New laptop problem

[Laura]

I'll throw this in chit chat, if it needs to be moved go for it.

My 1 year old threw my laptop off the table and caused $600 worth of damage. Rather than repair this one again (no warranty - son broke it last year - $500) we just bought a new one from Dell with 4 years of accidental damage coverage. I carefully went through and studied each aspect of the laptop (like how much memory I should get, what processor, etc.) and thought I had ordered myself the perfect laptop. The one thing I didn't look into was the screen. We "splurged" and paid $150 extra to get the "best" screen that was offered. I'm into digital photography so when I think of high resolution I think of high quality. So we got a super duper high resolution wide screen on the laptop - 1920x1200. I didn't bother to read up on this kind of screen before I made the purchase, I just assumed since it cost more and had a high resolution it would be the best screen. Well wasn't I surprised when yesterday I received my laptop in the mail, turned it on, and everything on the screen was miniscule! I am dead serious - I had to download a virtual magnifying glass to be able to read some of the text on the screen. AOL instant messenger is like the size of my finger LOL.

So it was at that point I actually decided to research the screen I had bought, and found out that if you change the resolution settings on a laptop it just makes everything look bad, you are basically stuck with the factory settings. So my viewing choices are: extremely tiny, or extremely blurry - and there's no middle ground.

So I was wondering if anyone else here has a laptop with this teeny tiny resolution and I was wondering how long it took your eyes to adjust to it. I tried using the laptop for about an hour last night and ended up with a massive headache. I wonder if magnifying glasses would help? Should I just lower the resolution and deal with the blurriness or will I just get used to the tinyness after a while? It just seems ridiculous that I paid so much for a screen that I hate.

 

[LiveItUp21]

I'll throw this in chit chat, if it needs to be moved go for it.

My 1 year old threw my laptop off the table and caused $600 worth of damage. Rather than repair this one again (no warranty - son broke it last year - $500) we just bought a new one from Dell with 4 years of accidental damage coverage. I carefully went through and studied each aspect of the laptop (like how much memory I should get, what processor, etc.) and thought I had ordered myself the perfect laptop. The one thing I didn't look into was the screen. We "splurged" and paid $150 extra to get the "best" screen that was offered. I'm into digital photography so when I think of high resolution I think of high quality. So we got a super duper high resolution wide screen on the laptop - 1920x1200. I didn't bother to read up on this kind of screen before I made the purchase, I just assumed since it cost more and had a high resolution it would be the best screen. Well wasn't I surprised when yesterday I received my laptop in the mail, turned it on, and everything on the screen was miniscule! I am dead serious - I had to download a virtual magnifying glass to be able to read some of the text on the screen. AOL instant messenger is like the size of my finger LOL.

So it was at that point I actually decided to research the screen I had bought, and found out that if you change the resolution settings on a laptop it just makes everything look bad, you are basically stuck with the factory settings. So my viewing choices are: extremely tiny, or extremely blurry - and there's no middle ground.

So I was wondering if anyone else here has a laptop with this teeny tiny resolution and I was wondering how long it took your eyes to adjust to it. I tried using the laptop for about an hour last night and ended up with a massive headache. I wonder if magnifying glasses would help? Should I just lower the resolution and deal with the blurriness or will I just get used to the tinyness after a while? It just seems ridiculous that I paid so much for a screen that I hate.

That is one of the biggest disadvantages of going with a larger screen on a laptop. The resolution is very hard to configure due to its much larger size, and large number of more pixels present.

Basically, in this situation i'd hate to say it but you are basically SOL. Also, with the larger screen your backlight is going to burn out much faster and much more often than it would with a smaller screen.

The only other thing I can think of is to call Dell and see maybe if it needs to be serviced. I know it's a new laptop, but it could have been a maunfaturing error that caused that.

 

[The_CEO]

You should be able to right click on your mousepad and click properties, then go to SETTINGS , then mess with the resolution. That shouldn't be the lowest they gave you.

 

[Laura]

You should be able to right click on your mousepad and click properties, then go to SETTINGS , then mess with the resolution. That shouldn't be the lowest they gave you.

There are many resolutions to choose from, but with an LCD display they are only made for 1 of those resolutions, so if you change the setting everything gets blurry. (I read this in many different articles yesterday - about a week too late)

You can increase the text size, but then webpages and things get all skewed. It's truly only made for one setting - extra small.

I'm just trying to ascertain if I should keep this laptop, like if anyone else has gotten one like this before and hated the screen at first but liked it after they got used to it, or if I'm never going to get used to it and I should just send it back. I've got a couple weeks to decide (21 day return policy).

 

[The_CEO]

If you can't lower the res the way I showed you, then yes... If it is blurry and you are uncomfortable with it. Return it, rebuy it with the proper screen.

 

[barnum42]

I'm not familiar with the law as it applies to retail in America, but in the UK goods must be fit for the purpose intended, which this clearly is not.

Also there are distance selling laws in the UK, so provided you get back to a supplier within a week (I think) you are entitled to a refund.

Hopefully there is something similar in America. Contact Dell and let them know you are unhappy with the laptop and see what they suggest.

 

[Robfasto]

After a bit of research on Native Resolution on LCD montiors I came up with this.

What is the Native Resolution on a LCD and why is it important?

The native resolution on a LCD can be thought of as the maximum resolution on a CRT monitor. The big difference is that CRT monitors can display images at a lower resolution without picture quality loss while a LCD monitor has to rely on interpolation (scaling of the image). A LCD has to scale up a smaller image to fit into the area of the native resolution. This is the same principle as taking a smaller image in your favorite image editing program and enlarging it; the clarity you had with the smaller image loses its sharpness when it is expanded. This is especially problematic as most resolutions are in a 4:3 ratio (640x480, 800x600, 1024x768, 1600x1200) but there are odd resolutions that are not notably, 1280x1024. If a user was to map 1024x768 to a 1280x1024 screen there is going to be distortion as well as some image errors as there is not a 1->1 mapping with regards to pixels. This results in noticeable quality loss and the image is much less sharp. Some resolutions work well however as in the case of a 1600x1200 LCD and a 800x600 image. Since 800x600 is an integer factor of 1600x1200, scaling will not adversely affect the image.

Keeping this info in mind the same should hold true in reverse. When changing resolutions try to keep them a 1:1 ratio of the Native Setting which in this case is 1920x1200. Try on of these 1280x800, 1152x720 or 1024 x640 and see if one of them works better. On our laptop we keep it at 800x600 which is a 1:1 ratio of the 1600x1200 native resolution and everything is fine.