Loving the Square screen monitor (Square versus Wide screen issues)

[LinComp]

Hi, I am very fond of the previous generation square type monitors and really dislike the current trend of wide screen monitors. but i see that the square type monitors are becoming rarer and rarer nowadays and in the laptop sector they are no more available, for company built desktops too the square type monitors are not available but the square screen is available in the market if you are self building a desktop computer.

What a great 15 inch square type laptop monitors used to be available before but now the 15.6 wide screen has replaced it totally. i personally feel the pictures and the letter size on the web pages look larger with the square type monitors compared to the wide screen type, for example chess boards, youtube videos, letter size while reading news in the yahoo, letter size while reading the email etc all look better for me on the square type monitor compared to the wide screen. I feel the movies too appear better on the square monitors (characters look larger). since no laptop nowadays comes with square screen i may think of building my own desktop with using one of the square type monitors available in the markets. there are couple of brands available with 17 inch square type monitors for desktops (dell, iball etc) and i may use this type of monitor. my question is will there will be any major technical problems i will face if i choose the square type monitor over the wide screen type. since the wide screen laptop went off the market i have been silently crying and desperately looking for a square type monitor, so if i build my own desktop with square type monitor will there any technical issues i face with the display of pictures, video, or reading a web page like yahoo etc, i am asking this because i feel the web pages are prepared for the wide screen nowadays. Thanks!

 

[corbeau]

There should be no problem using a full screen with most newer equipment (I use one full and one widescreen with my Radeon HD6850 video card). Depending on the video card you use it might require a DVI to VGA adapter but most video cards come with those these days.

 

[LinComp]

Thanks very much!

 

[LinComp]

And I agree i should not have called it as square type monitor because the size is not exactly square, it is still rectangular like the current trend wide screen but the vertical measurement of it is more compared to the wide screen laptops, it makes it look like a square monitor but it is not exactly square. so it is better to call the the square type monitor as full screen monitor like you have mentioned!

 

[Cons29]

i think, things appear bigger since the resolution is smaller on those older monitors, higher resolution on say 22 inches might have smaller pixel size compared to 4:3 monitor. im too lazy to compute so im just thinking that it is.

so if the pixels are smaller then things will appear smaller. wide screen is better esp for productivity, and movies (since everything is wide screen nowadays).

but with that said, using 4:3 is ok

 

[LinComp]

Thanks very much!

 

[momboso]

The standard aspect ratio was 4:3 for a long time. That works out to 1.33 times more wide than tall. That is an obvious and substantial rectangle. Take a piece of printer paper (U.S. letter), look at it in document orientation, and then in landscape orientation. It is not square either, as you would sorely realize if publishers started printing documents in landscape orientation. U.S. letter paper in landscape orientation is only 1.29 times more wide than tall. It is more "square" than the classic 4:3 display aspect ratio.


They still sell 17" and 19" monitors with a 5:4 display aspect ratio (1.25 times more wide than tall). The connectors are VGA and DVI (anything newer?), and I don't think they increased the resolution beyond 1280 x 1024, but that is fine for most computing applications and information consumption. Movies are the exception. Try a 5:4 or 4:3 monitor to work on and a large flat panel screen to watch movies on.

Width/height = 1.25, 1.29, 1.33, 1.41, and 1.78 for :

5:4, U.S. letter paper in landscape orientation, 4:3, A4 paper (European standard) in landscape orien., 16:9 (Flat-panel standard for video, TV, movies), respectively.

If you plot these values and look at the pattern, I think you will see that a 4:3 aspect ration was an excellent choice (and still is) for display of documents, column data, and "videos" on a monitor.

Pixel resolution is simply the number of pixels per inch (or square inch?). It is independent of the display size dimensions (width, height, diagonal, and area). Higher resolutions could be applied to older display aspect standards. Similarly, new and current connector standards could be used with 4:3 and 5:4 monitors.

A movie director probably prefers a wide-screen display, but many still prefer a 19" 5:4 display for computer work on a small/medium size desk and a 15" 4:3 display for a laptop. Widescreen is great for movies in the living room, but there is nothing wrong with letter-boxing an occasional movie on a 5:4 or 4:3 display. The black border stripes won't hurt your eyes.

 

[LinComp]

Thanks!