4:3 panels

[gammaray]

will they survive the 1920x1080 assault, or the 4:3 or 1600x1200 screen resolution panels are gone for good?

 

[KingFatty]

doubt it, the people who buy monitors may not realize the pixel difference and just look at the wide screen and try to find the 1080p logo.

At least there is craigslist and ebay

 

[Zebo]

Theres plenty of 4:3 and even 5:4. Check out dell for cheap. NEC for Good.

And yes they will survive. Those banks of NECs on trader desks on wall street arnt going anywhere. WS is useless for office work.

 

[TakeNoPrisoners]

For anything but specialized applications I do not see them coming back.

Even for web browsing and word processing I would rather have a widescreen monitor.

 

[bononos]

Theres plenty of 4:3 and even 5:4. Check out dell for cheap. NEC for Good.

And yes they will survive. Those banks of NECs on trader desks on wall street arnt going anywhere. WS is useless for office work.

Why is WS useless for office work?

 

[-Slacker-]

The cheapest 16x12 monitor on the egg is $400... supply and demand, I guess.

 

[Zebo]

Why is WS useless for office work?

A full Page is cut off usually requiring more scrolling and massive wasted space on the sides of screen. Other than excel, office, most programs and web is programmed like books with more vertical information than horizontal and I haven't seen any WS books.

Not until you get into WS of 19x12 or above is it good IMO where you can put two pages side by side with no right to left scrolling or up and down.

 

[Zebo]

Here is an example

 

[MrK6]

Here is an example

I don't think you do real office work then, no offense. Put two of those pages next to each other and work on them together. Or shrink the window and load up power point, excel, or a browser next to it. The screen is giving you extra space, you're the one wasting it.

To answer the OP's question, they won't make a comeback. 16:9 panels are cheaper to make than 16:10, 4:3, or 5:4 panels (in that order actually).

 

[Gillbot]

I don't think you do real office work then, no offense. Put two of those pages next to each other and work on them together. Or shrink the window and load up power point, excel, or a browser next to it. The screen is giving you extra space, you're the one wasting it.

To answer the OP's question, they won't make a comeback. 16:9 panels are cheaper to make than 16:10, 4:3, or 5:4 panels (in that order actually).

That's typically what I do, show 2 pages at a time.

 

[bononos]

A full Page is cut off usually requiring more scrolling and massive wasted space on the sides of screen. Other than excel, office, most programs and web is programmed like books with more vertical information than horizontal and I haven't seen any WS books.

Not until you get into WS of 19x12 or above is it good IMO where you can put two pages side by side with no right to left scrolling or up and down.

But I find WS to be pretty good for office work because its easier on the eyes because side to side movement is easier than up-down - a side effect from the way our eyes are placed (vs one above the other). I find it useful for having multiple windows side by side to make comparisons.

The worse case scenario of having lots of wasted space with one app filling the entire monitor is made up by having extra space for bookmarks/search menu column/editing columns/menus etc, instead of having to squeeze the viewing area to make room for searches each time for example.

 

[gammaray]

i much prefer playing games on a 4:3, so this sucks if i cant find any 24" 4:3 in the future.

Also, imho, web browsing is much better with a 4:3, as it been said, cos most of the content is spread in a vertical way.

right now i own a 21" ips 4:3 and i love it.

 

[Zebo]

Browsing is best in portait. i do it all the time with my 24'. Try it sometime.

i used to have one 30 and two 20 4x3s in portrait on both sides and i fond myself using the side monitors most. In portrait, the opposite of WS.


Twice the waste on WS and half the information.
here is an example of what i mean

[/url]\[/IMG]

vs

[/url][/IMG] = twice the threads shown. No waste.

 

[Zebo]

The reason they moved everyone to wS is 24" 16:9 vs 24' 4:3 is a lot less area and thus cheaper. The closer you get to a square most area. The closer you get to a line less area over same diagonal.

I'm just waiting until they really get cheap out and give us 2.35:1 like most movies. They'll sell that shit as super duper WS and idiots will eat it up but it's still less monitor, less efficient.

Don't worry. The corp world still uses 4:3 and even 5:4...you just have to be willing to pay for it which will set you back $800 for anything decent. e.g. NEC IPS's.

 

[Motorheader]

I'm visually impaired and used to help and support those who are as well and true 4:3 great and preferred for this reason. For native resolution - where the monitor runs and looks the best - most of the latest widescreen monitors just make everything too damn tiny and if you adjust the resolution from native then you get the dreaded blur and pixelation.

 

[KingFatty]

i much prefer playing games on a 4:3, so this sucks if i cant find any 24" 4:3 in the future.

Also, imho, web browsing is much better with a 4:3, as it been said, cos most of the content is spread in a vertical way.

right now i own a 21" ips 4:3 and i love it.

Watch out, because gaming on 4:3 can be a huge handicap depending on the game. You could be a competitive disadvantage, especially in a game like Starcraft 2.

Take a look at how you literally punish yourself when you game at 4:3 in Starcraft 2 - you can't even see the unit formation farther away, so you'd be caught off-guard if your opponent is unit-massing just outside your range of view:

Now, I suppose your game could use letterboxing to provide you with a simulated wider field of view so you don't actually miss anything. But guess what? That will effectively convert your 24" 4:3 monitor to something like a smaller 20" 16:9 (I'm guessing to the actual dimensions, but you see what I mean in this scenario where a good amount of your screen real estate is devoted to black bars displaying nothing at all so it's equivalent to a smaller screen). It's annoying to have a bunch of screen real estate, but then handicap your screen by running letterbox mode.

The point is, the games are enabling wider FOVs, and you get a tactical and very real competitive disadvantage if you are using a narrower FOV than everyone else. What games are you playing at 4:3 that you enjoy, just out of curiosity? Could your enjoyment be based on "blissful ignorance" of not realizing you are missing out on an available wider FOV (please excuse the derogatory terminology, I don't mean to call you ignorant, just trying to clarify whether you have actual basis for why 4:3 is preferable to wider FOV aspect ratios in the context of gaming, as opposed to 'good enough for me therefore it's great' type of anecdotal evidence - not meant as personal attack - and I'm going by how I personally was blissfully ignorant when I was first playing SC2 on 16:10 1920x1200 until I tried it on a 16:9 and my jaw dropped and I realized I was making a huge mistake by not using 16:9)

I very much agree with you on 4:3 being nice for web browsing, although another poster has a very good counterpoint about how you get an even better experience when you rotate the 16:9 display - this is potentially even better than 4:3 because you get even more vertical real estate and web browsing is primarily a vertical experience. So perhaps the 16:9 is actually ideal, so long as you take advantage of wider FOV in games for competitive advantage, and rotate to portrait mode for web browsing? Is 4:3 really just a compromise so consumers will avoid having to pay more for 4:3 because they see 16:9 as ideal due to the lower price and gaming/browsing benefits?

 

[KingFatty]

I'm visually impaired and used to help and support those who are as well and true 4:3 great and preferred for this reason. For native resolution - where the monitor runs and looks the best - most of the latest widescreen monitors just make everything too damn tiny and if you adjust the resolution from native then you get the dreaded blur and pixelation.

Is this a conflation of two separate/different issues? The 4:3 vs 16:9 issue is about aspect ratio. In contrast to that aspect ratio issue, the native resolution and being too damn tiny is about pixel size/pitch.

The point being, a 4:3 monitor with small pixels would be just as much of a problem as another monitor with small pixels, regardless of whether it's 16:9, 16:10, etc.

 

[gammaray]

The point is, the games are enabling wider FOVs, and you get a tactical and very real competitive disadvantage if you are using a narrower FOV than everyone else. What games are you playing at 4:3 that you enjoy, just out of curiosity? Could your enjoyment be based on "blissful ignorance" of not realizing you are missing out on an available wider FOV (please excuse the derogatory terminology, I don't mean to call you ignorant, just trying to clarify whether you have actual basis for why 4:3 is preferable to wider FOV aspect ratios in the context of gaming, as opposed to 'good enough for me therefore it's great' type of anecdotal evidence - not meant as personal attack - and I'm going by how I personally was blissfully ignorant when I was first playing SC2 on 16:10 1920x1200 until I tried it on a 16:9 and my jaw dropped and I realized I was making a huge mistake by not using 16:9)

well first of all, thank you for enlightening me, i had no clue now that game developers were actually using 16:9 displays.

i don't play starcraft 2, never tried it.
tho, i might try CnC generals 2 when it comes out.

Right now i play Skyrim and world of tanks. am i missing something with my 4:3 ?

 

[bryanW1995]

Is this a conflation of two separate/different issues? The 4:3 vs 16:9 issue is about aspect ratio. In contrast to that aspect ratio issue, the native resolution and being too damn tiny is about pixel size/pitch.

The point being, a 4:3 monitor with small pixels would be just as much of a problem as another monitor with small pixels, regardless of whether it's 16:9, 16:10, etc.

Yes. My main problem with my 16:9 monitor at work is that the pitch is too freakin' small. 1920x1080 should be on a 24" + screen, not 21.6". And a 27" 2560x1440 monitor is just as bad.

 

[Motorheader]

I'm only speaking from my own experience when addressing this and it's nice to see that it still can be an active topic even in 2012.

It's likely that I'll be completely blind in the next 5 years and I'm thankful for the move to LCD if for several reasons - the cut down in size and power use. Finding a useful 4:3 LCD greater than 21" is difficult and several manufacturers did address this but that stopped years ago.

As several have noted certain ratios would be better served by larger screens. That is the biggest problem - when I see ads for watching a movie on a phone I cringe at the thought of the headache inducing lack of size when trying to concentrate on something that small for so long.

No it is not a conflation. I've been a part of quite a bit of visual acuity studies the last decade and they are definitely related. Taking into account not only aspect ratio but native resolution and pixel count the push towards the dreaded "multimedia experience" has left behind a whole segment of users - those that don't want or need native letterbox type of formatting from less than 3 feet away.

 

[senseamp]

1920x1200 rotating is best of both worlds.

 

[Zebo]

I highly recommend this for visually impaired. It's about $150 and has more screen than a 20" widescreen and everything is big.

http://www.necdisplay.com/p/desktop -monitors/as192-bk

If you need IPS it will set you back $400 though
http://www.necdisplay.com/p/desktop -monitors/lcd1990sx-bk

 

[Zebo]

1920x1200 rotating is best of both worlds.

Actually when you get into 1200 vertical lines whole pages do fit on screen. Even two side by side. 19x12 are just a like a 4:3 16x12 with a free 300 horizontal lines. It's the 1080s that are stupid. It's the laptops with one inch top and bottom bezels that are stupid. My T60 with IPS 16x12 screen is much much larger than T520. Today most laptops are just portable DVD players vs decent work computers.

 

[Magic Carpet]

If your desk isn't big enough, high-inch 16:9 panels are a pain, especially, when you are running two or three at the same time. 4:3 > 16:10 > 16:9, in that order for me.

4:3 won't die, but it will become more expensive.

 

[dave_the_nerd]

I'm running a pair of 1280x1024 panels now. My next monitor upgrade will probably be triple 1080p displays turned portrait mode.

When I do stuff that's spread across multiple monitors (as opposed to just having separate workspaces) it's usually limited by vertical resolution.