High Res Screen and My Poor Eyes

[JustGetnStarted]

Hi, I'm a newbie.

I'm looking at getting a Macbook Pro with the high res screen. I’d love to have that screen for doing video work. However, my poor eyes are straining to read such small fonts on things like floating palettes. Is it possible to scale an application’s palette to a larger size? Like for examples MS Words Palette.

I'm JustGetnStarted

 

[Jasper2k]

Old Man regrets buying the HD

Hi, I'm a newbie.

I'm looking at getting a Macbook Pro with the high res screen. I’d love to have that screen for doing video work. However, my poor eyes are straining to read such small fonts on things like floating palettes. Is it possible to scale an application’s palette to a larger size? Like for examples MS Words Palette.

I'm JustGetnStarted

(Well, knowing that I'll soon be crucified and flamed endlessly) I will admit to buying the 17" HD and now seriously regretting it. I'm pushing 50, wear progressive lenses (a cute way of saying OLD MAN BIFOCALS) and the 17" screen at 1920 x 1200 is extremely hard for me in daily use. I had tried the 1600 and 1920's at the store, and then spent a day playing with the HD 1920 that I borrowed from a work colleague and convinced myself I could handle it. Now I regret my decision - the HD is an amazing screen, it's my old eyes that suck.

Of course, I could run it in 1600 but I'm picky as heck and can't stand LCD scaling off the native panel resolution.

Maybe when the apps and UI catch up to resolution independence in the OS down the road, I'll feel differently. For now, I'm buying an ACD to correct my own mistake.

 

[JustGetnStarted]

(Well, knowing that I'll soon be crucified and flamed endlessly) I will admit to buying the 17" HD and now seriously regretting it. I'm pushing 50, wear progressive lenses (a cute way of saying OLD MAN BIFOCALS) and the 17" screen at 1920 x 1200 is extremely hard for me in daily use. I had tried the 1600 and 1920's at the store, and then spent a day playing with the HD 1920 that I borrowed from a work colleague and convinced myself I could handle it. Now I regret my decision - the HD is an amazing screen, it's my old eyes that suck.

Of course, I could run it in 1600 but I'm picky as heck and can't stand LCD scaling off the native panel resolution.

Maybe when the apps and UI catch up to resolution independence in the OS down the road, I'll feel differently. For now, I'm buying an ACD to correct my own mistake.

I've done a little researching and I think I found something on Apple's discussion site that may help - I think.

http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?messageID=6004786&tstart=0


I'm JustGetnStarted

 

[CubeHacker]

This is exactly what leopard was supposed to fix by introducing a resolution independent UI. Unfortunatly, the feature wasn't ready in time and was disabled. But the entire point of having higher resolution displays isn't so your text and icons get smaller and smaller, but instead get sharper. Leopard would have addressed this had it been ready in time. Oh well, maybe 2010?

 

[Sun Baked]

I've increased the font sizes, and when I use word/pages I adjust the size of the page beyond 100%.

And i don't have the HD screen just the normal new iMac 20.

Just have to make use of the poor vision help most apps and the OS have for you.

 

[odinsride]

I have the HR 17" and I don't recommend it unless you have perfect vision and unstressed eyes. I wear glasses and use a computer all day at work, and by the time I get home to my MBP I find myself getting up close and personal with the screen in order to read certain things.

I'm kind of wishing I would have bought the 15" MBP now...but what can ya do.

 

[Neutral Gamer]

I have to be honest. For the first couple of weeks after buying my Hi-Res MBP I definitely felt the strain on my eyes; I think I was just trying to hard to focus as I wasn't used to the size of the text.

But then I just relaxed my eyes and the strain just went. I've had it for nearly 5 months now and I have no problems with my eyes at all now. I think it just takes some getting used to and for your eyes to adjust!

But I agree, if your eyes aren't that good then you may wish to reconsider. The best thing of course is to try it out for as long as possible in the store. Try as many different apps as possible and especially different websites to get a good range of text sizes.

In all fairness most applications allow you to change the text size and in Safari there's even a "Never use font sizes smaller than ..." option in the preferences. I also use the Command-'+' and Command-'-' shortcuts to quickly zoom in and out of certain websites where the text size is too small.

If you can handle the text size then the one thing that is certain is that you'll end up with a beautiful, sharp display where there's more than enough space for most people's multitasking needs. Add Spaces into the equation and you'll never find yourself needing to use a desktop again as you'll have everything you need (power and space) on your lap!

Cheers