Digital Trends

Size - and Resolution - Does Matter

LCD manufacturers offer screens with the same physical dimensions but different resolution options. The higher priced options are always the higher resolutions, and of course, the options that are pushed the most. But as you'll see, bigger is not always better for most computer users.

Take for instance the 15.4-inch LCD screen that is becoming quite popular with laptop computers. Dell sells their Inspiron 8600 with a 15.4-inch screen with 12 different resolution and processor configurations — more than enough to confuse the average computer buyer.

The lowest resolution available for the Dimension 8600 is WXGA (1366 x 768). You can also order it with a WSXGA+ (1680 x 1050) or WUXGA (1920 x 1200). What this means is that in the same 15.4-inch display, the WSXGA+ and the WUXGA have more pixels, respectively, than the WXGA display, thus making text and images appear smaller on the higher resolution panels.

As hard as it may be to believe to many "power users", the average computer user still has their resolution set to 1024 x 768 or even 800 x 600, so even the WXGA resolution may be a shock to some users.

The forums at Dell's support site are full of user's reporting problems with their LCDs. A quick search for "LCD resolution" in the forums will yield many posts regarding text that is too small to read. And in their attempt to fix that problem, Dell and Microsoft have introduced a new dilemma: to compensate for customers' complaints of small, hard-to-read text, Dell's high-resolution laptops are pre-configured with a larger than normal font size. Instead of the default 96DPI font, the Dell's are configured with 120DPI. This may sound like a good solution, but it actually creates more problems. Because Microsoft's Internet Explorer browser, and to a lesser extent Windows XP, don't do a good job of handling larger font sizes, images and text will appear blurry or misaligned.

The images below show some of the effects of the 120DPI "solution" introduced by Dell. As you can see, the Windows Update dialog box appears with text that is cut off at the bottom. An IE "404 Error" page also shows text that overlaps, and even the Designtechnica site itself appears distorted with the larger fonts.

Text is cut off in the Windows Update dialog box (left) and text in an IE 404 error page gets jumbled (right).

Even the text on Designtechnica's navigation bar gets jumbled when viewed at 120DPI.

Another side-effect of the larger font size on a high-resolution monitor is that increasing the size of the fonts doesn't have an effect on items such as toolbars and dialog boxes — which will still appear small. Some toolbars will scale to a larger size, like the Microsoft Office 2003 toolbars, but the images will appear blurry when their size is increased.

It is important to note that other Web browsers such as Mozilla and Netscape don't experience this issue with font sizes as they do a better job of scaling the presentation of the Website. But since Microsoft Internet Explorer is by far the most popular browser, and the issue also affects views in the operating system itself, this matter affects the majority of users. It should also be known that this issue doesn't just affect Dell laptops — all laptop manufacturers that offer high-resolution displays have to deal with it.