As Lenovo retires its last line of non-widescreen laptops, it sounds like one of the final nails being hammered into the squarish aspect ratio screens we grew up with. I think that the move to 16:10 and related aspect ratios is a good thing, but I mourn the passing of the standard aspect ratio (SAR) screen as I mourned my old SAR NEC monitor when I moved to a sweet new 16:10 Dell LCD. While it’s arguable that SAR’s value is that it gives you more vertical space to work in (essential for coding), I think the increased screen real estate provided by increased resolution more than makes up for it. Plus as the laptop is increasingly a media platform as well as a tiny workstation, the wide aspect ratio makes for good movie watchin’. Yes, widescreen is great, but a moment of silence if you please for SXGA.
And check out this awesome chart:
I completely agree, the vertical does matter. I’m not an advanced user at all; i only use my computer primarily for word processing. But its ten times better to be able see the entire page on the screen! Instead of having to continuously scroll. And now i need a new computer and to my surprise and dismay there aren’t any standard screen laptops left! this is crazy!
Many of the widescreen laptops can be tilted by 90 degress to satisfy this need for extra vertical space.