macbook pro 17" display... different ppi?

[jonhallman]

so i made the leap for the 17" macbook pro and bought a 19" samsung monitor with it to split screen.... little did i know the ppi on the macbook pro doesn't match "normal" displays... did apple squish the screen down to boast a higher pixel count? or is this progression of their intentions for hi-res (300 ppi) monitors as also seen with the 160 ppi iphone?

i've tried using a lower resolution, one that would be "normal" at this screen size, but it's blurry to the point where it's unusable. i do a lot of web work and if i'm designing something that's going to appear 20% larger on everyone else's display, there's going to be a problem. i'm just glad i got this second display to check for size. any input?

 

[NewSc2]

same with me -- my 15" MBP and 20" Dell LCD (2005fpw). I just deal with it, it's not a huge difference. Also it's not like I work with screens in between monitors.

If there's a fix, i'm all ears though.

 

[2ndPath]

Laptop displays usually have higher ppis than desktop displays. This makes sense as the distance between the user and the display is usally much shorter on laptops. In general there is no "normal" ppi for either of them. You can find lots of monitors, which have the same number of pixels, but differ in size or vice versa. PC laptop makers often offer for the same laptop the choice of different built in displays with the same size, but a different number of pixels.

Concerning your web design concerns: There are lots of displays out there which have higher or lower ppis than your MacBook Pro display. So you will need to take that into account. There might be ways to define all the dimensions on a web page in physical units, but this will probably look bad as soon as bitmaps come into play. So designing objects for a fixed number of pixels is probably the best way even if they are displayed at different sizes on different monitors. That said, I am no expert on web design, so there might be better solutions.

If you want your two screens to display the same objects at the same size, then your only way is currently to adjust the resolution and you have to live with the blur. Maybe resolution indepence in Leopard will offer a better solution to this, but not too much is known about that yet.