Re: [SEMI-OT] Applications in a typical ion3 desktop environment

[Sylvain Abélard]

 One thing I've been wondering is, whether a widescreen display on
 a laptop (not a dragtop!) is actually a bad idea too. And it's the
 trend. For most _sane_ documents, the height of the screen is more
 important than width.

That is completely true. WS and X-black-shiny-crap have been forced
upon us, nobody sane would like that, and we're pretty much fucked up.
But maybe some guy will get it right someday.

 (The Modern Web counts as sheer lunacy. In
 a few years, given the trend, it will require triple-widescreen
 configurations for all the advertisements and other crap, yet still
 have a single 5cm text column in the middle.)

The Web will not require a triple-wide screen since the trend seems
precisely to get the content on a third of the width, two thirds being
empty white (or styled) borders. And, preferably, long pages and large
headers, so it's frequent not to be able to even read half of the
latest post without scrolling. Just have a look at Blogger, Wordpress
and DotClear default and most used themes.

Yes, the Web has the exact inverse trend than the screens. I am still
wondering about that too. Who can tell what crap the
Web-for-phones-and-devices will give us next ?

 In fact, an approx A4 sized screen [...] could be quite nice on a laptop.

That would be great, readable, and not to mention easier to fit in normal bags.

-- 
Sylvain Abélard
J'ai décidé d'être heureux, c'est meilleur pour la santé. -Voltaire

Re: [SEMI-OT] Applications in a typical ion3 desktop environment

[Tuomo Valkonen]

On 2009-01-17 11:47 +0100, Sylvain Abélard wrote:
 
  (The Modern Web counts as sheer lunacy. In
  a few years, given the trend, it will require triple-widescreen
  configurations for all the advertisements and other crap, yet still
  have a single 5cm text column in the middle.)
 
 The Web will not require a triple-wide screen since the trend seems
 precisely to get the content on a third of the width, two thirds being
 empty white (or styled) borders. 

The two thirds are mega-wide and force the text out of view in narrow
browsers for sane content (such as my slightly smaller than portrait A4
or letter window on a 17 4:3 display) and viewing other stuff on the
side. You need the tripe-wide screen configuration to not have
to scroll horizontally to get to the text.

  In fact, an approx A4 sized screen [...] could be quite nice on a laptop.
 
 That would be great, readable, and not to mention easier to fit in normal 
 bags.

Of course, it would also be great if you could use it as a tablet in
portrait mode... with an e-paper display mode. The current tablet PCs
seem horribly kludgy, though, and, in fact, it might be better for the
tablet mode to be the default, with the computer behind the screen and
no keyboard except on a docking station that perhaps can be attached
to the computer nicely for transportation. At least I don't think 
I'd miss the keyboard much when travelling lightly. The keyboard 
does work as a screen cover, though, and there needs to be something
to replace that function. Surely it can be made lighter and less 
fragile than esp. tablet hinges. Or maybe the docking station can
be made to fill this function, essentially making the computer
of two detachable parts, so the tablet can be made less clunky.

In fact, maybe you could also split the eletronics and battery
between the two components, further reducing the tablet weight.
E.g., a primary storage HD (or SSD) could go in the KB part, as 
well as any optical drives -- actually, it sucks that you have to 
again pay extra for a laptop that doesn't waste space for one;
this is again something that belongs in a docking station or
otherwise external device -- with a smaller SSD on the tablet
part for the OS and some documents etc. The mechanical coupling
between the parts of course has to be made reliable.

-- 
Tuomo