Trying to choose a screen? WXGA, WSXGA+ or WUXGA? Look here!

On Thursday, I ordered an Inspiron 1501 ($609) with the following specifications:AMD Turion 64 X2 Dual-Core Mobile Technology TL-50Windows Vista Home Basic (I will upgrade to either Business 64 bit or Ultimate 64 bit in the near future)1GB DDR2 533MHz SDRAM (2 – 512 MB Dims)60GB Hard Drive8X CD/DVD Burner (DVD+/-RW)ATI RADEON® Xpress1150 256MB HyperMemory (Integrated)Dell Wireless 1390 802.11g Mini Card85 WHr 9-cell Lithium Ion Primary Battery15.4 inch Wide Screen XGA Display with TrueLife

WSXGA+ nor WUXGA is not offered on this model; otherwise I would have gone with the WSXGA+. I had an Inspiron 9300 with the WUXGA TrueLife display and I thought it was great. This PC was just too large to take back and forth to class (IMO), so I traded it for my mother's Inspiron 600m.
The reason I decided to purchase a new laptop is because I dropped the 600m and broke the 14.1" SVGA display and did not want to spend $300 for a new screen on a 2 year old computer with XP. I was tempted to get the Inspiron 640m, however based on the fact that my 600m's screen seemed to make everything small I decided against purchasing it over the 1501 for the following reason:

The 640m can be had in either WXGA+ or WXGA. In my opinion WXGA+ at 1680×1050 would have been way too small on a 14.1" wide screen. I am not sure how much bigger things would have actually appeared with SXGA (1280 x 800) on this screen as compared to 1400 × 1050 resolution on the 600m.

Paul

A WUXGA monitor is, IN MY OPINION, unecessary if you're going to be playing a lot of games on your notebook.

I learned the hard way when I got an XPS Gen 2 two years ago with WUXGA and noticed that most games wouldn't play at decent settings at full resolution, resulting in me having to do a lot of tweaking to make games bearable at a 1024x640 resolution. Also keep in mind that anything other than the native monitor resolution results in blurry and sometimes garbled screen output (letters look scrunched, unreadable, etc).

I am now taking what I learned and applying it to my next go around with a Dell 1520 having only a WXGA (1280x800) native resolution. Sure, the 15.4" monitor won't be as roomy as the gargantuan 17" WUXGA of my XPS 2, but atleast I can rest assured knowing that I'll be able to play most games at max resolution with a crisp, clear picture and a solid frame rate.

I agree that the WUXGA may be a bit of overkill in some cases. I have 2xD810 and just replace the screen in one of them before the warranty expired. . Dell replaced it with a WSXGA+ screen. which gives me almost the same resolution as my WUXGA screen but you hardly notice it. In fact it is easier to read on those late nite sessions and these old eyes are tired.

Any resolution lower than the native one for the screen bugs the crap out of me because it is not crisp.

I don't game on my laptops ( don't see the point) You have to keep upgrading to keep up with the video.

WSXGA+ is a good resolution. I love the WUXGA but if it is not availabe, then no sweat as long as I get some good real estate!

I like the high resolution screen WUXGA, but I'm not a gamer, so I don't notice any decrease in performance. I do a lot of video work on my 9400's though, and the 512 MB GUD's can slice through the video much easier than the 256 MB cards (imho)

Newer operating systems like Win7, OSX use GPU API to accelerate common tasks and GREATLY accelerate complicated tasks with higher end GPUs.