# Laptop screen resolution



## cornflakegirl (Mar 3, 2009)

My husband wants to buy a laptop. We don't do any heavy computing at home - email, interweb, Excel, Photoshop, Skype - no gaming (unless you count the CBeebies website  ). So we were thinking bottom end of the market. But then a friend of ours said to consider screen resolution. My work laptop is 1680 x 1050 and is nice. I believe that is a fairly high resolution. I've not knowingly used a screen with lower resolution.

Anyone got any advice on how important screen resolution is? Or laptop recommendations to save me from actually having to make a decision?


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## Jon von der Heyden (Mar 3, 2009)

Well for basic needs I hardly think screen resolution is particularly relevant.


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## cornflakegirl (Mar 3, 2009)

Yeah, that was kind of my feeling too! But our friend (who I would normally trust on techy geek things) made a big deal of it. Maybe I'll drag my husband to a computer shop so that we can play on cheap laptops and see if we actually notice the difference...


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## starl (Mar 3, 2009)

Maybe he meant screen SIZE. Resolution is important - you don't want 640x480, but really, it's the size of the screen that's hard to look at. 1280x1024 would be fine (which seems to be a standard now?), but I wouldn't go smaller than a 15.4" screen - but, then you should go to the store and look at different size screens to decide how small you are willing to go.
If you aren't gaming or doing cad design, I can't think of a reason to go HIGH resolution. A basic, integrated video should be fine.


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## RoryA (Mar 3, 2009)

I'm confused by the combination of "we don't do any heavy computing" and "Photoshop"! Do you just mean basic touching up in Elements?
For me it's the combination of screen size and native resolution that is important. Too high a resolution on a smaller screen can be uncomfortable after a while.


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## SydneyGeek (Mar 3, 2009)

Ditto. Resolution depends on what you need. Regardless of the number, you have to be comfortable reading text at the native screen recolution, whatever that is. 
High resolution is cool for putting 2 documents side by side, or seeing 16-20 columns of a spreadsheet, but if that doesn't matter to you, just go with something you can look at for several hours without squinting.

Denis


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## cornflakegirl (Mar 4, 2009)

Rory - not sure what you mean by Elements? But yeah, I just mean a bit of photo editing - red eye and cropping mainly.

Right, so the three of you have now identified for me that I have even less idea what I'm talking about than I thought.  Screen size and resolution in conjunction makes sense. Although most (cheapish) laptops seem to be roughly the same size? If 1280x1024 is the standard now, then I'm guessing most people are happy with that, so it makes sense that we would be too. Will have to check what our friend was doing that the resolution wasn't adequate for...


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## RoryA (Mar 4, 2009)

I just meant "Photoshop Elements" as opposed to "Photoshop Lightroom" or one of the "Photoshop CS" versions. (I have Photoshop CS3 and it can definitely count as *'heavy* computing'!! )


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## starl (Mar 4, 2009)

If it was a fulltime work laptop, I'd go way high on resolution - but if it's for idle use, then it's not as serious.


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## Richard Schollar (Mar 4, 2009)

starl said:


> Maybe he meant screen SIZE. Resolution is important - you don't want 640x480, but really, it's the size of the screen that's hard to look at. 1280x1024 would be fine (which seems to be a standard now?), but I wouldn't go smaller than a 15.4" screen - but, then you should go to the store and look at different size screens to decide how small you are willing to go.
> If you aren't gaming or doing cad design, I can't think of a reason to go HIGH resolution. A basic, integrated video should be fine.



You women frequently say size doesn't matter but threads like this show your true feelings!  I feel sorry for your husband as he must get compared to those stallions you keep


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## DonkeyOte (Mar 4, 2009)

I bought my laptop to be my primary machine as my Desktop is getting old (1GB RAM... urgh), so for me given I spend most of my time being a nerd n'all screen resolution was of paramount importance... mine runs optimally @ 1920 x 1200 on 15.4" so in XL terms I get A:AC @ 100% (default col. width) ... needless to say it's obviously quite small font-wise etc... for me it's not only perfect but also has the added bonus that my wife deems it too small
(and to beat Richard to it, no, not the first time she's said it)

I think it's fair to say you do pay (cash) for higher resolution so if you don't need out of the ordinary resolution don't buy it as it's a waste obviously.


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## cornflakegirl (Mar 4, 2009)

Luke - I remember you saying that you could see a ridiculous number of columns! Given that we only really use Excel at home for tracking monthly expenditure, I think I can probably cope with fewer columns.

(Surely no man actually believes that size doesn't matter?)


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## Long Nose (Mar 4, 2009)

I thought it came with a resolution enlarger, if the size was too small, you could change it.  Not that I've ever needed this contraption.

Eh..hem!


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## Lewiy (Mar 12, 2009)

Our work PCs are all set to 1024x768 which most people seem very happy with.  Personally I can't stand it and always immediately change my resolution to 1280x1024 when I move desks.  I find it a bit too blocky otherwise.

My home PC is 1440x900 (widescreen) but 1280x768 is perfectly sufficient.  One thing that's quite important is the maximum refresh rate.  60 hertz is fairly standard, but you will likely get some screen flicker at higher resolutions unless you can put it up to 70 hertz or higher.


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