Blinded by Progress
The lease was up on my work laptop, so I was issued a new Lenovo T61p last week: Here are the specs:
T7700(2.4GHz), 2GB RAM, 100GB 7200rpm HD, 15.4in 1920×1200 LCD, 256MB nVIDIA Quadro FX 570M, CDRW/DVDRW, Intel 802.11agn(n-disabled), Bluetooth, Modem, 1Gb Ethernet, UltraNav, Secure chip, Fingerprint reader, 9c Li-Ion battery, Windows Vista Ultimate.
This an awesome machine…..except for the screen resolution. A 15.4" screen with a resolution of 1920×1200 results in a whopping 147 pixels per inch! Compare that to these popular sizes:
17" – 1280×1024 – 96ppi
19"- 1280×1024- 86ppi
20.1" – 1680×1050 – 99ppi
I bought a 20.1" monitor with my new Dell last year, and that is about as high as I can go (in terms of PPI) and still work comfortably for any length of time.
So what are my options? I could go back to our IT guy and ask him to swap it out for the same model with a WSXGA (1680×1050) display. At 128ppi, this is only marginally better, but it is the only other option for this model. I spent a lot of time getting all my applications installed and configured this weekend. If I get the same model, I should be able to image the drive and move it over to the new machine. If I opt for a different model, I may not be so lucky.
The second option is to simply run at a lower resolution. Running at a non-native resolution does blur the display a bit, and this can result in eye strain after working for any length of time.
The third option is to change the font size (DPI) in Windows, but this also has it’s problems. You would be surprised how many applications are designed and developed without any thought to the possibility that the user may be running at a non-standard font size. Changing the font size also has little impact on how web sites are rendered in the browser. Sure, you can increase the text size in the browser, but most web sites are optimized to look good under a few popular resolutions, and increasing the text size within the same page layout can look really bad in a hurry.
None of these options are attractive. What would you do?