Laptop screen resolution

[cornflakegirl]

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?

 

[Jon von der Heyden]

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

 

[cornflakegirl]

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...

 

[starl]

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.

 

[RoryA]

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.

 

[SydneyGeek]

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

 

[cornflakegirl]

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...

 

[RoryA]

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'!! )

 

[starl]

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.

 

[Richard Schollar]

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