Just wanted to add my two cents here. I purchased this about a week and a half ago and then returned it after two days. I found that despite having an absolutely beautiful screen, the resolution was just too damned high unless you put your face about a foot away from it. FWIW, my vision is fine and I'm relatively young (29).
I used to have the previous 17-inch MBP, which I loved. But note that the resolution on most of these was 1600 x 1050, which seemed much more natural.
Ultimately, I ended up returning it to the Apple Store (without having to pay a restocking fee....if you have a good reason they'll usually help you out), and purchased a 13" MBP with 4GB RAM and then plopped in my own 500GB 7200rpm drive. I absolutely friggin' love it.
Anyone else with a similar issue?
Discussion about
Resolution just too high at 1920 x 1200
I agreed until I found myself running multiple applications that I wanted to keep an eye on at the same time. Now I enjoy having lots of screen real estate. Since most of my reading happens in Firefox, I use an add-on called "No Squint" which automatically zooms in on pages for you. I set the default zoom level to 170% and it's been smooth sailing ever since.
Too high, you say. I never imagined that would be a problem. The dpi resolution on the iPhone is even higher I think, but I guess one doesn't use it from far one's face. Perhaps it's not for everyone. Of course you could lower the resolution, or hook up an external monitor, but that sort-of defeats the point.
Actually I tried lowering the resolution on the display to the 1600 x 1050 that I was used to, but it came across smudgy. If you compared this 1600 x 1050 to the 1600 x 1050 on the old MBP, the old one wins hands down. Shouldn't be that way.
Lowering the resolution isn't really a solution since LCDs look like crap when they aren't displaying at their native resolution. Unfortunately, Apple hasn't really nailed resolution independence yet and it is really glaring on high dpi displays like the one in the 17 inch.
Hm. I definitely prefer the high res to the 1680x1050 (not 1600 btw) of my previous machine. Looks great with Windows 7 and Mac OS X. Could also be my eyesight being better than 20/20 but my friends that have this machine but bad eyes love it as well. I think the pixel density might throw some people off as it did with you. Any higher than this and it could start to be small but I think its just about perfect as is.
I am going to add the 500gb 7200rpm drive to my MBP but it is going to be a chore since Apple can't figure out that users want to customize at LEAST their machine's memory and hdd.
I am going to add the 500gb 7200rpm drive to my MBP but it is going to be a chore since Apple can't figure out that users want to customize at LEAST their machine's memory and hdd.
Hm... I would say that one of my favorite parts of my MBP 17" is the screen. The screen is beautiful in my eyes, but I can totally see some one's eyes starting to hurt especially at night because of the brightness and the overall sharpness because of the resolution. I will agree that lowering the resolution on this display definitely makes a noticeable difference in the clarity.
