only just afford one of the two I put up for discussion :-/

[bellinghman]

Ah, the budget thing. Yes, I sympathise.

[liasbluestone]

The widescreen is 160 pixels wider against 124 pixels less height, so in terms of total screen real estate probably about the same.

It's actually a tough call. If you watched DVDs on it then I'd say go for widescreen, but I don't imagine you do.

For myself, I think I'd go for 4:3 because more height means more lines of code/text visible on-screen. But that's me. It depends what you do most, really. I know K* likes her widescreen (which is 19", but the same resolution as that 17").

[liasbluestone]

Widescreen = 1440 x 900 = 1,296,000 pixels
4:3 = 1280 x 1024 = 1,310,720 pixels

[dakegra]

I have a widescreen laptop at home and really like the extra width so I can have stuff like Trillian running at the side. It's useful for comparing documents too.

At work I've got a regular 4:3 laptop, plus a 2nd 4:3 flat panel monitor to the side, so I get the best of both worlds.

:-)

sorry, that's probably entirely unhelpful. What will you be using it for?

[artela]

I'll be using it for:

IRCing
LJing
Word documents
Excel Sheets
Paint Shop Pro work
Gaming
DVD playing
iPlayer

In fact, just about everything...

[dakegra]

I'd go widescreen then. More room horizontally to fit stuff.

[artela]

Himself is always moaning at me for how much I have running on my machine all at once... I'm a bit of a "flitter between windows" person - I've always got more than one thing on the go at once on my screens :-)