My laptop has a display resolution of 1366x768. Every now and then, I’ll encounter a window whose default height is over 768 and thus won’t fit entirely within my screen. The GTK file picker comes to mind, though it is resizable without much fuss. But then there are those that cannot be resized and being unable to move the titlebar further up, I am forced to use Alt+F7 to see what’s at the bottom.
I suspect that many programs today are designed to work comfortably on higher resolution displays, but not really tested on smaller ones. Understandably, developers only have so much time and 1366x768 is getting long in the tooth. Just wanted to put this out there since nobody seems to be talking about it.
Honestly, I would have assumed 1080p was an acceptable default assumption.
Is this just a case of older hardware, or are there still laptops that don’t have 1080p panels at this point?
A quick review of stuff on BestBuy indicates that $150 laptops have 1080p displays now, and anything more than that does as well, so uh, what devices are still using these?
<1080p screens are still a thing in new laptops. took a quick look at my local electronics store and found some with 1600x900. but most are indeed at least fhd.
Old hardware indeed, but 768 pixels ought to be enough for any window
My current laptop I bought used and didn’t realize that HD wasn’t 1080p, but rather 720p… (1080p is apparently FHD), whoops. I’m currently using a Latitude 7290 for reference and it more than meets all my regular needs (other than the screen resolution…). I have been using a tiling window manager and moving to apps that don’t waste as much space on my screen to try to help compensate.
Assuming Desktop is 1080p is probably reasonable, but there are a ton of good used business laptops that are still 720p, so it’s probably going to stick around for a while (also, why encourage e-waste).
For reference, my laptops specks are:
As long as I stay out of VM’s and do my development in lightweight editors and containers, this hardware could technically last me a while (also, I think the 7x90 series Latitudes are some of my favorite laptops).
You could assume 1080p or higher for desktops, but 1366x768 and 1440x900 are still fairly common on laptops. Not everyone is running brand new hardware. Many people put Linux on their old laptops so they can continue using them. Higher resolutions screens with display scaling are also common on laptops.
It’s a case of people not buying new computers anymore as much as they used to. They have reached a speed that’s acceptable to them, so they don’t see the point of upgrading. Same with phones, everyone was buying a new phone every year until about 2017. Then it slowed down because phones matured, there was no point chasing new hardware anymore. So now we have people using old phones, and old laptops. That’s why there were so many angry people at Ms for asking them to upgrade in order to install Win11. They didn’t want to upgrade, their laptop felt fast enough.
Old devices. Why throw them away?
Exactly! My current laptop will turn ten next year. It is still working fine.
Less energy efficient, less efficient on your time while waiting for things to load/compile/whatever
I think old devices are great, my laptop is from 8 years ago but it was considered a monster of a laptop back then so it still holds up today. I think I would struggle to get any work done on anything less
Still good for anything except compile and gaming.
my chromebook with this resolution is not even old