Sounds like you bought the wrong LCD - if you wanted a lower resolution, you should have purcahsed the WXGA screen, not the WUXGA....might be best to send it back in your satisfaction period and get one with the lower res LCD.
You chose the resolution of your screen. LCDs have a fixed resolution. If you wanted lower resolutions, you should have gotten WSXGA+ or WXGA. its not going to be fixed by a firmware update.
Yeah, it's sort of a bummer but there's really nothing you can do about it until MS has better support for high resolution screens. Even some installer boxes and pop-up web boxes (the good ones) run "out of the box", you'll see what I mean. Gotta do the old blind tab thing. I'm still happy with WSXGA though, I've gotten used to the small graphics and text and it's not so bad anymore.
But sometimes what helps is if you're in IE you can hold down CTRL and use the scroll-wheel down on your mouse or click View/Text Size to make the fonts a little bigger. Doesn't work on every page but it helps out when it does, especially on long reads.
LCD screens have a "native" resolution associated with them and can only display a clear and crisp, full-screen image at that resolution. For example, when the resolution of a WUXGA LCD (1920x1200 pixels max) is set to 1920x1200, each pixel the operating system displays matches one physical pixel on the screen. This results in a clear, sharp image.
But, by contrast, if the resolution of a WUXGA LCD is lowered to 960x600, each pixel the operating system displays (logical pixels) must take up double the length and height of a physical pixel. As a result of this, a 200x250 pixel image would take up 400x500 physical pixels on the screen. This leads to a distorted picture, as every vertical and horizontal line would appear straight and fine, but diagonal lines and curves would appear "blocky" or jagged.
On some resolutions, this distortion becomes much more noticeable. A 1920x1200 screen running at 1280x800 (the WXGA resolution) would have a ratio of logical pixels to physical pixels of about 3:2, therefore a 20 pixel wide logical object would use 30 physical pixels. But this in turn means, a 5 pixel wide object requires 7.5 pixels on-screen, and a pixel cannot be "half on." Therefore, video cards (and integrated video) will blur the edge of the images by blending colors, this is called Anti-Aliasing (AA). This AA of the jagged edges caused by the resolution change is what results in the blurriness.
So as you can see, this is a limitation of the LCD's themselves not of the particular notebooks you were looking at. This is why it is very important to scope out what screen you want before buying, as we get a lot of people here thinking that when they are buying the WUXGA they are buying the best as far as quality is concerned, only to come here after receiving it complaining the fonts are hurting their eyes because they are too small.
It is unfortunate that the XPS has only the WUXGA option, but then again there is an almost identical i9100 system being sold as an option.... with the WXGA and WSXGA screens. You may wnat to consider that.
LCD screens have a "native" resolution associated with them and can only display a clear and crisp, full-screen image at that resolution. For example, when the resolution of a WUXGA LCD (1920x1200 pixels max) is set to 1920x1200, each pixel the operating system displays matches one physical pixel on the screen. This results in a clear, sharp image.
But, by contrast, if the resolution of a WUXGA LCD is lowered to 960x600, each pixel the operating system displays (logical pixels) must take up double the length and height of a physical pixel. As a result of this, a 200x250 pixel image would take up 400x500 physical pixels on the screen. This leads to a distorted picture, as every vertical and horizontal line would appear straight and fine, but diagonal lines and curves would appear "blocky" or jagged.
On some resolutions, this distortion becomes much more noticeable. A 1920x1200 screen running at 1280x800 (the WXGA resolution) would have a ratio of logical pixels to physical pixels of about 3:2, therefore a 20 pixel wide logical object would use 30 physical pixels. But this in turn means, a 5 pixel wide object requires 7.5 pixels on-screen, and a pixel cannot be "half on." Therefore, video cards (and integrated video) will blur the edge of the images by blending colors, this is called Anti-Aliasing (AA). This AA of the jagged edges caused by the resolution change is what results in the blurriness.
So as you can see, this is a limitation of the LCD's themselves not of the particular notebooks you were looking at. This is why it is very important to scope out what screen you want before buying, as we get a lot of people here thinking that when they are buying the WUXGA they are buying the best as far as quality is concerned, only to come here after receiving it complaining the fonts are hurting their eyes because they are too small.
It is unfortunate that the XPS has only the WUXGA option, but then again there is an almost identical i9100 system being sold as an option.... with the WXGA and WSXGA screens. You may want to consider that.
mattcowger
2.6K Posts
0
April 29th, 2004 23:00
whitecollar
23 Posts
0
April 30th, 2004 00:00
Did you change the DPI setting from 96 to say....144?
nik7k7
2 Posts
0
April 30th, 2004 15:00
mattcowger
2.6K Posts
0
April 30th, 2004 18:00
dcranford
2 Posts
0
April 30th, 2004 18:00
I also just purchased a XPS so now were being told that the only decent resolution we can run is 1920/1200?
When if they had put a WSXGA option on the XPS we could get 1680/1050 1280/800 and so on???
I cannot beleive this cannot be fixed by some driver or firmware update.
Either that or Dell should allow us who have WUXGA on our XPS to get a WSXGA for a more manageable resolution.
Answers Please Dell??
dcranford
2 Posts
0
April 30th, 2004 19:00
I understand that lower resolutions will be somewhat fuzzy but they could at least make them work...
mattcowger
2.6K Posts
0
April 30th, 2004 20:00
IG-88
54 Posts
0
May 2nd, 2004 04:00
Yeah, it's sort of a bummer but there's really nothing you can do about it until MS has better support for high resolution screens. Even some installer boxes and pop-up web boxes (the good ones) run "out of the box", you'll see what I mean. Gotta do the old blind tab thing. I'm still happy with WSXGA though, I've gotten used to the small graphics and text and it's not so bad anymore.
But sometimes what helps is if you're in IE you can hold down CTRL and use the scroll-wheel down on your mouse or click View/Text Size to make the fonts a little bigger. Doesn't work on every page but it helps out when it does, especially on long reads.
sakor1
2.2K Posts
0
May 2nd, 2004 09:00
LCD screens have a "native" resolution associated with them and can only display a clear and crisp, full-screen image at that resolution. For example, when the resolution of a WUXGA LCD (1920x1200 pixels max) is set to 1920x1200, each pixel the operating system displays matches one physical pixel on the screen. This results in a clear, sharp image.
But, by contrast, if the resolution of a WUXGA LCD is lowered to 960x600, each pixel the operating system displays (logical pixels) must take up double the length and height of a physical pixel. As a result of this, a 200x250 pixel image would take up 400x500 physical pixels on the screen. This leads to a distorted picture, as every vertical and horizontal line would appear straight and fine, but diagonal lines and curves would appear "blocky" or jagged.
On some resolutions, this distortion becomes much more noticeable. A 1920x1200 screen running at 1280x800 (the WXGA resolution) would have a ratio of logical pixels to physical pixels of about 3:2, therefore a 20 pixel wide logical object would use 30 physical pixels. But this in turn means, a 5 pixel wide object requires 7.5 pixels on-screen, and a pixel cannot be "half on." Therefore, video cards (and integrated video) will blur the edge of the images by blending colors, this is called Anti-Aliasing (AA). This AA of the jagged edges caused by the resolution change is what results in the blurriness.
So as you can see, this is a limitation of the LCD's themselves not of the particular notebooks you were looking at. This is why it is very important to scope out what screen you want before buying, as we get a lot of people here thinking that when they are buying the WUXGA they are buying the best as far as quality is concerned, only to come here after receiving it complaining the fonts are hurting their eyes because they are too small.
It is unfortunate that the XPS has only the WUXGA option, but then again there is an almost identical i9100 system being sold as an option.... with the WXGA and WSXGA screens. You may wnat to consider that.
stu
sakor1
2.2K Posts
0
May 2nd, 2004 09:00
LCD screens have a "native" resolution associated with them and can only display a clear and crisp, full-screen image at that resolution. For example, when the resolution of a WUXGA LCD (1920x1200 pixels max) is set to 1920x1200, each pixel the operating system displays matches one physical pixel on the screen. This results in a clear, sharp image.
But, by contrast, if the resolution of a WUXGA LCD is lowered to 960x600, each pixel the operating system displays (logical pixels) must take up double the length and height of a physical pixel. As a result of this, a 200x250 pixel image would take up 400x500 physical pixels on the screen. This leads to a distorted picture, as every vertical and horizontal line would appear straight and fine, but diagonal lines and curves would appear "blocky" or jagged.
On some resolutions, this distortion becomes much more noticeable. A 1920x1200 screen running at 1280x800 (the WXGA resolution) would have a ratio of logical pixels to physical pixels of about 3:2, therefore a 20 pixel wide logical object would use 30 physical pixels. But this in turn means, a 5 pixel wide object requires 7.5 pixels on-screen, and a pixel cannot be "half on." Therefore, video cards (and integrated video) will blur the edge of the images by blending colors, this is called Anti-Aliasing (AA). This AA of the jagged edges caused by the resolution change is what results in the blurriness.
So as you can see, this is a limitation of the LCD's themselves not of the particular notebooks you were looking at. This is why it is very important to scope out what screen you want before buying, as we get a lot of people here thinking that when they are buying the WUXGA they are buying the best as far as quality is concerned, only to come here after receiving it complaining the fonts are hurting their eyes because they are too small.
It is unfortunate that the XPS has only the WUXGA option, but then again there is an almost identical i9100 system being sold as an option.... with the WXGA and WSXGA screens. You may want to consider that.
stu