# Screen Resolution



## Lenny (Jun 5, 2008)

Think of this as research into current trends. It's also going to affect any web design I do, and thus the web design tutorials.

The question is an easy one - *what is your screen resolution?* If you don't know it, you can find out here. Once you do know it, vote in the poll.

EDIT: If your resolution is 1680x1050, please vote for "1600 x 1050" and not other. If your resolution is 1600x1024, please vote for "Other". Bit of a keyboard problem - damned thing thinks it's a larf to jump out from under my fingers. 

Statistics say that 17% of computer users still have an 800x600 screen resolution, whilst around 66% use 1024x768. I reckon the 800x600 resolution might actually get a number of votes, and that the 1440x900 resolution may give 1024x768 a run for its money. Now I don't expect many people, if anyone, to have a resolution of 2048x1536 or above, but you never know, and I think that the biggest resolution anyone will choose is 1920x1200 (I'm looking at Commonmind with his 24" widescreen ).

For anyone who is interested, the resolutions can be split into two sets - the regular, 4:3 square screens (first seven), and the 'newer', 16:10 widescreen screens (second seven). If anyone has a different resolution to those above, then I'd put money on it being a Mac owner. 

So, there we go. Vote!

Oh, and if you have multiple displays in dual view or something, please give the resolution of a single screen, or the one you use the most.

---

EDIT: Foiled by a forum setting! I can only have 10 options, so I've decided to put up the four which I think are the most common from each group.The original 14 were:

*4:3* - 640x480, 800x600, 1024x768, 1152x864, 1280x1024, 1600x1200, 2048x1536
*16:10* - 1280x800, 1440x900, 1600x1024, 1680x1050, 1920x1200, 2560x1600, 3840x2400

_EDIT2: Seeing as we've not got a dedicated Tech forum mod yet, could one of the Sup Mods please edit the seventh poll option to read *1680 x 1050*? If Sup Mods don't have the right permissions to do that, then never mind. Thankee._


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## Ursa major (Jun 5, 2008)

I've given the screen resolution for my laptop - it's a 17" widescreen.


(My desktop has a measly 1280 x 1024 17" LCD monitor, but it is older - 2004 - and I bought it in a hurry.)


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## Lenny (Jun 5, 2008)

1920x1200 on a 17" Laptop monitor? Not too shabby. Not to shabby at all. You lucky, lucky bear!


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## BookStop (Jun 5, 2008)

Mine is the 1680 X 1050 

Is that good, bad, does it make a difference? Is it as measly as Ursa's apparently is?

laptop is 1280 X 800


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## Ursa major (Jun 5, 2008)

My previous laptop had a 1600 x 1200 before it died. (It's 0 x 0 now, I guess.)

I like having a big desktop: I prefer seeing application windows rather than having to always switch to them to use them.

I rarely use anything at full screen. The only exception is when I'm reading a document in two pages format; lower screen resolutions are simply harder to read when I'm doing this.


Oh, and yes; I am lucky in this regard.


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## Morpheus42 (Jun 5, 2008)

Ummm.. are we talking total screen resolution or resolution per screen?
I mean what if you have 3 screens attached to your PC like this:
- 1600x1200
- 1280x1024
- 1280x1024
I happen to have 3 different videocards in my PC.
Unfortunately recently only 2 monitors attached. 
(And yes, I edited out the 3rd one in my Xconfig. Sort of edited out..  is actually overlapping parts of the two screens i use)


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## Overread (Jun 5, 2008)

_1280 x 1024_ for me on my screen - nothing special but it does the job well 
and its not a wide screen 

!! I feel all small now


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## Lenny (Jun 5, 2008)

Morpheus42 said:


> Ummm.. are we talking total screen resolution or resolution per screen?
> I mean what if you have 3 screens attached to your PC like this:
> - 1600x1200
> - 1280x1024
> ...


 
Per screen, please, unless you rarely use all three (or just two now?) at once, in which case I'd like the resolution of the main screen, please. If you do use all three(/two) at once (lucky beggar... now if only one could combine Ursa's resolution with your three monitors *evil grin*), I'd put down 1280x1024.

---

Awww. Poor, tiny OR.  Just wait until you're able to get yourself a _proper_ monitor. 

---

I'm jealous of you too, BookStop! A large screen resolution is always wonderful - it allows you to fit more clutter onto the desktop before you have to spring clean.


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## Ursa major (Jun 5, 2008)

Lenny said:


> A large screen resolution is always wonderful - it allows you to fit more clutter onto the desktop before you have to spring clean.


 
That's what I meant earlier. 


Actually, although I haven't written any application software since the (early) 1980s - they had computers then?! - I did work for a company with a lot of software designers. They had bog standard Sun 20" (or larger) monitors which were absolutely packed with opened windows; so they could test their applications, they said; so they could see why their software wasn't working at all, more like.


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## Overread (Jun 5, 2008)

Lenny said:


> ---
> 
> Awww. Poor, tiny OR.  Just wait until you're able to get yourself a _proper_ monitor.
> 
> ---


 
considering my current financial commitments (the camera is a harsh mistress to the bank balance!) I think I will be waiting for a long long time................


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## Ursa major (Jun 5, 2008)

It's a matter of priorities. I don't have a (working) camera and the one I have is 1980s vintage. The only thing digital about it will be the thumb- and fingerprints on the lens, I expect.



<--- (There is a camera on the laptop, which I used to capture Thread Bear in all(?) its glory(?).)


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## Commonmind (Jun 5, 2008)

1600x1050 on the laptop; desktop is 1920x1200


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## Morpheus42 (Jun 5, 2008)

Lenny said:


> Per screen, please, unless you rarely use all three (or just two now?) at once, in which case I'd like the resolution of the main screen, please. If you do use all three(/two) at once (lucky beggar... now if only one could combine Ursa's resolution with your three monitors *evil grin*), I'd put down 1280x1024.


Are you trying to confuse me?
I used to have my desktop computer running with 3 screens. The usable desktop area is then the area of the three screens.
So windows open in all three. Combined or separate chat windows, several browse windows etc. And sometimes windows positioned half in one and half in another screen.
Now i only use 2 screens. So less workspace.
Ofcourse if i can only say one, then it should be changed to 1600x1200.


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## The Ace (Jun 5, 2008)

17 " CRT monitor,1024x768, more than adequate.


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## Momoka (Jun 5, 2008)

Lenny said:


> If anyone has a different resolution to those above, then I'd put money on it being a Mac owner.


Or a mobile phone/pocket pc/palm/etc user - or someone on an EeePC or such 

I think my point is valid too - if you are after 'research into current trends' as more and more people surf casually from their small form-factor devices. I always think if I am to design a web page, that I should make a faster-loading 'optimised' (no fancy flash/javascript/etc) version for the mobile users 

Mine's one of the 1440x900 votes - but I do own (and use) my pocket pc often too and that's a mere 320x240.


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## Erin99 (Jun 5, 2008)

1440 x 900 for me, too!


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## Rane Longfox (Jun 6, 2008)

Well, 1280x800 on my laptop, so I voted for that because I use it more. 1280x1024 on my desktop.


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## Delvo (Jun 6, 2008)

1280x1024 isn't 4:3. It's 5:4. But the rest of the computer world seems bent on pretending it's 4:3... so their circles get stretched into ovals and their squares get stretched into rectangles... AKHCK, those things should be banned!


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## Happy Joe (Jun 6, 2008)

1680x1050 in a 19" for me.
I find that I do like the wide screen format better.

Enjoy!


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## Lenny (Jun 6, 2008)

Blame the site that gave me a list of the resolutions, then (come on, you don't expect me to _know_ all of them off by heart, do you?! I may be a Tech God, but even I have limits!). 

It's interesting to see how many people have big monitors - I honestly expected more people to have smaller resolutions (like our 5:4 friend). It warms the heart to see no 800x600 users [yet], though.


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## Karn Maeshalanadae (Jun 6, 2008)

I prefer to keep my resolution at 1024x768. It gives me the clearest picture without anything either being to small to see or so large it glares out of the screen, like 800x600 tends to do.


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## Lady of Winterfell (Jun 6, 2008)

1280x1024 for me, on a 19" monitor. No widescreen unfortunately, though hopefully someday.


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## Highlander II (Jun 8, 2008)

This laptop is 1024 x 768... but that's only b/c it doesn't go any higher.

My PC that I normally use is either 1280 or 1600... I don't remember right off, or I'd vote.  I'll check when I'm on that one again.



*ETA:* PC is 1280 x 1024... but only b/c it doesn't go any higher.  I'd have the resolution at 1600 or better if I could... but it doesn't go beyond the 1280, alas.


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## Sephiroth (Jun 10, 2008)

1210 x 1024 for me, on my crappy CRT.  Seems like I'm run of the mill, in that regard.


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## Joel007 (Jun 11, 2008)

1280x1024 on my 17" CRT. I only use 1024x768 when I'm on a 15" monitor


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## Simple Simon (Jun 14, 2008)

1600x1200 for me on my desktop and 1024x768 on my laptop.


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## Lenny (Jun 22, 2008)

Thanks to all the people who voted - you've confirmed my suspicions that all my years of purposefully building a site so that Maji can see it without scrolling across were a wasted effort. 

It also means that in the sixth lesson of my HTML tutorials, I'll be asking people to build a much wider site.


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## Sephiroth (Jun 22, 2008)

Ooh, how wide is_ wide?_ 




Seems like I got away with my typo, anyway.


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## Lenny (Jun 22, 2008)

Probably only a couple of hundred pixels extra - I usually build my sites to be 750px wide, but now I'm going to up it to around 1000px. Maybe 980px if there's a border effect.

As for the typo, don't mention mine in the poll, and I won't mention yours.


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## Sephiroth (Jun 22, 2008)

Deal.  


And phew.  Anything under 1280 suits me fine.


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## Pyan (Jun 22, 2008)

1024 x 768 for me, on an old Compaq CRT.

Can't be bothered to change it, because of all the work involved in changing icon sizes, text size, etc...


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## MKG (Jun 24, 2008)

That's a pretty interesting result, Lenny, and obviously representative of this site. Serious question, though - how representative would you say this site is of the rest of the world?


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## Erin99 (Jun 24, 2008)

Lenny said:


> Thanks to all the people who voted - you've confirmed my suspicions that all my years of purposefully building a site so that Maji can see it without scrolling across were a wasted effort.



Heh. You and me both, Len. I always designed mine for 800 x 600. At the time it was the norm. How quickly things change!

And, MKG, I'm not Len (as far as I know), but I'd say it'll be pretty accurate for most well-off nations. People have spare cash and they use it to upgrade their systems - better PCs, better monitors, etc. Plus, tech prices are coming down all the time, and manufacturers are having to compete with others, which brings their prices down. And technology advances and old hardware becomes obsolete and "uncool", so younger people will want to keep up. So, people are upgrading.

I think you'll find, world-wise, it's only older people, un-techy people, or poorer people who are sticking with old monitors with small resolutions.


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## Ursa major (Jun 24, 2008)

Leisha said:


> I think you'll find, world-wise, it's only older people, un-techy people, or poorer people who are sticking with old monitors with small resolutions.


 

Some of us older folk are exceptional, though.


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## Pyan (Jun 24, 2008)

Leisha said:


> .... it's only older people, un-techy people, or poorer people who are sticking with old monitors with small resolutions.



Which are you classifying me as then, Leish? Broke, ignorant, or one foot in the grave...?


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## Lenny (Jun 24, 2008)

Take your pick of any of them, gramps. By the way, if you're struggling to understand any of us, I'd advise using your next pension payment to buy a *Computers For Dummies* book.  

---



MKG said:


> That's a pretty interesting result, Lenny, and obviously representative of this site. Serious question, though - how representative would you say this site is of the rest of the world?


 
The top three of Chrons:

1280 x 1024 - 25.81%
1024 x 768 - 22.58%
1440 x 900 - 16.13%

I've found a few sets of statistics online to compare to:

Market share for browsers, operating systems and search engines
Monitor display resolution statistics
Screen Resolution and Page Layout (Jakob Nielsen's Alertbox)
» Screen Resolution Statistics - Marketing/Ecommerce Research

In all cases, the most used resolution is 1024 x 768, with between 40% and 60% of the 'market share'.

I'd say that this site, whilst not a true, accurate representation, gets pretty close to the rest of the world figures.


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## Erin99 (Jun 24, 2008)

pyan said:


> Which are you classifying me as then, Leish? Broke, ignorant, or one foot in the grave...?



LOL! Acually, you share the resolution of my old laptop, and I LOVED that machine. I only upgraded because the screen broke and was in danger of dying completely (and I'd rather save for a new laptop than replace a screen on a very old model that may pack it in completely one day).


Although... I _do_ classify me as broke.


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## Tansy (Jun 24, 2008)

1152 by 864 on a 19 inch TFT


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## scalem X (Jun 24, 2008)

I do use a projector from time to time, don't know the resolution, but it's the one I use for watching movies and television. Maybe 1,5 by 2 meters?

But I voted my normal laptop resolution (number two).


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## Pyan (Jun 24, 2008)

Lenny said:


> In all cases, the most used resolution is 1024 x 768, with between 40% and 60% of the 'market share'.


There you are then, young whipper-snapper: Broke, ignorant, one foot in the grave, yet still in line with the majority...


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## Lenny (Jun 24, 2008)

Just you wait until my generation takes over, old man!


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## Ursa major (Jun 24, 2008)

... when I'll have to downgrade to 1440 x 900.


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## HoopyFrood (Jun 24, 2008)

1280 x 800


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## Pyan (Jun 24, 2008)

Yeah, yeah...heard that before, in the Sixties, the Seventies, the Eighties, the Nineties, the New Millennium....they never "take over", they just get absorbed...

Is there actually an advantage in using the smaller sizes, Lenny? I mean, I don't really play games any more, only using the PC for word-processing and t'internet. Am I really missing out on anything?


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## Lenny (Jun 24, 2008)

If all you do is Word process and browse, then an 800x600 resolution would suit your needs just fine. I find that the reason I need a higher resolution is for the programs I run - not really games, because I'm not much of a PC gamer, but rather graphics packages, and 3D modelling programs and the like. In the days when 800x600 was standard, all of these programs had few enough menu options that you could write them on the back of a bus ticket twice and still have room left. These days, you've got hundreds of sidebars, and toolbars, and ribbons that take up a few hundred pixels, and the extra size is wonderful, as you can fit most of your toolbars on.

Say you've got a resolution of 1280x800, and you open Photoshop. When you load it, it has the usual couple of lines of menus and toolbars at the top, then a toolbar menu down the left which is about 200px wide, and then on the right there are lts of boxes which themselves take up a quarter of your screen, as well as the choice to have things at the bottom. After you've taken all of those into account, you're left with a workspace the size of a postage stamp. Now if you open Photoshop and you've got a magical 1900x1200 resolution, then the toolbars are still the same height and width, but your workspace has suddenly grown into the size of an A3 sheet of paper.

If you don't use programs and do things that require high resolutions, then there's no need to shell out the cash for a large monitor - a small resolution usually means a small monitor (say a square 17" monitor has a native resolution of maybe 1024x768), which has the advantage of being cheap. If you do need the screen space, though, then you have to pay dear for it (for example, I have my eye on a beautiful 24" HyundaiIT widescreen - £433. You could buy a small house for that price).

And to answer your last question - missing out on it? Not really. 1024x768 is a decent resolution, in my mind. When I was younger and didn't have my own computer, I'd have killed for a 1024x768 monitor to replace the lowly family 800x600 one.


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## Ursa major (Jun 24, 2008)

It's a variation on Parkinson's law: "The number of windows increases to more than fill the screen real estate"; or something like that.


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## Pyan (Jun 24, 2008)

the Guru said:
			
		

> After you've taken all of those into account, you're left with a workspace the size of a postage stamp.



Yes. I know what you mean - I hate that.

I don't know what the _official_ size of my monitor is, but (measuring it with a handy ruler) it's 210mm from top to bottom, of which the toolbars, etc, take up all of 30mm at the top. This has taken me a while to achieve, moving buttons and search windows about using Appearance and Preferences, but it leaves me over 85% of the area for the important stuff.


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## Lenny (Jun 24, 2008)

Oh, isn't it a perfect law for computers?  You can apply it to anything:

*The size of programs expands so as to fill the available hard disk space.* Remember when CDs became popular? I never thought I'd fill one, and now I've got a 50gb Blu-ray disc full of data sat on my bookshelf.

*The demands of programs expands so as to use the available memory.* I increase my RAM, the latest programs increase their requirements to what I have, and thought would never be needed.

*The demands of games expands so as to ensure even God can't play Crysis on Very High settings, and won't be able to for three years.* I think that one says it all, really. 

-----

EDIT: My calculator and a bit of Pythag leads me to believe that you've got an 11" monitor, Py... but, for some reason, I doubt that.  I'd guess at 15", or 17". In fact, I'll go and measure the downstairs monitor.

EDIT2: Yeah, they're not perfectly square, which is why my calculations gave such a dubious answer. The 17" monitor downstairs is 240mm from top to bottom, so I reckon your 210mm monitor is a 15" monitor.


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## Ursa major (Jun 24, 2008)

I recall when a friend got his first Archimedes - with 4 Meg of RAM (compared the the BBC Computer's 32K - yes that's right: 32768 bytes). It was more memory than any of us had access to on our four attached floppy disk drives.


On the first or second day after delivery, he ran a screen demo program written by some guys in Norway. Part way through, he got an error informing him that he'd run out of memory.


Things have been going downhill ever since.


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## Lenny (Jun 24, 2008)

Ursa major said:


> Things have been going downhill ever since.


 
But you've got to admit - things are going downhill in a fantastically fascinating manner! And so quickly, too!!


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## Pyan (Jun 25, 2008)

Ursa major said:


> ....compared the the BBC Computer's 32K - yes that's right: 32768 bytes....
> 
> Things have been going downhill ever since.



I started with 1(one) k memory, with a plug-in 16k extra, and the added joy of SinclairBasic. 

You_ can't_ go downhill from there....


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## Talysia (Jun 25, 2008)

Another 1024 x 768 here, from a very non-techy person.


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## Ursa major (Jun 25, 2008)

pyan said:


> I started with 1(one) k memory, with a plug-in 16k extra, and the added joy of SinclairBasic.
> 
> You_ can't_ go downhill from there....


 
The first computer I owned was a TRS-80 (with a full 16K of RAM) and Level II Basic, which meant that there was 12K of ROM.


I recall reading the error reports - yes I know: nerd alert - that would be output by the Level I (from its 4K of ROM); one was simply "Sorry" and the solution to this error was to buy more RAM - ("Sorry" was used for out-of-memory errors).


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## Majimaune (Jun 27, 2008)

I guess I should say why I have 800x600 as my screen res. Its because I need reading glasses and once I get them (which will be within the next few days) I need things on the screen as large as possible so I'm not straining so much.


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## davidson91 (Jul 9, 2008)

1600x1200 on my big 19" CRT :S

Looking at upgrading to a 19" Widescreen ASAP though.


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## Majimaune (Jul 10, 2008)

I'm now using 1024 x 768 because I can see the screen easier with my glasses.


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