12" powerbook design fault
Hi Guys,
I'm the proud owner of a 15" 667 DVI powerbook and I'm definitely willing to switch to one of the new powerbook but I found the new 12" to have one major drawback?namely the screen!!!
WHY not a 16/9 ratio screen???
It would have made the unit look better and for us old powerbook users a more natural upgrade.
I willing to have a smaller screen but I like to keep the nice modern 16/9 ratio and I know is possible since a lot of Japanese ultra portable have a 16/9 screen.
Cheers
Alex
I'm the proud owner of a 15" 667 DVI powerbook and I'm definitely willing to switch to one of the new powerbook but I found the new 12" to have one major drawback?namely the screen!!!
WHY not a 16/9 ratio screen???
It would have made the unit look better and for us old powerbook users a more natural upgrade.
I willing to have a smaller screen but I like to keep the nice modern 16/9 ratio and I know is possible since a lot of Japanese ultra portable have a 16/9 screen.
Cheers
Alex
Comments
[ 02-26-2003: Message edited by: RodUK ]</p>
There are Fujitsu Loox/lifebook with 16:9.6 (1280x768) but their screens are even smaller than the PB12's; about the same width as the PB but shorter. OK, these have more resolution but they ARE very high PPI since the screen is actuallt smaller. Sony, had 1024x600 Xwide and now they have 1280x600 -- practically 2:1 !!! and they've STILL got the vretical res chopped.
Widescreens are great as you get larger. Excellent for the 15 and 17" PB's because they keep the screen from getting too tall and they fit the human field of view better. BUT as screens get smaller, widescreens will either cut down your vertical res -- having the effect of making even small windows look letterboxy -- or jack up the PPI to eye straining levels. 1024x768 on a 12" screen is the limit of reasonable readability, and for some it's even too small. Also, there's little need to fit a smaller screen to a human field of view, everything on it falls naturally into it. Only exclusive DVD watching benefits from a widescreen when were dealing with a small display. But then again, at 12" wide a letterbox DVD will appear as large as it does on a widescreen notebook of 9-10" and you still have the valuable vertical space left over for working on documents or reading web pages.
You only have a legit argument if you want to go extremely sub with your 'book. The Uwide screen makes it possible to build a machine around the footprint of the keyboard so that at least you don't sacrifice the keyboard to make a small machine, though you still lose on the screen legibility. And often on internal drives/general spec.
As an example, a woman in a seminar I'm taking uses a Fujitsu widescreen subnote. It's footprint is a little smaller than the PB's and it has a built in optical, but to get any kind of decent batter life she uses a long life battery that slots into the front of the machine and protrudes from the footprint right where the wrist rests are. Basically it extends the front of the machine and the footprint to again a squarer profile. This battery is always connected, always. So now she has a notebook with the rough footprint of my PB but the screen is only two thirds as high.
I'm sure it looked great in the store, but in practice she'd be better off with a 4:3 screen -- since she MUST use the larger external battery to return useable battery life, she's stuck with the bigger footprint anyway.
No no, Apple made excellent choices on the PB and iBook12. And they generally make excellent ergonomic choices about screen resolutions. We are still a ways off from resolution independance, in terms of the OS, web pages, even the GPU power/heat at our disposal.
Edit: I'd expect that you can.
[ 02-26-2003: Message edited by: Stoo ]</p>
Also, in experiments I've done, DVD through the adaptor (in S-Video, natch) is chock-full of artefacts in dark areas. Perfectly watchable, but not actually as good as my PlayStation 2...
Let's say you keep the width of the 12", but make the screen 16:9. To compensate, lop off about an inch from the edge. Where are you going to put the hard drive then? Have you taken apart an iBook? There ain't much space in there.
Of course, they could keep exactly the same width and depth, and just now use all of the space for the screen. That would look doofy.
Or they could make it wider, while keeping the depth. They could call it a 14.999999" Powerbook.
Once you've decided that, much of the rest of the packaging more or less works itself out: CD drives physically can't get much smaller in terms of width and depth, and the battery needs to be as big as possible, so from there the rest of the form factor is down to just how small you can make the electronics.
I have to say, surely going from a 15" TiBook to a 12" Powerbook isn't an upgrade?
1152x768 on a 13.3" screen would provide 3:2 aspect ratio, same as the PowerBook G4 15". It would also have 104 pixels per inch, which is in line with other laptops Apple sells (12" iBook/PowerBook is 106, 15" is 101, 17" is 100). Finally, the dimensions of the screen only would be 11.1x7.4 inches, instead of 9.7x7.3 inches like the 12". Basically, the depth is kept the same while the width is just increased. The same thing was done when Apple moved from the Pismo to the TiBook - the 15.2" widescreen is the same height as the Pismo's 14" screen, but wider. And they have the same amount of vertical pixels.
Another option is a 1024x640 12.1" wide screen. That would make the 'book absolutely tiny... just 10.3x6.4 inches. And it would have exactly a 16:10 ratio, same as on the 17" iMac and PowerBook and both Cinema displays. But 640 vertical pixels is pretty tiny... it might fit the size well, but I don't know how many people would like it since it would be so restrictive.