- Oct 20, 2018
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Hi. So I'm considering purchasing a one of the classic Lenovo/IBM Thinkpad t60's with the ATI discrete graphics and 15 inch IPS screen with 1400x1050 resolution. I really like these laptops and they were the last IBM ThinkPad's to come with a 4:3 aspect ratio display which I love as I do a lot of web browsing/documents/play old games on my computer and a 16:9 laptop screen feels too short to me.
My current laptop is a Dell D530 which is 15 inches with a 1024x768. I also have a 19 inch 1280x1024 monitor for my desktop computer.
When I first bought my Dell laptop, everything seemed too large and it felt a bit cramped due to the low resolution. However, I'm now used to it and everything looks about the same size as 1280x1024 on a 19 inch screen.
However, I'm wanting to upgrade to a ThinkPad for a few reasons:
1. My dell laptop has a TN panel, which means that the colours/brightness shift when you move your head. This doesn't happen with an IPS panel. Also, I've heard the colours are better on an IPS panel.
2. Higher resolution means text looks less blocky and shaper and crisper - but at the cost of smaller icons and text.
3. I've heard about the amazing keyboards that come with these laptops. At the moment, my hands and wrists get tired pretty quickly on my dell laptop, which does have the old style (chicklet keyboard i think it's called) but the feedback could be better. I also am not a fan of the flat keyboards found on modern laptops.
4. My dell laptop runs really slow on windows 7 because it only has 3GB of RAM so when i have lots of tabs open and get above 70% RAM usage my computer slows to a crawl. I know that Thinkpad T60's are also limited to 3GB RAM, however my Dell laptop has a really slow hard drive that is nearly always chrunching away, whereas if I got a ThinkPad with an SSD it would probably be much faster.
5. My dell laptop only has x3100 gma graphics with are integrated graphics and while they work fine for YouTube and watching videos I tried to run OMSI (a bus simulator game) but I just couldn't get it to run at all. Whereas many IBM ThinkPad's come with ATI x1300/1400 dedicated graphics with are better for gaming.
So what I'm considering is buying an IBM Thinkpad T60 off Ebay/Amazon/Gumtree etc with a Core 2 Duo Processor, 3GB RAM, an SSD and the ATI discrete garphics, as well as the IPS 1400x1050 15 inch screen.
My only concern is that icons and text might look too small at this size/resoultion. I looked up the DPI of this screen size/resolution combo and it is over 100 DPI, whereas my current screens have a DPI of around 86. So I guess if I was to make the switch from a 15 inch 1024x768 screen to a 15 inch 1400x1050 screen everything would be quite a lot smaller than what I am used to.
My close up vision is pretty good (I am near-sighted btw) but I do have some astigmatism so probably not quite as clear as it could be. I do have glasses but I don't like wearing them for close-up activities.
I would however be planning to install Windows 10 on this machine and I've noticed that the same resolution makes eveything look bigger compared to Windows 7 and much bigger than Windows XP.
I have used 17 inch 1280x1024 monitors in the past with Windows XP and 7 and it always felt like everything was a bit on the small side, but then when I saw the same monitors on Windows 10 everything looked a decent size.
Of course if it was too small for me, I could always just:
1. Zoom in on the browser/document etc.
2. Drop the resolution to 1280x1024, 1152x864 or 1024x768 (which I'm guessing would result in some blurriness when reading text).
3. Increase scaling to 125%. I have seen the display scaling on Windows 10 and it seems pretty good (apart from the cursor staying small).
I have used a 15 inch 1080p laptop with scaling set to 125%, which I was comfortable using, but when I chnaged the scaling to 100%, everything looked really tiny.
I'm guessing 1400x1050 on a 15 inch screen would look about the same as 1920x1080 on a 17 inch screen.
Any thoughts?
My current laptop is a Dell D530 which is 15 inches with a 1024x768. I also have a 19 inch 1280x1024 monitor for my desktop computer.
When I first bought my Dell laptop, everything seemed too large and it felt a bit cramped due to the low resolution. However, I'm now used to it and everything looks about the same size as 1280x1024 on a 19 inch screen.
However, I'm wanting to upgrade to a ThinkPad for a few reasons:
1. My dell laptop has a TN panel, which means that the colours/brightness shift when you move your head. This doesn't happen with an IPS panel. Also, I've heard the colours are better on an IPS panel.
2. Higher resolution means text looks less blocky and shaper and crisper - but at the cost of smaller icons and text.
3. I've heard about the amazing keyboards that come with these laptops. At the moment, my hands and wrists get tired pretty quickly on my dell laptop, which does have the old style (chicklet keyboard i think it's called) but the feedback could be better. I also am not a fan of the flat keyboards found on modern laptops.
4. My dell laptop runs really slow on windows 7 because it only has 3GB of RAM so when i have lots of tabs open and get above 70% RAM usage my computer slows to a crawl. I know that Thinkpad T60's are also limited to 3GB RAM, however my Dell laptop has a really slow hard drive that is nearly always chrunching away, whereas if I got a ThinkPad with an SSD it would probably be much faster.
5. My dell laptop only has x3100 gma graphics with are integrated graphics and while they work fine for YouTube and watching videos I tried to run OMSI (a bus simulator game) but I just couldn't get it to run at all. Whereas many IBM ThinkPad's come with ATI x1300/1400 dedicated graphics with are better for gaming.
So what I'm considering is buying an IBM Thinkpad T60 off Ebay/Amazon/Gumtree etc with a Core 2 Duo Processor, 3GB RAM, an SSD and the ATI discrete garphics, as well as the IPS 1400x1050 15 inch screen.
My only concern is that icons and text might look too small at this size/resoultion. I looked up the DPI of this screen size/resolution combo and it is over 100 DPI, whereas my current screens have a DPI of around 86. So I guess if I was to make the switch from a 15 inch 1024x768 screen to a 15 inch 1400x1050 screen everything would be quite a lot smaller than what I am used to.
My close up vision is pretty good (I am near-sighted btw) but I do have some astigmatism so probably not quite as clear as it could be. I do have glasses but I don't like wearing them for close-up activities.
I would however be planning to install Windows 10 on this machine and I've noticed that the same resolution makes eveything look bigger compared to Windows 7 and much bigger than Windows XP.
I have used 17 inch 1280x1024 monitors in the past with Windows XP and 7 and it always felt like everything was a bit on the small side, but then when I saw the same monitors on Windows 10 everything looked a decent size.
Of course if it was too small for me, I could always just:
1. Zoom in on the browser/document etc.
2. Drop the resolution to 1280x1024, 1152x864 or 1024x768 (which I'm guessing would result in some blurriness when reading text).
3. Increase scaling to 125%. I have seen the display scaling on Windows 10 and it seems pretty good (apart from the cursor staying small).
I have used a 15 inch 1080p laptop with scaling set to 125%, which I was comfortable using, but when I chnaged the scaling to 100%, everything looked really tiny.
I'm guessing 1400x1050 on a 15 inch screen would look about the same as 1920x1080 on a 17 inch screen.
Any thoughts?
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