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Comment by chairface | Hacker News Reader

I hate "wide screens" with a passion - I call them short screens instead. My pet theory is that the LCD manufacturers like short screens better because they can sell fewer pixels while still advertising the same diagonal length.

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Widescreens are great as long as you get one that can run at a high enough resolution that you can run things side by side (that point comes much sooner on a widescreen).

That's not a pet theory, it's simply true.

Heh, well, I can't think of a good way to prove that one, so I thought I'd be careful not to overstate my case. :)

This seems counterintuitive from a math perspective.

Having a bad math day? A square gives the best number of pixels per diagonal inch. The farther you get from a square (aka the wider the screen), the less pixels you get, even if the diagonal length stays the same. You can advertise a 22 inch monitor but if it's only 1 inch tall then it's worthless.

A 40 inch monitor that's 1 inch tall would also be useless.

Besides, 4:3 screens aren't square either. Why not demand 1:1 screens? Wide screens are more aesthetically pleasing (for most, not all).

most non-wide screen 17 and 19inch monitors were 1280x1024 which was 5:4 which is even more square. I'd happily buy two 1:1 monitors (no one makes an affordable monitor with more than 2048 pixels wide).

It seems impractical to me. I'd rather just have one screen that's wide but not too tall. It's a lot easier to look across wider things than up and down tall things.

1920 widescreens are not really wide enough for a webpage and a code window. A 2560 widescreen is the obvious answer but they cost 3 to 4 times as much.

You're right. I guess your other suggestion was really still making a "wide screen" but a super high res one out of two squarer ones :-) That seems a reasonable solution.

I have 2560 pixels wide but I have a 27" iMac and sorta consider the screen almost a "freebie" with the computer (considering how little extra the 27" costs). A similar stand alone screen is crazy money though..

Simple solution: buy two monitors. Only costs twice as much.

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