Ok, I have looked at many laptop screens, PC and Mac, and I think that the 17" Powerbook LCD looks stunning. However, I am confused by a few things. Can someone please explain what some of these resolution numbers mean exactly? The 17" PB has a max resolution of 1440x900 and is capable of displaying millions of colors according to its specs. How does this compare to say a Compaq or Dell that is SXGA+ at 1400x1050 or UXGA at 1600x1200 or greater and displays 16.6 million colors (24-bit)? To me, the PB screen looks better, but I just want to know what these numbers mean. Is the PB also 24-bit 16.7 million colors? How do you calculate dpi? What do others think of the PB display compared to the best PC laptop displays? Sorry for such a long post, I just want to make sure I am getting an excellent quality product if I am going to switch to Apple (I have always used PC's). Thanks in advance for answers to these questions.
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LCD clarity of PB's?
- Thread starter Butla99
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I have a 15" TiBook, love the screen. The resolutions are different because the macs are using a 16:10 ratio I believe, which is closer to a widescreen aspect ratio. The high-res PC laptops are using a more traditional square-ish shape. Yes, many of them are higher res than the PB screen so you get more "real estate" on your desktop. I can't really tell you much about the SVGA, XVGA etc. stuff, but I do know that my screen looked as good as the high-end pc my friend had. Just not as much room on my screen.
Firstly the resolution is made up of pixels/dots, so a powerbook with a resolution of 1440x900 has 1440 dots horizontally and 900 dots vertically.
The bit rate is how many colours the display can show, 16.7million colours is the most number of colours the human eye can see. 24it and 32bit colour displays are both capible of displaying 16.7million colours, although I am not sure what the extra 8bits is used for on the 32bit displays is used for.
In the end it all comes down to looks, if you like the quality of the monitor, then get it. But I have to say Apple displays are generally better than PC ones, I have always got a Mac laptop because of this even though I use PC desktops.
The bit rate is how many colours the display can show, 16.7million colours is the most number of colours the human eye can see. 24it and 32bit colour displays are both capible of displaying 16.7million colours, although I am not sure what the extra 8bits is used for on the 32bit displays is used for.
In the end it all comes down to looks, if you like the quality of the monitor, then get it. But I have to say Apple displays are generally better than PC ones, I have always got a Mac laptop because of this even though I use PC desktops.
Bit RATE?! There is no rate involved in monitor bit DEPTH.
You cannot set any monitor to a higher bit depth than 24 (millions of colours). 16 bit is thousands of colours, 8 bit is 256 colours, 4 bit is 16 colours, 1 bit is black and white.
An IMAGE file can have more than 8-bits per channel (so more than 24 in total): e.g. a scan from a 16-Bit per channel scanner is a 48-Bit file. Also, you can have other channels than colour in an image, e.g. an alpha channel (for transparency)- usualy an additional 8 bits, making a 32 bit image. (this has nothing to do with monitors, by the way)
Dell (for example) has some very high pixel density laptop screens (1600x1200 in a 14"). I wouldn't say that Apple's lkaptop screens are any better, when you compare with Sony/Toshiba/etc high end models.
Apple's screens are good for the Mac OS which can't adapt as much to changing pixel densities.
Having a 15" laptop with a wide aspect ratio is quite unusal, and the 17" is so much better as a portable that the other behemoths on the PC size with a screen that big.
To work out the pixel density (should be fairly obvious, no?), find out the height/width of the screen- you could use trigonometry with the ratio of the sides and the diagonal distance (which is how screens are measured). Then divide the resolution in the corresponding direction by the distance in inches along a side, to give how many pixels per inch.