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So anyone who was in the computer specs thread knows that I bought a new monitor and a new computer. The desktop is still a couple weeks away, but the lovely screen arrived today. It's a 23 inch HP, with a suggested display of 1920x1080. I have it hooked up to my monitor now. But the screen is ridiculous. Everything on my screen is friggin tiny, and stuff like facebook only fills the center of the screen, the rest is just white wasted space. I can barely read the screen because all the fonts are so small. I have it set at 1920x1080 on my laptop. I don't understand why it's so funky.
It's hurting my eyes. Please help.
Posts: 21898 | Registered: Nov 2004
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If it is just the font that is hurting your eyes you should be able to change it in Windows. Your computer may have automatically set the font size to small. Change it medium (or large if it is already set to medium) and see if that makes a difference.
I wouldn't change the resolution except as a last resort. Everything looks good at 1920X1080.
Just out of curiosity, what refresh rate do you have on that new monitor? Is it 60hz or 120?
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I had the DVI cord plugged in, and it recognized that it was plugged in, but wouldn't display the image. So I switched.
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okay, i have it hooked up through the DVI cord now. But now it won't let me set the resolution that high. I think I'm just going to leave it where it is, which is at 1440x900. Maybe when the new computer gets here this will be easier to figure out.
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I suppose it's possible that the older computer's chipset won't support higher resolutions, particularly on widescreen monitors. That's a problem I've run into with some older computers.
Posts: 1813 | Registered: Apr 2001
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That's a 1080 resolution. Everything WILL be small. It's meant for a large (50+ inch) television. You can make some changes, however.
To increase the size of websites, hit CTRL + the mouse scroll wheel.
To make desktop graphics and Windows text larger, search for "icons" and select "make text and other items larger and smaller" (in Windows 7).
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I did the CTRL scroll thing and it did zoom in, but then the screen was non-responsive it was so slow.
This computer still has Windows XP. Like I said before, if this is how it is, then I'll just live with it until the new computer comes and then try to make it work. But this is TOO small. I might be able to zoom in on the actual screen, assuming the new computer won't have the slowness issue, but I mean, even looking at the type of my browser window and seeing that my tabs in Firefox are tiny, things like that, it's not workable. Major eyestrain.
I can't fathom how this is the optimal resolution for this size screen.
Posts: 21898 | Registered: Nov 2004
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Maybe you can take a screenshot, upload it, and then tell us whether it matches what you see on screen. That way we can separate between a real hardware issue or just whether you're not used to the resolution.
Posts: 7593 | Registered: Sep 2006
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The optimal resolution for an LCD monitor is when one pixel of the display resolution that you've set represents one physical pixel on the display hardware. If the display specs state that 1920x1080 is its optimal resolution, that means that there are actually 1920 columns and 1080 rows of discrete electronic elements, each capable of displaying a single dot of color.
Running at any resolution other than the optimal resolution will result in a lower quality output.
Once you've got the correct resolution displays, windows can be configured for larger/smaller fonts but even in "small" font mode, things should be perfectly legible, just (relatively) small. Some people find the smaller settings difficult to read but it's hard to tell from your description whether you're just unaccustomed to modern high-res displays or if there is something else wrong.
Is the text clearly rendered, but just too small, or is it small and fuzzy/blurry? How far are your eyes from the screen when you're using the computer? Is the text clear when you move closer? When you maximize a window does it (the window borders, not necessarily the content) use the entire screen space?
Posts: 3275 | Registered: May 2007
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quote:Originally posted by Mucus: Maybe you can take a screenshot, upload it, and then tell us whether it matches what you see on screen. That way we can separate between a real hardware issue or just whether you're not used to the resolution.
A screen shot may be helpful, but I doubt he'll be able to determine if it matches what he sees given that he's only got the one computer, with the questionable displays settings, to do this on.
Another idea would be to take some digital photos of the screen and upload them somewhere without doing any processing (especially resizing).
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He could check out the screenshot on the laptop's screen, but yeah a digital photo would be even better.
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Regardless of what your documentation says, that's the maximum resolution (not the optimal). At that resolution, everything WILL be small. Again, it's meant for big televisions.
If you want to give it another try, try to change the font and graphics size with this:
Try switching to 1280 x 720 if it's still bothering you. There's really not much benefit to using the maximum resolution -- the only difference is that ultra-high resolution movies will look slightly better. You actually may not even notice any difference on a monitor that small.
Posts: 688 | Registered: Nov 2008
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quote:Regardless of what your documentation says, that's the maximum resolution (not the optimal). At that resolution, everything WILL be small. Again, it's meant for big televisions.
No resolution is "meant" for any particular device. I've been running >1080 resolutions on computer displays since long before any TV, big screen or not, could handle more than 480. I'm currently running 1920x1080 on my 15" laptop display.
The monitor has that many physical pixels so it is the "optimal" resolution. Setting the monitor resolution lower than the "optimal" setting on an LCD display will cause a lack of fidelity. It is a cheap & dirty way to magnify the current font size but because the monitor still has to scale up to the actual number of pixels it uses you're going to get slightly blurry or blocky (depending on how good the scaler is) text. It's much better to just change the windows settings if font size is the real concern.
Posts: 3275 | Registered: May 2007
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quote:Regardless of what your documentation says, that's the maximum resolution (not the optimal). At that resolution, everything WILL be small. Again, it's meant for big televisions.
No resolution is "meant" for any particular device. I've been running >1080 resolutions on computer displays since long before any TV, big screen or not, could handle more than 480. I'm currently running 1920x1080 on my 15" laptop display.
The monitor has that many physical pixels so it is the "optimal" resolution. Setting the monitor resolution lower than the "optimal" setting on an LCD display will cause a lack of fidelity. It is a cheap & dirty way to magnify the current font size but because the monitor still has to scale up to the actual number of pixels it uses you're going to get slightly blurry or blocky (depending on how good the scaler is) text. It's much better to just change the windows settings if font size is the real concern.
Fiddlesticks. It won't be any more blurry or blocky than another monitor with that native resolution. And the human eye can only distinguish a certain amount of fidelity (see the human visual system model). It is likely, at that screen size and viewing distance, that a casual user will notice little to no difference between 1080p and 720p resolution.
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quote:Fiddlesticks. It won't be any more blurry or blocky than another monitor with that native resolution. And the human eye can only distinguish a certain amount of fidelity (see the human visual system model).
Fiddlesticks right back. I can tell at a glance if an LCD monitor is running at a non-native resolution vs using a larger font size.
Changing the resolution may be an acceptable solution for many users. I'd even go so far as to say that for most of the users for which font size seems to be a real problem (people with poor vision, like my mother, primarily) that it's probably just fine but there will be a loss of actual information displayed. Given that Lyrhawn is fairly young and likely to have decent normal or corrected vision I'd be suspicious that the native resolution of the display is really his problem, which is why I suggested photographs so that other people could examine what he's seeing.
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Uh, what? A monitor is viewed from closeup. Higher resolutions have a huge impact on visual quality. Humans have an extremely high visual resolution at our point of focus, out to a considerable distance.
Viewing at 20 inches (not too unusual for a computer monitor, though a bit close), an image needs to be at least 530 pixels per inch to even approach the limits of the human eye -- and most monitors rarely go over 100. Televisions at 1080p are even lower than the monitors, usually, because they're larger. This isn't a big deal, because they're intended to be viewed at a much greater distance. At monitor-viewing distances, 1080p is a horrible resolution.
And, even at typical television-viewing distances on a 30-inch-ish television, most people have no problem telling the difference between 720p and 1080p. Of course, a lot of those who can tell the difference don't consider it enough of a difference to care, but that's a different question.
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MattP -- I'll bet that you can tell if it's running at a higher resolution, but I'd be danged if you could tell if it was non-native. A monitor is capable of multiple resolutions, but two monitors running 720p will look the same.
fugu13 -- Of course you'll get higher quality from a 1080p resolution. My only point is that 720p really is the standard monitor resolution, Windows is optimized for it, and the laymen wouldn't notice unless two were side by side. Sure, changing font sizes is the optimal solution, but to the non-technophile there generally isn't much of a difference. Heck, my mom can't tell the difference between 480p and 1080p. Her monitor is "optimized" at 600 x 800.
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720p seems awfully low to be much of a standard. Steam's hardware survey shows that the most common resolution is 1680x1050 with about 19% of users with only about 0.74% of people running at 720p (or 1280x720).
Posts: 7593 | Registered: Sep 2006
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quote:fugu13 -- Of course you'll get higher quality from a 1080p resolution. My only point is that 720p really is the standard monitor resolution, Windows is optimized for it, and the laymen wouldn't notice unless two were side by side. Sure, changing font sizes is the optimal solution, but to the non-technophile there generally isn't much of a difference. Heck, my mom can't tell the difference between 480p and 1080p. Her monitor is "optimized" at 600 x 800.
No, it isn't. ~720p is only a standard resolution for smaller and older monitors (such as those on cheap laptops) sold nowadays. Most monitors, especially those of any size, come at higher resolutions (as Mucus' numbers substantiate).
I wouldn't be surprised if he can tell that it is non-native. In non-native resolutions (technically, non-multiples of native resolutions) physical pixels do not line up with screen pixels, resulting in a jaggedness/fuzziness that isn't present at native resolutions.
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quote:I'll bet that you can tell if it's running at a higher resolution, but I'd be danged if you could tell if it was non-native. A monitor is capable of multiple resolutions, but two monitors running 720p will look the same.
No, they won't. My current LCD monitor has a native resolution of 1920x1080. If I change the resolution on that monitor, images become noticeably less sharp and colors "blur" at the edges. This is because the monitor actually has 1920 pixels in one dimension and 1080 in the other. Any other resolution requires that my monitor extrapolate a virtual "pixel" out of some combination of its actual pixels, and this produces fuzziness.
This is a fairly pronounced, obvious effect. Like other people have said here, it is immediately obvious to me when I encounter an LCD monitor running at the wrong resolution; we have several people at work who, thinking that they need "bigger" text and icons (because they're old), set their resolution too low, only to turn their monitors into fuzzy (and blocky, but that's a low-rez rather than a non-native problem) messes; a far better solution is to simply crank up the font and icon size, where possible.
Posts: 37449 | Registered: May 1999
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Herblay, are you extrapolating from your experience with CRTs? Because everything you've said in this thread is wrong when it comes to LCD displays.
Posts: 4287 | Registered: Mar 2005
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I concede, I was certainly wrong on many points. But is may be better to have a "sub-optimal" resolution than have to squint, no? It seems that the consensus of a lot of pro critics is just to buy a smaller monitor.
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Or just use the optimal resolution and either use a theme designed with larger fonts, accessibility options, etc.
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A smaller monitor won't automatically get you larger text. If you try to go the way of "get a new monitor" as your solution, then what you need to look for is a monitor with a higher dot pitch. If you get a smaller monitor which also has a smaller dot pitch then everything will appear even smaller.
But, as Mucus says, there are relatively straightforward ways to increase font size and otherwise adjust the settings to make things larger without using a non-native resolution or buying a new monitor.
Posts: 3275 | Registered: May 2007
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It's set to the suggested optimal resolution, and I love it. While my old computer had super tiny icons on the desktop and super tiny font in my web browser, this is much better. The icons on the desktop are perfectly sized. For Firefox, I've taken to utilizing Windows 7's thing where it automatically snaps the window to half the screen size, and that fills the window perfectly. Also, zooming in the screen to make it easier to see doesn't slow the computer down like it did my old one. I think that was just because my old computer was so slow.
Long story short: this is much better. I like Win7 so far, I like how fast everything is, and I'm generally pleased.
Also, for a little while I had my laptop on dual-screen mode with the monitor, and I loved it! I always thought having two monitors was just weird, or for certain people with specialized tasks in computer programming or something. But man, it was extremely helpful while researching. Having that much real estate to work with and being able to have that many windows open while still being able to type was incredibly useful, and frankly, made me a lot more productive. I might buy a second monitor when my income tax money comes in!
Posts: 21898 | Registered: Nov 2004
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Yes. The single largest productivity increase per dollar (by a lot) in computer upgrades is to increase screen real estate (there are a number of research studies on t). At work, I had three 24" monitors, a horizontal one in the middle for development, and a vertical one on each side, one usually for 'communications apps' (email, chat, et cetera), and one usually for web browsing and document reading (standard dimension PDFs and such are much, much easier to read on a vertical monitor).
When I have the desk space and the money, I'm going to have a similar setup at home, though probably somehow driven by a laptop. I haven't worked out how that's going to work yet . . .
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I might play with something similar in the future, though I can't imagine I'll ever need three monitors (then again, I never thought I'd need two!). A vertical monitor sounds interesting. I read a lot of PDFs and other documents that would be a lot easier to deal with if the monitor was taller rather than wider.
Out of curiosity, how taxing on the computer is it to have a second or even third monitor? Does it noticeably slow down the computer, or does it really just have more to do with how many programs you have open on those screens?
I just noticed that the back of my tower has two DVI ports. I never would have even noticed that before now.
Posts: 21898 | Registered: Nov 2004
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quote:Out of curiosity, how taxing on the computer is it to have a second or even third monitor? Does it noticeably slow down the computer, or does it really just have more to do with how many programs you have open on those screens?
All you need is enough video card power; with that, there's no loss of performance. Multiple programs rarely affects performance, either, with enough RAM, since usually only the active program is using any processing power to speak of. The computer I was working on had ten gigs of RAM .
Posts: 15770 | Registered: Dec 2001
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A second monitor basically requires that your video card double the resolution at which it is displaying graphics. If you have a good video card, you won't notice an issue except in very demanding games.
At work, I use two monitors and have been tempted for a while to stump for a third. It is astonishingly beneficial.
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