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IBM

IBM Selling 20" 2048x1536 LCD 158

Posted by CmdrTaco from the aint-that-yummy dept.
starman97 writes "IBM will show a new 20.8 inch LCD active matrix display that boasts 2048x1536 pixels at Comdex this fall in Las Vegas " One word: Yum. A slightly related question: what is the maximum size for a portable computer screen? I would say 20" is a bit out there, but there are 15 and 16 inch laptop screens. Larger LCDs with larger production volumes will mean someone is gonna test the waters sooner or later.
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IBM Selling 20" 2048x1536 LCD More

IBM Selling 20" 2048x1536 LCD

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  • Oh great... now I gotta listen to all the techs next door talk about how much bigger THEIR screen is than everybody else's. It's like penis envy for geeks. Is it any suprise they're both measured down to the 1/10th of an inch? =)

    --
  • A slightly related question: what is the maximum size for a portable computer screen?

    Well, if they could make them out of material that would conveniently roll up (like the keyboard in that one ST:TNG episode) when not in use, I suppose they could get up to a yard or so in the short dimension -- you'd carry it around in a scabbard like a sword.

    Oh, you were saying something about penis envy?
    /.

  • Woaaah, look at all those colors at such a high resolution.... wait wait.. LCD? OH, I thought it was LSD. My bad.

    -PovRayMan
  • Smart ass. =) I'd prefer if my screen *cough* wasn't the roll-up model. You know... I like my screens hard.. and so to the systems I *cough* service.

    --
  • Ummm... let go of the degauss button.

    --
  • Depends on what kind of portability you're looking for in your laptop. If you don't care how big it is, than 15-16" is fine... but if you want a light, thin laptop that you can stick in your briefcase, then you'll want something smaller.

  • Yawn. Another single resolution display. (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    For all the hype surrounding LCDs, they only look good at their native resolution (maybe at /2 also) Anything else and they look like utter crap with every 10th pixel or whatever stretched twice as wide. And I don't know about you, but switching video modes is not an uncommon event for a lot of us. The desktop gets the max res. The DVD player wants another video mode. Games seem to all want a different custom mode (I *need* MAME. 384x512 w scanlines or it ain't a proper emulation). For all but the most fixed task users, LCDs are a lot of money for a lousy display. I'll stick with the 21" Sont CRT thank you.
  • Anybody got any pictures of this beatuty, I'd loovee to see this. Oh, this gotta be sexy.

  • It's good to see such a big screen. Too bad I'll be an executive before I can afford it....

  • *cough* Am I the only one that thinks those two sentences are psycho-sexually loaded? If you don't care how big it is.... 15-16" is fine...

    Hmm.. I think I'd better stop reading the UF listserv... I'm gettin' all these funny thoughts in my head.... NURSE - I need my pills.. I having ONE OF THOSE DAMNED FITS AGAIN! =)



    --
  • I have largeish fingers, so most laptop keyboards are a pain in the *ss to type on. When I need to type on them, I often resort to the end of a pen or pencil, especially on the "notebook" and "ultralite" styled laptops. I would like to see a laptop with a full size keyboard, and possibly a nice HUGE screen to go with it. If this screen brings about this, I will be completely extatic! For me, personally, weight isn't much of an issue with a portable computer. Durability and comfort typing is the need.

    I will admit that I do not currently own a laptop, but that's not because I don't want one or like any current models. (Being a student often sucks.)
  • These are being manufactured for non-laptop use. A friend of mine works for the division of IBM that produces these and he thought (as I do) that anyone who would think these could be usable in a laptop forgot to wear their tin-foil hat.
  • whoops. 15-16" wouldn't be fine, it'd be great... if you've got the RAM to support it. Otherwise, you'd have trouble booting.
  • The bigger the better. Panoram Technology [panoramtech.com] has a nifty LCD Display [panoramtech.com] that sells for only $27,000. My questions are
    A: When are LCD monitors going to become practical (aka cheap)
    B: Just out of curiosity, are there any other display technologies in the works besides CRT and LCD? What about holographic displays?



  • (It's a bird! It's a plane! It's -- semantic nitpick man!)

    LCD screens don't have degauss buttons. It'd be like a power switch on a pair of headphones.

    (With a mighty woosh, semantic nitpick man flies away.)
    ---
    "'Is not a quine' is not a quine" is a quine.
  • Hey semantic boy - you didn't need that extra comma in your last sentence, and putting those parenthesis in your last sentence is illegal. Your use of a period inside the parenthesis is also illegal syntax. =)

    You've officially been one-up'd by Signal 11!



    --

  • price (Score:1)

    by marks ( 12185 )
    anyone know an approximate price? Or is this gonna be a "screw college...i'm getting this" kind of thing?
  • Well, if you're having trouble booting you should check for several things, including:
    • Have you plugged it into the proper recepticle yet? This is the most common reason people cannot boot their systems.
    • Did you try booting from floppy? You need to remove the floppy from the drive and boot using the hard drive.
    • No RAM or insufficient RAM can be a problem, however in modern systems this usually isn't an issue - older systems may have this problem. A RAM upgrade (contact your local vendor) can usually resolve this issue.

    My tongue is firmly planted in my cheek right now..



    --
  • Ah, but they were parenthetical interstitials. Perhaps they would have been better suited inside brackets, as they were basically stage directions. Also, it is perfectly legal to have an entire sentence within a parenthetical interstitial, if not by the book then by de-facto newer standards. Remember, folks, English is a relatively new language, and continues to evolve daily.

    Oh, and just because I didn't need that comma doesn't mean it was unnecessary; it was a phrasing comma. Oh, and since when is an equal sign and an unmatched right parenthesis legal at all?

    Oh, and it's "one-upped," not "one-up'd." :)
    ---
    "'Is not a quine' is not a quine" is a quine.

  • Oh, come on. We all know that when parenthesizing an entire sentence, proper procedure is to put the punctuaion inside the parentheses. When parenthesizing a few words at the end of a sentence, the punctuation goes outside (but you could have guessed that).

    (This is really off-topic but apparently important.)
  • *cough* Goddamnit... =)

    --
  • hahaha It's not the screen size that matters. It's the way you use it. ;-)
  • Apple's Cinema display is "only" 1,600 by 1,024 pixels (~1.6 M pixels). IBM's is 2,048 by 1,536 pixels (~3.1 M pixels). Also, IBM's display has a different aspect ratio. 20 inches in 4:3 gets about what you get with 22 in whatever Apple's ratio is. I don't know the ratio so I haven't done the math. 207 sq inches for IBM though. I think Apple's display is pretty damn cool, but IBM's is next generation by comparison.
  • >"'Is not a quine' is not a quine" is a quine. >Quine "quine?" "'Quined' quined" quines "quined." obscure... i like it.
    ------
    WWhhaatt ddooeess dduupplleexx mmeeaann??
  • Forgot to mention, it's 20.8 inches not 20 inches. Big difference when you are comparing 20 inches to 22 inches (and at different aspect ratios!)
  • Try a Compaq Presario 1245 sometime - the keyboard on it is actually usable. However it does have some disadvantages: 1. The computer was designed to be run with Windows 98 - translation: The hard drive is filled to full capacity, and it has a Winmodem. 2. RedHat 6.0 will work with it, including sound, but you can't disable the touchpad, even by plugging in a mouse. Find a way to cover the touchpad when typing, or be prepared to curse when that accidental brush of the palm selects-deletes the text you were typing. 3. The hard drive is intolerably slow, and it comes with too little memory. I recommend getting at least a 64MB upgrade. Overall, the machine is very slow, even for a Compaq (expect the equivalent of a pentium-120 desktop), but at least you can type a term paper on it without getting carpal tunnel syndrome. And it is relatively cheap for a laptop.
  • hmmm.. I'm not sure what good a picture would do. I mean, are you going to look at it and think "Wow. that image looks much clearer there than it does on the monitor I have now."
  • It stands to reason that any common multiple would be fairly decent. 2048*1536 /2 = 1024*768, that's fine. /3 =~640*480. 800*600 is near /2.5

    However, you also might want to consider that most people have about 19 or 17" monitor, and probably don't go above 1024x768 (majority probably doesn't even do that), so this is almost twice the density. It'll be a lot sharper, but the pixels should be so small I doubt you'd be able to tell. I guess it remains to be seen.
  • 1080i? Give me 720p. Ever try to use an interlaced computer monitor? It isn't pretty. TV survives because of coherence -- but coherence means you don't have the detail the higher resolution is supposed to give you.
  • I prefer to spread my icons out to get the maximum amount of screen realestate. I also run my refresh rates low, because my system gets very upset when I refresh too quickly; It can lockup and become unresponsive for several hours.

    --
  • Why would anyone waste their money on this. I have a 15inch, Sony Trinitron and it has been the best monitor. Sharp picture, good size and with a good video card, pretty friggin' smooth at 1024x768x16-bit. Luxury IMHO would be a 21inch monitor with sharp picture. No one would need more than 1024x768, nor anything larger than 21inch (unless you're watching DVDs, but there are players and 37inch TVs that will do that job).

    Standalone LCD screens seem to me a waste too. The only real noticable advantage is the lack of dust collection and slightly sharper image. THis is just another thing for men with big egos, too much money and too little sense.

    And that's the way I see it (IMHO)...


    Dijital
  • Give it a try. Take that big photo album off the shelve, sit it down on your lap, and open it. No problem, as long as it's not much more then an inch thick. And then there would be room for a really good keyboard. Only problem I can see is getting a laptop case for it. ;-)


    If I read the article right, this is the raw display, not the finished consumer product, so companies can put them into whatever frame they want. I don't know if there is any difference in the raw display for laptop screen's vs desktop monitors, but if not, an innovative company could build one into a laptop. Please make the screen detachable and mountable on an arm for when I'm computing at home.

    By the way, the 22 inch Apple Cinema Display is only 1600x1024, which makes for quite a bit bigger pixels then the 20.8 inch IBM at 2048x1536.


  • At a pixel resolution of 123 Pixels/Inch I dont think you'd notice if the video card dithered properly. Not to mention, you wont get color fringing on vertical lines like you do on a trinitron.

    IBM is also working on a 200PPI LCD, that's getting close to laserprinter quality.

    My 21inch Mitsubishi has a Sony tube with .26mm phosphor pitch, that works out to 97 Pixels/inch
    My screen is 16 inches horizontally, 1600 pixels.
    (20 inches diagonal usable screen)
  • Remember the IBM "butterfly-keyboard" laptops? One should be able to do something similar with an LCD screen. Getting the alignment right to the last pixel might be difficult, but shouldn't be impossible. Now THAT would be a machine worth buying. Butterfly keyboard, butterfly LCD...
  • I like my laptops small (think the old HP Omnibooks or the new Sony VIAO subnotebooks) and I don't demand that my laptop do the same kind of stuff my desktop does. As long as the keyboard and pointing device are reasonable, I'm happy.

    You can fit a good keyboard into about 10", and t he pointing device doesn't have to take up any space at all if you use that eraserhead thingy everyone seems so fond of these days. (I know some people hate it, but I'm willing to make sacrifices for portability) Leave a little room for the bezel around the LCD and you get a 9"x6" display at some reasonable resolution (800x600 is good for me, in a pinch at least).

    With the current trends in I/O ports and removable storage, I'd be willing to forego an internal floppy and CD-ROM, and have only modem, ethernet and USB ports. (maybe throw in IrDA, though I have yet to use it for anything. I'm sure some other folks have found it usefull)
  • Doing CAD work, you need all the screen pixels you can get. The toolbars and side menus take up a lot of room on the screen, most CAD people go to multiple screens to get any real productivity. When you pay a designer $100+/hr, productivity increases will pay for expensive screens. The other issue is desk space, a 21" CRT takes a big desk, 2 of them require a bigger office, office space costs big $$$. In the business world, you can justify big LCD's if the users cost big $$$ per hour and the office space costs big $$$ per sqft.
    The other thing I see as a big advantage for LCD's is that in multiscreen setups, the screens wont interfere with each other like CRT's do, its really distracting to watch interference bands crawl down the screen.
  • I would guess that when Apple moves over to PDF for its display systems (see OS X this spring folks) you are likely to get what you are asking for.

    TML
  • Anybody else curious about what 'spacer balls' are, and why it's a good thing to get rid of them? I did a quick search and found some intersting info about LCDs at flatpanel.com [flat-panel.com]

    /peter

  • The problem I'd see with making a laptop of this size is that the power run the backlight would be huge! What you'd end up with would be a rather large laptop with some rather large and hot batteries stuck inside it. I realize that battery technology is improving all the time, but It's just not at the point yet where a laptop with such a screen and the hardware to back it up would be useful for a long period of time. I also wonder about the utility of having such a big screen on a laptop since the usual format of such computers puts your face about 9" away from the screen. Well anyway that's my 2 cents. Lizard
  • Do IBM actually make the displays? If so that would be one thing "up" with IBM, as I am pretty sure Apple doesn't make any LCDs. They may put a different shell on the display and call it an Apple LCD, but I highly doubt they make LCDs. That 1600x1024 display sounds suspiciously like the SGI LCD display, which is also the same as a Radius display that we have at work. These are probably all manufactured by the same company, which is almost certainly not Apple or SGI.

    Besides, LCDs are nice for their flatness, but they suck in just about every other area when compared to CRTs. LCDs have extremely limited viewing angle and generally poor refresh rates (no flicker per se, but if you drag an opaque window around on an LCD you will typically see a blur because the LCD cannot update its display nearly as fast as a CRT).

    LCDs may seem cool but I would take a high quality CRT over an LCD any day of the week. For the $5000 or whatever these LCDs cost you could get an *incredible* CRT. Personally I don't see the point of these LCDs, except to look cool and impress non-technical types. Oh yeah, and because maybe current LCDs are just stepping stones to improved models which correct all of the LCD problems I mentioned.
  • We have 15 inch LCDs at work which, when displaying non-native resolutions, do some kind of anti-aliasing (it must be the LCD doing it because the video card has no idea it's displaying to an LCD) which looks pretty good. Certainly not as bad as those monitors that just stretch every nth line to sum up to the required resolution.
  • LCDs are also a helluva lot cheaper to run. I'd love for someone to do a study on the costs over 5 years of 15 LCD vs. CRT. All the numbers I have seen would seem to indicate a cost savers would result with LCD.

    If anyone from IBM is here, I'm prefectly willing to beta test one of these....

    matt

  • It's great, but I wouldn't get one (Score:3)

    by Silicon_Knight ( 66140 ) on Wednesday November 10, 1999 @05:56PM (#1543782)
    I love LCD as much as the next geek, and there are applications that almost require LCD displays (such as labs where RF interference is a problem). But, as most laptop owners can tell you, every once in a while a pixel can go bad on you, and no matter how small the pixel is, it's noticble and annoying as hell. Now, when a traditional CRT bust an element, most of the time whatever it is (power supply, synch circuit, etc) can be replaced relatively easily. But burn a pixel out on an LCD screen, there's no real way of replacing it except for scrapping the whole damn display.

    If I'm investing *that* much money on a display, it has to have a good enough warranty on it such that I can sleep soundly at night without worrying one or two annoying pixels that's always red.

    -=- SiKnight
  • What is the point of getting any bigger? I agree with the idea of 15-17 being satisfactory. Don't they realize that the larger u get the worse the LCD is? If you were to go off on a tangent, u would kno that plasma screens for theaters are not used often because of 2 reasons. Sheer expense, and the lack of color. The bigger you get the more "black tone" there is. It is hard to heat all that crystal. The expense comes from the filterization and disposal. I mean, there are literally millions of pixels in them things!, and to make sure that not one is bad is hard. All the bad ones need to be properly disposed of. Now, im not saying that we should resort to 3 lens projectors as our laptop screen's. Although it would be phat to just have a 100 inch screen projected anywhere, HDTV quality with phat picture. But a limit needs to be drawn somewhere..., perhaps people will realize that its too expensive, and not that great yet at those sizes.
  • A couple other thoughts on his trouble booting:

    One thing that can cause problems is excessive accumulation of dirt and grime. Besides having the potential to cause malfunctions, excessive dust and grime makes the system look unappealing to potential users. I would recommend the use of a thin covering material to shield it from unwanted substances, especially during use.

    Are you overclocking? While overclocking can lead to more fun in your games, if you overclock too much you can wear the part down causing boot failures. You can only compute so much in a given time, trying to do more is just asking for trouble.

    And I don't even want to know where the Matrox Dual-Head comes into this...

    8^p

    PS No, my choice of verb for what the Matrox is doing was not intended as a pun. Though it should've been ;-)
  • The ultimate would be to have the virtual desktop - adjust it as you need it. Instead of running your refresh rates low, perhaps you could use a better video devices? There are several on the maket that might help your "problem", they can be ordered in secracy.
  • Flat panel screens are amazing. Keep in mind that there is a difference between analog and digital screens. Digital screens are amazing when you 1st see them, but commonly have a fixed ideal resolution, and are too sharp (?) when they are viewed for a long period of time. OTOH, analog screens are more familiar but may be "fuzzy".

    As for laptops and notebook computers, the current pragmatic issue is size, weight, and power consumption. Obviously, you do not want to lug around a heavy piece of fragile equipment, nor want a power sucking hog when one is truly mobile. And the best thing since slice bread are laptops with DVD drives and decoding. If you travel, there is nothing better than to pop in a movie when your flight has been delayed/cancelled, while your fellow travellers bitch and moan. One thing that I learned is that one should travel with at least one good PG or PG-13 movie as you don't know who you will sitting next to on your flight. I learned this while watching Aliens while sitting in an aisle seat. woops:-)

    Now I will admit that I'm a mac-addict. I have a lombard powerbook (dual boot, macos and linuxppc). Some ppl that I work with just got a IBM 570 notebooks but realize that there is no composite S-Video output. Some with Dell laptops realize that their batteries don't last that long.

  • Larger LCDs with larger production volumes will mean someone is gonna test the waters sooner or later.

    Test the waters for what? Do you mean simply having 20" Laptop LCDs or using the tech to create 17" LCDs inexpensive, so they can compete with CRTs?

    I think the next step is cheap, rather than simply bigger (but big is definitely not bad in this case!)

    Also, what's the average dot pitch of an LCD? My .25 dp 17" has been very nice, and I'd hate to go to something new, with much higher dot pitch (sorta like my friend's Packard Hel^H^H^HBell. .31 dp!)
  • Personally, I like a larger screen, because I like high-resolution but have bad eyesight. Small monitors mean I have to either limit my screen size or squint at my monitor. But I would also hate to lug around some huge laptop wherever I go. That's the problem with large screens on laptops, the whole laptop has to get bigger, too. Sure, that gives you room for more stuff (drives, a normal keyboard, etc.), but if that were enough reason, we'd have larger laptops already.

    But I digress. The point at which I was actually driving is just that it's a matter of taste. As a developer, I stare at the screen all day, and size is important (insert crude joke here). I also don't feel the need to carry my workstation around with me, so laptops are more of a burden than a benefit. As far as portable computing goes, I'm satisfied with my Palm III. But I work with people whose jobs depend on using laptops, and I have little doubt their opinions differ from mine. Since there are so many different uses of portable machines, how can you ask for just one answer for how big they (or their screens) can be? You have as many answers as there are reasons for using a laptop. And even though /. has a large readership, I like to think (and I consider this a compliment) that /.ers do not represent the general populous, so even if we settled on a general solution, that wouldn't necessarily mean anything. I think the only way we'll ever really know what a reasonable size is will be to see what the market supports.
  • Both Sony and Apple, perhaps others, have LCD monitors that perform interpolation in hardware to provide non-integral resolutions. Not cheesy pixel-doubling, but actual convolution. Great for games, DVD, etc...but it's mostly just irritating for any "serious" use.
  • So Apple is a "crappy" company? you obviously are a anonymous coward - i still have my mac around. Some of the best ideas in computing came out of em, still today are better in some fields. Their risc processers are damn good, and their stock has made me money - so, how crappy exactly is crappy in ur book? Only cus they arn't a frontrunner?, so what - do u hate sun too? Sorry - u needed to be ranted to.
  • Of course it's a good idea to get rid of them. Otherwise, they will fly to your planet and steal your oxygen :)

  • Re:Only 20 inches? (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Only cus they arn't a frontrunner?, so what - do u hate sun too?

    In a word, yes. I certainly realise that Sun has made many contributions (NIS/YP/NFS,etc.) but their actions wrt Java are rather discouraging...

    Call me a free software 'bigot', but I do have much more respect for companies that contribute GPL/BSD code (i.e. - SGI/xfs) than companies that extend, proprietise and close formerly free code (Sun/SunOS, Digital/Ultrix/OSF, Apple/OS X).

    ~Bob

  • Re:Only 20 inches? (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Thats fine you would prefer a CRT. I would not! I would love a nice big LCD screen. I don't give a damn about the viewing angle, or the blur you get when dragging a window around. No the only reason I want a LCD is because it is better for my eyes. I do a hell of alot of reading on computers. I mean hugh amounts, like reading and editing whole books, day in and day out. And after a while a CRT really starts to hurt my eyes. However LCD screens are much more comfortable to look at for long periods of time. And before you say it, yes I am a tech, I'm just more into the documentation side of things. The only problem with the current LCD's is they a too small. So there you go, that is one reason why these new LCD's can be very useful, especially to me. So just because you can't think of a good use for them don't assume that nobody could possible have a good use for them, because you will be wrong.
  • For a laptop with a large screen (15.1") and a full sized keyboard (including numeric key pad), take a look at ProStar [pro-star.com]. They build nice machines, which can take a beating and work great, and are very reasonably priced ($2.2K starting, loaded about $3.3k).
  • I've used a Gateway LCD and I wanna ask LCD fans

    Why????

    There must be a market out there for people who use laptops all day and can't deal with the higher resolution and refresh rates of a CRT.

    They do look quite futuristic and fetching though...

    "Wow, look at that! You must be from the future."
    "No, my gullible friend, I'm just rich."


  • Organic LEDs (Score:2)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Check out this EETimes article [eet.com].

    The displays are completely viewable at any angle and at any light level (even with big halogen lamps shining right on it).
  • Too bad I'll be an executive before I can afford it

    At that point you wont even look at your computer once. You will INSIST that your secretary print all of your email, annotate it with highlighter, xerox it for archival purposes and re-highlight the xeroxes. Your "personal" assistant will replace surfing for porn, and your broker will take care of your trades for you. No need to even turn on the box.

    Of course you will have to get the most expensive one with the 20 inch LCD. Its like the leather chair, yours has to be the biggest. Never mind that the web developers are using 14" .32 dot pitch monitors to work on the website. Dont forget that you need a laptop too, and that the IT guys need to come to your house to fix stuff. Oh yeah, and when you know that the IT guys are coming into your office to upgrade stuff, leave important memos lying arount. Memos that talk about increasing yearly bonuses among all of the execs by amounts greater than any other employee's salary. Dont forget to mention cutting bonuses for other staff at the same time. Gee, and you thought being an executive would be easy.

    -BW
  • What do you do then? I must must must have/need lots of desktop real estate - have you tried to debug 2/3 GUI/Graphics apps at the same time on the same pc? I remember early-mid '90s working at 1600x1200 through at 14" via a Diamond Viper - bliss!. Now my main kit is a Thinkpad 700x - 15"@1280x1024 + external 1600x1200 (Int. thou' - what are you playing at IBM?) Now do I want an Inspiron 7500 or what???... (before you ask, yes I wear glasses, but not cos of this - In fact my sight has stablised.)
  • >>Why LCD? Why not a 3 beam projector?

    Because it's not really intended for use in laptop computers! From the article:

    "IBM expects its OEM customers to incorporate the ITQX20 panel into products for medical, electronic publishing, drafting, image processing, media content creation, data visualization and financial applications, such as trading floors."


    The 3-beam projectors I've seen don't give a precise enough display for these applications.
  • LCD screens don't have degauss buttons. It'd be like a power switch on a pair of headphones

    Well, my headphones have a power switch because they're cordless... Not everyone is a slave of the wire!
  • Yay, but it's also a big pain to lug around a laptop with a 21" diagonal profile... (assuming that they leave half an inch around the edges for stuff).

    Ugh, large displays are nice, but they're really getting in the way of portability (especially since the panel is weakest at the center, all the more so fragile). Soon we won't be able to bring them in as carry on baggage (hmm. A laptop with a 20" display... that will allow what, everyone in the same row to play games with you?).

    But, I won't mind a 20" LCD panel on my desk.
  • I must be really weird then.. 1152x864 on a 15" display and I -LIKE- it. But then again, it's 75Hz refresh still, on a Matrox Millenium.

    Damn I need a new monitor. I'd probably manage to do 1880xwhatever at 21"...
  • I've used a Gateway LCD and I wanna ask LCD fans

    Why????

    There must be a market out there for people who use laptops all day and can't deal with the higher resolution and refresh rates of a CRT.

    [caveat: I write firmware at a company that makes interface boards for LCD displays]

    I used to think that the versatility and brightness of CRTs made them superior displays but have now completely reversed my opinion. I use a 16" SXGA panel as my main display right now and it is miles better than staring at a CRT all day. The important things for me are sharpness and flatness.

    Current TFT displays have fewer dead pixels than they used to and with power from mains you can get decent brightness (I wish more laptops had brighter displays when jacked into the wall...) With the latest scaling hardware, non-native resolutions look much better than they used to as well. Now, when I go home to my Sony CRT I find it annoyingly fuzzy :(

    Also, I live in Hong Kong and space and heat considerations can be important as well (I imagine this is true throughout Asia and possibly Europe as well).

    There is still a problem with cost, but a good size panel costs about as much as a 17" monitor used to only a couple of years ago so wait for wider adoption to drop the price (as a matter of fact, I think part of the reason they are so expensive is the high demand right now... as more plants come on line they should become less dear).
  • The displays are completely viewable at any angle and at any light level (even with big halogen lamps shining right on it).


    Assuming your retinas don't burn out while looking at it! j/k

    Of course, if your link wasn't broken... I wouldn't have fixed it here [eet.com]

    It apparently has REALLY GOOD anti-glare properties, which make it suitable for a LOT of purposes. This sounds interesting.

    The prototype AM OLED has a simple structure, consisting of one glass substrate with an EL layer 150-nm thick and a metal cover. The prototype is 1.8 mm thick -- "thinner than a quarter," said David Williams, general manager of display alliances at Kodak. In the future, he said, today's 1.1-mm glass substrate will be replaced with plastic.

    That's some thin display there. I want these to be layered into my glasses/contacts very soon. Either that or embedded into my wall, for a 4M x 3M screen!

    Apparently tho, it still needs work in colors, as it's only hitting 256 thousand (not quite true color millions)
  • Zounds. The geeky sexual obsession around here is thick enough to make liquid testosterone leak from my monitor. Sounds like some peeps around here gotta get out from behind thier flat, flacid LCDs and find themselves a warm body to cozy up to.

    C'mon you geeks, you got money, and everyone knows you got them big ol' brains, shake that thang and get you grrlfriends who'll alternately kick your ass on Quake, then make up for the insult with a little sweet love down by the fire [rangerstation.com]!

    --
    rickf@transpect.SPAM-B-GONE.net (remove the SPAM-B-GONE bit)

  • Not likely if they use digital signals. Then it's a straight signal to the transistors in the pixels. No transmission here.
  • Vincent is correct about heat dissipation. Hong Kong summers can be brutal, I grew up there.

    Not to mention that LCD panels are less suceptable to magnetic interference. In my chemistry lab, there's a device called an NMR machine that we never work with with steel tools. 8-). Not surprisingly, all the displays on that thing are LCD displays. The nearest CRT has to be some 20 ft away from the machine, so as not to interfere with readings and get interfered by the mag fields.

    Ever seen a recording studio? MY friend runs one. They have to have the boxes stored in another room and run extension cords for all the cables into the control console because of the noise from the cooling fan. Even if you have the money to pay for cooling systems, they might not be an option.

  • I'm happy to note the screen has a good resolution, and I'd love one as my desktop display to reclaim some of workspace back from my Iiyama "backbreaker" monitor.

    I believe the next leap in LCD design should concentrate less in size and more on other factors such as:
    * power consumption
    * viewing angle
    * resolution/dot pitch

    For a laptop I think about 15" is the limit, but I'd be much happier if that supported (say)
    3840*3072 [including happily handling low resolutions] within that 15" and had a full 180 viewing angle.

  • hrrm, mail you at vmsmarquette.edu ? methinks you are missing a .
  • Surely 7" would be OK if you had enough RAM, 15-16" wouldnt if you had insufficient RAM, after all you dont want any juddering during Full Motion do you?
  • I can't speak for others, but...

    I've been carrying a laptop of one type or another for over 15 years [sinasohn.com]. As a 6 foot, 275 pound, fairly active person, size and weight is of little matter to me. In fact, the larger size would allow for a larger keyboard, a full-size numeric keypad, and so on.

    A 20" screen would mean a laptop somewhere around 16"x12" or so, about the size of two letter size pages. I would be more than happy to carry such a computer in order to have room for more sessions on the screen at the same time, or to have /. loaded next something I get paid for. 8^)

  • I run 1024x768 on a 14" monitor 16bit color for desktop and 32 for DVD and have no faults at all. And as most games don't run that well >1024 res why go higher? But a dvd wwiiddee screen tv would be nice...
  • I'd like to see 2 or 3 pages of code while programming, and currently with 2 monitors & w2k, it's nice, but 2 20" LCD displays would just ROCK. I'd be able to have shitloads of work up there...webbrowser in one place, c++ in another etc.


    Oh, and TV Tuner in one area as well. LCD is much smaller (I really hate the space CRTs take up), takes up half the power, and doesn't flicker.
  • I wish my *whole* desktop was a giant display, along with a 8'x4' 'electronic' white board on the wall.

    Ah, just think of it, dozens of Linux kernal code snippits and modules right at the turn of the head, virtual terminals everywhere, get those piles of paper off of the floor, too. Hmmm.

    Input w/ finger (death to the mouse!), voice and keyboard in a fast/smooth/seamless fashion, etc. Virtual goggles would probably be the most economical way to impliment, just don't make me feel like I'm floating in space/walking through molasses. :(

    Technically feasable in a decade or two if Moore's Law and MIPS continue to advance. At least for professional use anyway. (Yes I know, all of the requisite ideas are here, but they are not all in a single package and ready for prime time.)

    A far cry from getting our subatomic particles torn apart, moved, and reassembled in the correct quantum states by remote control.

    --What happened to all those poor little naugas that gave their hides? :).
  • The only reasonable way to go portable with a big screen is to use eye-ware level LCDs. As reported on Slashdot [slashdot.org] a few months ago, Sony is making headway in this area. These things result in about 30 inch screens. And while they need further development, it seems to me to be the only reasonable course.

    Secondarily we can then evolve on to stereo-scopic 3D. Some gamers and scientists are already doing this. There is no reason we all can't get a better GUI for the mundane stuff too.

    There are other benefits too. Like no one looking over your shoulder at the airport reading you E-mail or passwords.
  • A slightly related question: what is the maximum size for a portable computer screen?

    20" is appropriate. I can then have a real keyboard on the portable. Of course the 20" screen should come with almost no border, and the whole thing should be rather thin. It is still small enough for my suitcase.
  • Good point. I was trying to come up with a better argument than the hackneyed "automatic transmission on a bicycle" one, since there are bicycles with an automatic transmission, and it apparently is quite useful.
    ---
    "'Is not a quine' is not a quine" is a quine.
  • Remember that this is a still developing field. The implications of this larger LCD screen not nessecarily mean larger laptops:

    1. It means new techniques have been developed so smaller LCD screens can be produced cheaper.
    2. It means development in this area is still going on.
    3. Maybe, in the future it means larger screens on laptops. But why enlarge the laptop? Why not fold the screen?

    Just sticking with what we have now, and ridiculing it makes no sense. Instead take what you have and improve. See the possibilities. Make the world better.

    ----------------------------------------------
  • It's @marquette.edu If you press backspace for the ^H's you'll delete 'vms'.. Methinks you are missing a clue.
    ---
    Ilmari
  • Comment removed based on user account deletion
  • >I would say 20" is a bit out there, but there >are 15 and 16 inch laptop screens. Larger LCDs >with larger production volumes will mean someone >is gonna test the waters sooner or later. There's nothing that special about making a 20/30/40" LCD - the technology of the display itself really doesn't need to change that much. What's impressive is to be able to be able to get high enough yields to make it economically viable. Area of the display goes up as x^2. If you assume a constant defect rate per unit area, yields go south pretty fast.
  • ...is 15.1", 1400x1050. Not bad for a laptop!!! And the cool thing is, I have one now! Hooray!! :-)
  • Yes... You want an Inspiron with the 1400x1050 resolution 15.1" LCD screen. I just got one, and MAN, is this thing sweet. VERY crisp, very bright, and the ATI Mobility video setup is pretty darn nice.

    I've worked on a couple of the new IBM laptops with the 1280x1024 resolution... Not bad either. I'd take the Dell over the IBM any day, though.

    Now, if only Linux would support my video (ATI Mobility) and my PCMCIA network card (3Com FE575), I could at least dual boot between Win98SE and Linux...
  • I'll have to give the obligitory ThinkPad plug here. They cost a bit more than other brands, but their keyboards are top-notch. Their 14.1" screen models have a full-size keyboard I use 8+ hours a day without a problem, they have no Windows keys and they come standard with a 3-button trackpoint. If you want portable computing, I can't recommend IBM strongly enough.
  • Yes, I agree... If you have desktops available, there isn't much of a need for a laptop with a huge screen. Of course, if you're like me, your laptop IS your desktop (my only PC, actually, for work and home), so you need all the help you can get!

    Mmmm... Dell Inspiron 7500...
  • I don't know how long your batteries last, but my new Dell will run for at least three hours on the one battery I have. I don't do a lot of travelling, so for me that's about all I would ever need at one time.

    Yes, I know some of those Mac Powerbooks are really good with battery power consumption. I almost bought one...
  • I can't speak scientifically, but using my Sun 20" CRT all day strains the hell out of my eyes - while using my laptop's 14.1" LCD does not. I bought a laptop for the portability, but when I'm doing lots of text work I rarely use anything else.

    The LCD does look a lot cripser and sharper. Perhaps that has something to do with it.

  • ...1600x1024 max resolution. Not much less than the IBM monitor.
    Let me tell you: there is a huge difference between Apple's 1600x1024 and the IBM's 2048x1536. I know... that's the virtual size I run both at home and at work (with only 16 M of video ram, the cards won't go to 2400x1700@32bpp, damn it!).

  • ...to what I really want:

    a 90 Hz 24x60@300dpi (65" diagonal) quarter-cylinder screen as a backdrop for my desk (that gives you a 38" radius, leaving you a comfortable 18"-deep or so quarter-annulus for "conventional" desk-top). We had quite an extensive discussion of this sort of thing back about a year ago on the "comp.arch" news-group, with the consensus that this was a nice sweet spot for the ergonomics -- that's the resolution and scan frequency at which further increases do not significantly imprive viewability, a size that is easily viewable from your chair, and a general design that would work quite well for lots of the participants in that discussion.

    For grins: the whole discussion was started as a response to some idiot who claimed a Pentium had all the CPU horsepower anyone could make real use of (just driving the screen I described requires far more horsepower than any single CPU currently available :-)

  • Damn! Everyone's really punchy this morning!

    I guess it's better than flaming each other, but it's odd we'd all come to the LCD discussion for our kicks this week!...
  • well maybe sony could fax us a screen shot so we could see the quality?

  • Yummy... (Score:1)

    by jim ( 3666 )
    It's my birthday next week ... Slashdot readers want to chip in? Wouldn't be much each ...

  • Wow, apparently allegories are very offtopic. I had no idea.
    ---
    "'Is not a quine' is not a quine" is a quine.
  • No one would need more than 1024x768, nor anything larger than 21inch

    And no one would need more than 640k of RAM, right?

    Seriously, I run my 21" monitor at 1280x1024 for normal use, up to 1800x1600 if I'm doing work in 3d studio. Most of the time I'm doing web design at 1280, though.

    believe me, photoshop and dreamweaver and most other apps with 100 palettes work a lot better with the resolution to put them ALL off to the side of the screen and still have enough real estate left over to get work done.

    Standalone LCD screens seem to me a waste too.

    Well, they are for your average computer user, but even then you have a lot of advanatages in power consumption and ecological damage. It's a lot better on the environment for everyone to use LCDs than CRTs. And a 21" CRT weighs about 80 pounds -- not fun to lug around and makes it hard on your desk. They also tend to be about 18" deep or more, meaning my desk has to be about two feet from the wall just so I can hang the damn monitor off the back and still have enough spoace for the keyboard!

    And as many others have noted, it's a LOT easier on your eyes to look at an LCD -- you're not staring into a lightbulb, which is essentially what a CRT is...
  • When I was editing my dissertation, I actually hauled in my 486 laptop to use it's 640x480 display instead of the 19" monitor onmy K6. It made a *huge* difference inhow my eyes felt at the end of the day . . .
  • I have a 1994 era Sony that's just shy of 40 inches--my late father in law bought it to watch football.

    It has a 700 line screen. Yes, 700. But the broadcast is only 525, of which 400-450 are usable. So it interpolates & extrapolatesto create the extra lines. Most things look ok, but diagonal lines and small text arehorrid.

    And for some inexplicable reason,it hasno expansion slotto use it asa monitor or hdtv . . .
  • I was comparing this announcement side-by-side to the Apple Cinema Display [apple.com] earlier, and it seems the main difference is in pixel density (2048x1536 for the IBM vs. 1600x1024 for the Apple display, on, give or take an inch, the same surface area).

    In my short history with laptops, I've had multiple bad pixels on measly 12.1" LCDs with maximum resolutions of 800x600. Based on some really primitive early-morning logic, it seems the pixels are just going to pop twice as fast on the IBM display.

    Have the manufacturing processes changed at all in the past two years to allow them to cram 9 million transistors in this thing? (Besides the removal of the "spacer balls"?) (Heh)
  • Why?

    Not because I think it's futuristic or fetching... Actually that never crossed my mind. I prefer them becuase it's a zillion times better than any CRT I've seen/worked on.

    • Perfect focus across the entire screen
    • No goddamn brightness and contrast adjustments
    • Bright, bright, bright
    • Very little "real world" real-estate required
    • Flat

    This screen I'm using right now (14.1" TFT 1024x768) has 1 dead subpixel (blue is always on) in the very upper left corner (i.e. 0,0). It doesn't bother me 'cause I have a blue background :-). You cannot approach this level of focus (individual pixels visible) with a CRT. I've tried. One of the things I hated most about CRTs is that you had to futz with the brightness and contrast so that black really was black. Christ I hated working on people's computers which were glaring this grey "haze" and calling it black... UGH!

    The sub-pixel smoothing thing is way cool... I'm waiting for X to incorporate it :-)

    I have a 17" Philips/Magnavox monitor upstairs (can't remember the model now) but it has a .21" dot pitch display... very sharp. I run it at 1280x1024 and it's nice... but I still prefer my laptop display. It's "easier" on my eyes.

    In short, my answer to your "WHY?" is "Because it's far better."

    Your comment about "No, I'm just wealthy" sounds like sour grapes to me. I can't afford one either, my employer pays for this toy. Because I can't afford (or won't justify) something doesn't mean I won't ooh over it, though. :-)

    (an aside -- Are they thinking of making other flatscreen technologies available on laptops? The screens are easily the most expensive parts... They're going after PDP, etc. on flatscreen TVs, I'm just wondering if anyone's heard anything about that on a laptop)
  • I have a 15inch, Sony Trinitron...

    Sorry, I hate Trinitron tubes. Yes they are super sharp but I cannot stand the 1, 2 or 3 black lines across the screen. Sony says "you'll never see them!" I say "Nuts to you, I've got an LCD now"

    Urf... whoever put that technology into a monitor should be shot. I very often have a single-colour background and those lines just stare at me... grating on my nerves. For a TV? Go ahead, I doubt I'll ever see them.

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