from Hacker News

Professionals need our 4:3 screens

by H4CK3RM4N on 2/18/18, 11:20 AM with 93 comments

• by anfilt on 2/18/18, 12:20 PM

  Same! I hate the freaking wide screen madness. It's not just laptops though. There are not a ton of manufactures making LCDs with modern resolutions in a 4:3 aspect ratio. Also a lot them are quite expensive.

  Eizo makes 1:1 desktop monitor, I managed to get one used for a good price I love it! I would get a second if they did not cost so much.

  http://www.eizoglobal.com/products/flexscan/ev2730q/index.ht...

  Also 5:4 is basically stuck as 1280x1024. You think for the desktop monitor market there would be more variety of aspect ratios made with higher resolutions.

• by jeffhuys on 2/18/18, 12:14 PM

  So, he doesn't like 16:9 or 16:10 because he doesn't use the extra space? I think I couldn't live without a wide-screen.. screen. Most of the time, I have 2 or 3 files side-by-side. I also think that the author actually has a different problem: a bad trackpad. He stated he needs to scroll a lot to view content, and a nice trackpad goes a long way with this.

  It all comes down to opinion; I'd rather have a wide screen than a high screen, because I feel really agile with my huge trackpad.

  > Please consider the needs of such user as I and many of my colleagues. Academics and various assorted IT professionals are not an insignificant group of users. And even if only a part of them are having the same frustrations as me when buying notebooks, this is still a large group, I’m sure. Please consider providing such people as us with a little choice in the matter of screen ratios. There is our money in this for you. Lots of money!

  I don't think there's "lots of money" there. I also think the companies that make these laptops do the necessary market research and come to the conclusion that wide-screen sells better.

• by bartread on 2/18/18, 12:19 PM

  Disagree.

  I have a Microsoft Surface Pro (or Surface Book Pro - I can never remember which because I find the naming scheme ridiculous and irritating but, basically, the most powerful variant)[1], which has a screen that's much closer to 4:3 than 16:9.

  I tend to like to have files open side by side. Not just code, but often documents, web pages, and sometimes spreadsheets. This does not work nearly as well on a 4:3 screen as it does on a 16:9 screen. A particular bugbear is Visual Studio, where I like the solution explorer open next to my side by side files: I can make it work on the Surface, but it's not great, and I find myself having to reduce the font size.

  16:9 works much better for me, particularly when I'm on the move and am forced to only use a single screen.

  [1] Off topic but I do not recommend you buy one of these due to unreliable WiFi connectivity, unreliable trackpad, a tendency to drain the battery very quickly (12 hours or so) when sleeping, and disappointing overall battery life. These would be irritating issues in a £600-1000 laptop, so they're absolutely unacceptable in a £2400 laptop.

• by Paul_S on 2/18/18, 12:16 PM

  4:3 and matte and a proper keyboard. These no longer exist because Apple and shiny.

• by hjorthjort on 2/18/18, 12:16 PM

  Or is this a call for mainstream operating systems and applications to get creative (read, nice tiling or splitting by default)?

  What if all browsers suported single page split view? So that the left side was your regular view, half width, and the right side was the continuation of the same page, where the left side ended.

• by kev009 on 2/18/18, 12:21 PM

  On the other hand resolution has gotten to be AMAZING with 4k so I almost don't care anymore. That might be eye sight dependent as I am able to use fairly minimal scaling.

  I've had over the years ThinkPad 760, 600X (600 was one of the best laptop ever designed given the constraints in available tech, not sure anything can ever top it), T42, T61p, T420s and now P50 and it is a worthy family member as good as any of them. I /really/ wish they had a P4x that was 14" while retaining the xeon/ecc and 4k but that must be too niche.

  I was sad when we lost 4:3 screens.. and was hoping the ThinkPad 25th Anniversary edition would have been delivered to David Hill's design intent.. just to have a real special piece of art if nothing else, but I don't think we'll ever see the industry go back.

• by BuildTheRobots on 2/18/18, 12:11 PM

  I've been lamenting similar for years; nearly everything I do on a computer involves long not wide documents.

  I've mostly made my peace with a 16:10 monitor as it at least allows me to have two documents side by side and this is still findable in a laptop.

• by kristianp on 2/19/18, 7:34 AM

  Most of us have never tried, or don't remember what it's like to have a 4:3 screen, it's been so long since they were common. It's hard to have a real debate about something few people have actually tried.

• by lazyjones on 2/18/18, 12:36 PM

  Wide screens are a terrible idea indeed. Another side effect is that they frequently add another vertical row of keys on the right edge of the keyboard, just next to Enter/Shift/Backspace. That's just asking for trouble, as if laptop keyboards weren't bad enough already... The C64 had its function keys there, but with a huge gap in between for a reason.

• by IdontRememberIt on 2/18/18, 4:01 PM

  (Controversial) Corollary resulting from this 16:9 domination: the maximum length of a source code line should be increased. 80 characters seems to be not the best fit for modern IDE on 16:9 screens. (I hate that, but praying for a 16:10 monitor comeback did not work. Also, it is getting worse with hidpi monitors)

• by cairo_x on 2/18/18, 12:36 PM

  Agree 110%

  I have an external monitor flipped to portrait. Only other option is to get some kind of beastly tablet set-up.

• by jstewartmobile on 2/18/18, 12:31 PM

  For most forms of computer work, he has a point. 16:9 at 27" isn't the same thing as 16:9 at 15.6".

  Browsers, word processors, CLIs, etc. run top-to-bottom, and can make you feel claustrophobic on the tiny 16:9 screens most laptops have.

• by DerekL on 2/19/18, 3:49 AM

  Another reason why laptops are usually widescreen is airplanes. The seat in front is often reclined, leaving little room for a tall screen.

  Also, keyboards are more wide than tall, so an extra wide case allows wider keys or more space between keys.

• by scarface74 on 2/18/18, 12:49 PM

  I have what I think is one of the last great 1920x1200 laptop displays. Not 4:3 but better than 1920x1080 It's a Core 2 Duo 2.66Ghz Dell from 2008. It serves as my Plex Server.

  At least after 2012 you could get Retina display Macbooks and later PCs that you could use in other modes without looking bad.

  All that being said. For reading, I much prefer my iPad because it is 4:3.

• by chvid on 2/18/18, 12:42 PM

  I am professional and I like my wide screen laptop.

  Most of the time I am in this editor-thingee where the left-hand side is a tree-structure showing an overview of the project I am working on and the right-hand side is some sort of detail view.

  Perhaps there are some toolbars too but they are just fine being vertical.

• by falcolas on 2/18/18, 4:01 PM

  My compromise to address the lack of 4:3 screens: Laptop on the left. One monitor in normal orientation in the center. One monitor in portrait orientation on the right.

  I still wish for more vertical landscape in the middle, but... ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

• by jbfoo on 2/18/18, 2:15 PM

  As a programmer I like panoramic screen very much --- I usually have at least two panes with code open next to one each other. My four year laptop has HD screen, which also helps a lot.

  I also find horizontal space much more valuable.

• by pathartl on 2/19/18, 4:34 PM

  On a 4:3 note I really just want a large 1024x768 (or even 2048x1536) monitor that's larger than the standard 18" for software preservation purposes. Lots of games were just made to run at 1024x768.

• by TomK32 on 2/18/18, 12:44 PM

  I should use my ext display in 9:16 more often. That's the one that makes sense even if you only work between vim, firefox and the terminal.

• by moondev on 2/19/18, 6:32 AM

  I felt like my widescreen wasted a ton of space until I started using a tiling window manager. My productivity went through the roof!

• by wccrawford on 2/18/18, 12:18 PM

  >When it comes right down to it, I find only these two things to be of paramount importance:

  >the highest possible screen,

  >the lowest possible weight.

  Rotate the monitor sideways. According to the only 2 criteria that matter to him, a 16:9 monitor on its side is way better than a 4:3 monitor in any rotation.

• by nukeop on 2/18/18, 12:21 PM

  The author presents his own personal opinions as though they were shared by the majority of programmers, but they're not. 4:3 ratio offers little space and I found that I actually prefer ultrawide monitors (21:9) to regular HD ones. The extra width lets me open 4 emacs buffers side by side (or 5-6 if I'm editing smaller files) which gives me unparalleled possibilities for editing and comparing code. Of course when it comes to laptops I find 16:9 way better than 4:3. I don't think we're going to see too many 4:3 laptops in the future.

• by mozumder on 2/18/18, 12:11 PM

  iPad Pro with keyboard.

• by veritas718 on 2/18/18, 12:33 PM

  this is so stupid. this guy doesnt want a laptop but a tablet or netbook, and should be asking why chromebooks dont come in 4:3

  this guy's real problem is probably that 768 pixels isnt enough, not the wasted pixels to make the width 1366; so the solution is probably not being as cheap, and getting a higher resolution screen on a small latptop