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$600 Notebook Roundup - Crowning the Affordability Kingby Anand Lal Shimpi on 11/29/2005 10:38 AM EST
- Posted in
- Laptops
50 Comments
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trexpesto - Wednesday, December 14, 2005 - linkDidn't notice much about screen quality. Reply
cactux - Wednesday, November 30, 2005 - linkHello,
Such articles are great, but you say nothing about the Linux compatibility of these PCs.
In only 5 minutes, you could test them, using for example a Knoppix. This Linux distribution boots are works from one CD.
This would allow you to say what works and what fails (sound, screen, nouse, etc.)
CB1 - Wednesday, November 30, 2005 - linkWant Linux? Get an Acer. A version of the Acer TravelMate TM2312LCi has been sold briefly with a Linux boot disk and no OS. There is an Asian linux distro linked at Acer's website.
HP has had an Ubuntu option available in Europe.
I've just booted a Compaq X1000 from the latest Ubuntu live disk, and it produces a perfectly working desktop, at the correct screen resolution. I wasn't in a location to check the modem or wireless, but I doubt there would be problems. Win 2K wouldn't give me the proper screen res or colours without the Compaq driver disk.
Short of gaming, you'll have as many issues with Win as Linux. I don't think it requires special consideration in the test. Reply
nullpointerus - Wednesday, November 30, 2005 - linkI'd love to see a test like this, too.
In the meantime you take a look at building your own laptop from Linux-compatible parts:
http://www.anandtech.com/news/default.aspx?newdate...">http://www.anandtech.com/news/default.aspx?newdate... Reply
artifex - Wednesday, November 30, 2005 - link...because a couple of weeks ago, we bought my sister a v2000z, with a 3000+ chip, for $400 or so after rebates. I think the office supply company that sold it to us figured out they screwed up, because it hasn't been that low, since :) Anyway, at these prices, look at the Sunday ads before you buy, because if one is substantially cheaper than the Gateway, like ours was, go for it instead. Reply
Myrandex - Wednesday, November 30, 2005 - linkI have seen plenty of laptops for sale under $600 with 512MB ram. Well at least on a sale and not a regular price. I wouldn't buy a machine w/ 256MB of ram at all anymore :-/ Reply
bupkus - Wednesday, November 30, 2005 - linkWhat's with these 90 day warranties? Reply
unclebud - Tuesday, November 29, 2005 - linkheartily enjoyed!
and also printing out to share with my coworkers -- the most asked question for me "is how good is this laptop?"
can just give this to them (to read) instead... Reply
MacLean - Tuesday, November 29, 2005 - linkYou can't review low price great bang for the buck laptops without including a model from Acer. The Acer AS3003 is AMD Sempron based, has WI-FI and all the of the specifications reviewed for the other models.
I am very interested to find out how the integrated SIS Mirage 2 graphics go head to head vs. Intel and ATI.
Hardly a beauty contest if you don't invite all the contestants. Reply
CB1 - Wednesday, November 30, 2005 - linkI too was surprised by the absence of a model from Acer. They are ubiquitous in the market here in Vancouver, and have a good reputation for quality. Their bottom end models, both Cel M and Sempron, use SiS chipsets. I could care less about gaming capabilities of the onboard video, but would really like to know about the performance and battery life of the Cel M Acers with an SiS chipset.
Please include one when you test the new Dell model.
Otherwise, this was a very well done and thorough test, up to the usual Anandtech standards. The idea of testing the loss leader versions was brilliant.
Bottom end model locally is the Acer TravelMate TM2312LCi-H. Reply
johnsonx - Tuesday, November 29, 2005 - linkInspiron 6000 (can be had for $600 on the right day)
Acer Aspire 3003
Rudimentary gaming benchmarks. Yes, most current games are almost unplayable on these, but some would probably play fine. I played Dungeon Siege LOA quite happily on my Inspiron 6000, and old Unreal Tournament works great (even UT2k4 is just barely playable at 640x480x16, though very ugly). It would also be nice to see how much better ATI integrated gfx are vs. Intel (and SiS Mirage 2 in the case of the Acer).
hondaman - Tuesday, November 29, 2005 - linkI agree that its long overdue for a laptop graphics gaming review. Using all the common graphics, integrated or not, like the mirage 2, x200m, 700m, 9700, and all the assorted nvidia ones. Reply
johnsonx - Tuesday, November 29, 2005 - link"with the Dell doing absolutely dismally at only 144 minutes. The only tangible advantage we can see that Gateway has in this case is that they use an older chipset"...
The tangible disadvantage for the Dell is that they use the old NiMH battery instead of Lithium ion. I have the original version of that laptop, the Inspiron 1000. It's battery life sucked even worse, plus it died after only 5 months.
If you even remotely care about battery life, DON'T buy a dell with the NiMH battery. Don't buy a Dell without a 1-year warranty either.
ksherman - Tuesday, November 29, 2005 - linkIs there any hope for upgrades in these laptops? Like if I poped the hood off the COmpaq (Smepron of course) and threw in a Turion MT processor... or even a pentium M for the others, is that something doable? Reply
Hacp - Tuesday, November 29, 2005 - linkI know for a fact that the compaqs are upgradable. you can upgrade the processor/ram/hd/optical drive. Reply
bloc - Tuesday, November 29, 2005 - linkhttp://www.shopping.hp.com/webapp/shopping/compute...">http://www.shopping.hp.com/webapp/shopp...el=2&...
IT's TFT XGA, not WXGA. Reply
SilverTrine - Tuesday, November 29, 2005 - linkI'm amazed that Gateway tries to charge $50 shipping on a notebook. Anands assertion of $600 laptops is misleading, with shipping and tax this laptop is $800. Reply
KCjeeper - Tuesday, November 29, 2005 - linkI purchased one of these Gateway laptops a few weeks ago and am very pleased with it. Mine came with the wireless G and I only paid $579. Reply
bldckstark - Tuesday, November 29, 2005 - linkI am curious as to which company(ies) denied access to test parts. It doesn't make a whole lot of difference, but I wonder who is so embarassed of their product that they don't want them compared openly. Reply
bjacobson - Tuesday, November 29, 2005 - linkSomething worth noting is that the good battery life on the V2000 is thanks to the Intel 2200BG integrated wireless, not the Broadcom wireless. The Broadcom is what made the V2000z Sempron's do so poorly. Reply
rqle - Tuesday, November 29, 2005 - linkHmm, didnt know these littler celeron M 1.4ghz can pretty much outpace the new architecture of the sempron 2800+ cpu. interesting. Reply
Questar - Tuesday, November 29, 2005 - linkHow about an Inspiron 6000? I snagged one for $584 + $19 shipping. Reply
Questar - Tuesday, November 29, 2005 - linkBTW, that was with a P-M, not a C-M. Reply
bjacobson - Tuesday, November 29, 2005 - linknice
Questar - Tuesday, November 29, 2005 - linkYeah, and now I see you can get a 600m for less than $600. Reply
Alphafox78 - Tuesday, November 29, 2005 - linkI have a V2000Z with a Turion64 and its great!!! It sounds like the article is biased against compaq or something, the thing is sweet. works great in World of Warcraft and even plays BF2, althouh its not too fun. the form factor is great, I highly recommend it. mine does have the brightview screen, 1GB of PC3200 ram and a 5400rpm drive tho.. ;) Reply
SS - Tuesday, November 29, 2005 - linkThe point of this was for $600 range laptops, going with the Turion64 setup over the Sempron and upgrading the RAM and hard drive all would push the price well over the price point this review was for.
So you are basically asking to rate the $600 laptop based off the $1400 model's preformance. Reply
Alphafox78 - Tuesday, November 29, 2005 - linkI got mine for $760 after tax. then the free buestbuy ram, used the HD from my old laptop. lower than $700 after the free ram and stuff. I didnt get it for $500, missed that offer by a week! arg! Reply
Hacp - Tuesday, November 29, 2005 - linkTell that to the people who got the Turion 64 V2000Zs with wireless/12cell for around 500 shipped taxed. Then add the free 1GB bestbuy ram. Reply
Hacp - Tuesday, November 29, 2005 - linkYa if you can get it for under 450 taxed shipped of course its great :).
Also to further my comments, I think this article really shows the strenght of the Intel centrino platform. In other tests with dedicated graphics cards, the Turion/sempron/ and Pentium M come really close in terms of battery life, but in this test, comparing the V2000 to the V2000Z, we see that the whole platform makes the celeron have much battery life, even though the sempron "should" have more Blife. Reply
OrSin - Tuesday, November 29, 2005 - linkNo video benchmarks at all. I'm not saying test BF2, but something would be nice.
I think the AMD laptops would show some definate leads in that. Reply
raskren - Tuesday, November 29, 2005 - linkIt sounds like you want to see a benchmark where the AMD offerings *might* show an advantage over Intel so you can feel better about *your* company.
These are not for gaming. Why should Anand waste his time?
Why don't we do some Geo Metro top speed testing as well? Reply
hondaman - Tuesday, November 29, 2005 - linkHas nothing to do with amd vs intel.
Has everything to do with how well laptops do compared to desktops in games. Reply
hondaman - Tuesday, November 29, 2005 - linkI was dissappointed about this too. It was the first thing i looked for when I read this article today on anandtech. I wanted some game benchmarks.
Anyone who buys a 600.00 laptop isnt buying it for games, however, I _am_ in the market for a laptop in the 1000.00 range, and I would like to do some casual gaming here and there on it. Severeral of these laptops reviewed share the same video processor as some laptops much more expensive, and good laptop reviews are so hard to come by. Reply
Hacp - Tuesday, November 29, 2005 - linkBottom line, gaming on integrated graphics is non existant. If you want a gaming laptop, get dedicated graphics. Reply
PrinceGaz - Wednesday, November 30, 2005 - linkGaming does not necessarily mean playing the very latest games, and at the highest graphics quality settings. Some people seem to think all that matters with a game is how pretty the graphics are, and discard it when something that looks better comes along. Gameplay is more important to me, and there are plenty of older games that are just as much fun to play as the current hits.
I'm sure all of these $600 laptops with their integrated graphics (especially ATI) would be quite capable of playing the top games of the 2001-2002 era very well, and do a decent job with some later titles as well. The only likely probloem is the 256MB system memory which has to be shared with graphics-- but an upgrade to 512MB is the first thing most people would do to these laptops anyway to make them more flexible. Reply
mikecel79 - Tuesday, November 29, 2005 - linkWhy? Who is going to try and game on one of these things? Reply
oupei - Tuesday, November 29, 2005 - linkmaybe some RTS games or something would have been nice. Reply
Hacp - Tuesday, November 29, 2005 - linkGaming would be horrible. WHo would wnat to play halflife 2 at 800x600 at 24 frames per second?
I have a V2000Z and tried playing some games on it. It sucks. About the only "modern" game that I can play is Civ VI.
I'm pretty sure that older games will run fine on it though. Reply
bjacobson - Tuesday, November 29, 2005 - linkDo you have the x300 ATi or the Intel graphics? I'm thinking of getting one of these boards too. Reply
Hacp - Tuesday, November 29, 2005 - linkx200 graphics with/o dedicated memory.
If you get x300 graphics with some dedicated memory, it should play some of hte latest games at halfway acceptable settings. Just dont' expect to be playing FPS smoothly though, but RPGs/rts should be fine. Racing should be fine too. Reply
manno - Tuesday, November 29, 2005 - linkme Reply
LoneWolf15 - Tuesday, November 29, 2005 - linkInteresting to note that even without Speedstep, the Celeron-M still has better battery life. Then again, didn't Intel change some designs in transistor-switching to make battery performance better even at full speed?
One comment, more to notebook manufacturers: Where the heck is my Trackpoint mouse? I can't stand touchpads, which require me to take my fingers off the keyboard to use, when a trackpoint can be used almost simultaneously. I can type 75-80wpm, and don't find touchpads very efficient for this reason (my older but top-of-the-line-when-released Latitude C840 has both devices). Somebody, please bring back the Trackpoint! Reply
Hacp - Tuesday, November 29, 2005 - linkAlso, why do you have to take your fingers of the keyboard to use the touchpad? I keep one hand on the keyboard, and one hand on the touchpad when using my computer. Rightclick is tap top right corner, leftclick is tap anywhere on the touchpad that doesn't involve the top right corner. Reply
Zorba - Tuesday, November 29, 2005 - linkI too hate touchpads and miss the old mouse sticks. I always rub the touchpad with my arm when typing and usually end up clicking some where I don't want to. It also takes me much longer to navigate with a touchpad and I usually accidently click something because I change the amount of pressure on the pad (I know you can turn the clicking off, but I still don't like the pad). It is a personal preference but I would like to at least be given the chance to pick between the two. Reply
matthewfoley - Tuesday, November 29, 2005 - linkYeah, well I hate the mouse sticks. Who cares. Reply
Zorba - Tuesday, November 29, 2005 - linkThe point the original poster and I were trying to make is manufacturers should include both devices, which a lot of them used to do. Reply
Hacp - Tuesday, November 29, 2005 - linkThe battery life difference is most likely due to the ATI chipset and integrated graphics, which uses more power than intel EE. Reply
Tamale - Tuesday, November 29, 2005 - linkpage 9's link to page 10 is shot Reply
Tamale - Tuesday, November 29, 2005 - linknvm :] Reply


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Earlier today we introduced you to Glen Davis' new dance single "Big Baby Gon Turn It Up."
The song brought forth the in-house statement this must be the worst song that an athlete has ever released.
Sadly after we racked our brains and revisited these previous efforts, that was not to be the case. Not by a long shot.
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subset: commoncrawl


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Firstly, I can't stress enough how much we need artwork. Concept sketches; pixel art; basically anything to get us moving.
Method Names and Instance Variables
Use the function naming rules: lowercase with words separated by underscores as necessary to improve readability.
Use one leading underscore only for non-public methods and instance variables.
mixedCase is allowed only in contexts where that's already the prevailing style
now the abbreviations and capitalizing is driving me nuts.
su for setup
pg for pygame
Surf for surface
also in pep8 it said method and instance variables should follow function rules.
class SomeClass(object):
def __init__(self):
self.instance_variable = 5 #I'm an instance variable
The example you have used here is referred to in the pep8 document as mixedCase, not CamelCase, and indeed mixedCase is highly discouraged in python.also python is moving away from camelCase.
pep8 wrote:CapitalizedWords (or CapWords, or CamelCase -- so named because of the bumpy look of its letters [3]). This is also sometimes known as StudlyCaps.
Class Names
Almost without exception, class names use the CapWords convention. Classes for internal use have a leading underscore in addition.
A style guide is about consistency. Consistency with this style guide is important. Consistency within a project is more important. Consistency within one module or function is most important.
But most importantly: know when to be inconsistent -- sometimes the style guide just doesn't apply. When in doubt, use your best judgment. Look at other examples and decide what looks best. And don't hesitate to ask!
As long you guys agree on a consistant style for the project it will be ok
but i did find in pep8.
DrakeMagi wrote:how are you guys handle xrange, range difference ?
import sys
if sys.version_info[0] == 2:
range = xrange
jkbbwr wrote:Have two separate master branches. py2 and py3
tag all subsequent branches as either py2-<branchname> or py3-<branchname>
keep releases separate. Mixing version logic gets complicated quickly. This also means you can test, deploy and release far easier than having mixed logic that works on all versions, and its more optimised, less instructions and less that can go wrong.
As for range or xrange, unless you need a list, always use xrange. Simple as.
Hey, do you guys still need art? Let me know what file-types and what kind of graphics you need, and I can whip something up.
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Found 506 matching paintings
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Scaling Windows - The DPI Arms Raceby Brett Howse on 4/15/2014 2:00 PM EST
- Posted in
- Operating Systems
- Windows
- Microsoft
- Windows 8.1
- High DPI
114 Comments
Back to Article
SodaAnt - Tuesday, April 15, 2014 - linkThis has always been one of my big issues with the surface pro. I really like it, and the high resolution display is great, but I'm stuck between a rock and a hard place. I'd like to use 150% scaling to get the UI elements to the size I want, but I find that everything is just blurry and unusable then, so I have to stick with 100% and deal with the small elements. Reply
Imaginer - Tuesday, April 15, 2014 - linkFortunately, I haven't dealt with the applications that needed 100%. Even at 150%, I am fine, but to actually fit more work, a compromise for me is a blanket 125%.
Still usable for me in both direct touch, pointer cursor work, and pen work. Virtual mouse trackpad is also fine.
I do not have the "fortunate" experience with Adobe's suites. So I cannot experience that "joy" with their software. Manga Studio possibly took some cues, being their window title bar areas are as custom sized and small at 125%, but everything else is usable. ArtRage, is one of the very good ones out the gate - from day one of the Surface Pro's release in pressure support for Ink.API and WinTab along with their UI elements.
And long before that, when I sometimes tried to view things in CAD on my HDTV, the scaling was set at 150% and 1080p, but the behavior of AutoCAD wasn't up to par. I believe that is fixed a bit as I did not have problems when I used the software upon the default factory scaling of the Surface Pro.
Some companies listen and go back to do things right, some do things right out the gate, some are more slower than others. Reply
TimEMcGough - Thursday, April 17, 2014 - linkThis is actually part of the reason why I really like my T100 and its 768p resolution. With a 10.1" screen, the ~155dpi to my eye is pretty darned good with 100% scaling. Much higher DPI and everything gets too small without scaling and, sadly, I use plenty of those Adobe applications on a regular basis. http://buyh.tk/wC Reply
coastwalker - Sunday, April 20, 2014 - linkPathetic. We have a generation of morons who think that a 16:9 video display is suitable for writing documents on. They also seem to believe that swiping the screen actually has something to do with productive activity. Its all a bit of a laugh watching civilization go down the plug hole. Reply
eddman - Tuesday, April 15, 2014 - link"One of the problems holding developers back is that there have been few high resolution devices on the market"
What?! Holding them back?! Nothing was/is holding them back except for their own laziness, incompetence and total lack of respect for windows programing guidelines; and they call themselves developers.
Yes, the desktop aspect of windows is quite open, but it doesn't mean you should develop a butchered application and then even be proud of it. Reply
YuLeven - Tuesday, April 15, 2014 - linkAnd whist it's easy to accept 'developers' of freeware software being lazy to properly code their software with the current age of computing in mind, it's baffling to see Adobe charging hundreds of dollars for that rubbish UI of them, a problem that persists for years since the first HiDPI personal computers now. Reply
bountygiver - Tuesday, April 15, 2014 - linkand at the same time high DPI actually benefits designers the most, but the largest developer for designers' applications is one of these lazy bums... Reply
beginner99 - Wednesday, April 16, 2014 - linkWasn't surprised Adobe is affected by this. Their software is general pretty bloated and crappy. I mean Acrobat is a 1 GB+ install for working with pdf's. WTF? Reply
gerz1219 - Wednesday, April 16, 2014 - linkAdobe's software is the best on the market. Their problem has always been is that there's a huge disconnect between the needs of creative/design professionals, and the needs of casual users. They design for the professional market, even though a lot of more casual users may want to edit a PDF or Photoshop their friend's face onto a dog.
Acrobat is a 1 GB download because it includes all manner of print production, image scaling, and text recognition features, which the casual user doesn't need to delete a page out of a PDF. So if you only ever use the software to merge two PDF's, it looks bloated. But it's not! Almost every feature of Acrobat has saved me time at one time or another.
Regarding the scaling -- as a motion graphics and design professional, I *like* the small text in the UI. It gives me more screen real estate for my projects. The problem for anyone working in AfterEffects and Premiere is always that there's never enough screen real estate to see everything at once. Adobe has been slow to add in HiDPI scaling because their core market doesn't need or want it. It's a request from casual Photoshop users who only need the erase tool and the clone stamp tool to copy their friend's face onto a dog, and most of those users are still torrenting CS6. Reply
chaos215bar2 - Wednesday, April 16, 2014 - linkAs stated in the article, it's the professionals that are likely to be first to adopt high DPI monitors or (for a Mac example) case-sensitive file systems. It's rather telling that Adobe CS still don't work on case-sensitive filesystems after five major releases. All they have to do is make sure their apps always use the correct case when accessing a file! It's not that difficult, they just don't care.
It's great that you like the small text, but you're always free to set Windows to 96 DPI. In fact, if Adobe properly supported scaling, you could even set it lower to get more working space if that's what you wanted.. Reply
pixelstuff - Tuesday, April 15, 2014 - linkNot to mention, apparently Adobe has created a HiDPI interface for OSX. So it's not exactly like they are having to reinvent the wheel on Windows. Reply
jamyryals - Tuesday, April 15, 2014 - linkMost developers are doing what was scoped for a project. DPI scaling was not very important for many years. It was difficult to assign resources to a problem when it was an issue that few encountered. Believe it or not, but most decisions in development are based on priority and not laziness. Go ahead and keep shaking your fist at them though, you'll show 'em! Reply
eddman - Tuesday, April 15, 2014 - linkAre you one of such developers, because I don't see how anyone can defend such practices.
There are these things called guidelines. You don't need to have project "scopes" or resources to follow them. If a developer doesn't care to follow such basic things, then he/she doesn't deserve any respect. Reply
npaladin2000 - Tuesday, April 15, 2014 - linkWhen your project manager says "don't bother programming for DPI scaling, we don't have the time, and we have to meet this deadline in order to get paid on time" then you skip the frigging DPI scaling. Get it? Reply
eddman - Tuesday, April 15, 2014 - linkThey would actually demand it?! Is it really that hard to code a DPI-aware program? I have a hard time believing the latter.
If it is easy and yet they still ignore, then it is even worse than I thought. Reply
inighthawki - Wednesday, April 16, 2014 - linkAgain, I see you don't work in the software industry. Every feature takes time. If that time is not in the current milestone budget, it gets cut. So yes, it happens, and your project manager absolutely can demand you not work on it. Reply
Alexey291 - Wednesday, April 16, 2014 - linkSometimes I wonder if any of the people here have ever worked in ANY industry let alone as developers.
Every project in the damn world has a set of priorities and you don't "just decide" to throw something in unless you're told to. Reply
Gigaplex - Wednesday, April 16, 2014 - linkYes, it really is that hard to code DPI-awareness into a Win32 application. The API is horrendous. Reply
UsernameAlreadyExists - Wednesday, April 16, 2014 - linkThus, since around 2007 (2006-2008?) writing Windows applications with WPF has been possible..
"Windows Store apps require far less work from the developer in order to achieve this scaling. The app doesn't have to be DPI aware, because by default all applications automatically are. Instead, things such as XAML layouts and SVG graphics allow the apps to be rescaled completely by the operating system."
XAML, since 2008 or so has allowed the programs to be rescaled completely by the operating system. Might have been nice to mention this in the article. Reply
Klimax - Thursday, April 17, 2014 - linkIf it is hard for you and like, then don't do UI yourself and use bloody framework or toolkit.
And I am sure similar docs were there for all those years... Reply
inighthawki - Tuesday, April 15, 2014 - linkI take it you're not a developer? Or else you'd understand at large companies you have a set of tasks, a time limit, and you have to cut certain features and prioritize them to customer needs. In Adobe's case, maybe, despite what you may think, their research showed that few people needed a high DPI UI, so resources were spent on other features first. Reply
npaladin2000 - Tuesday, April 15, 2014 - linkYes I am a developer, working for a large multinational ecommerce provider. And I just said exactly what you did only I was much coarser and simpler in my language in the hopes that it will penetrate some of the thicker skulls out there. But the bottom line is that you apply hours to the features that are either functionally required, contractually required, or will actually be used. If something's unlikely to be used or isn't a specifically requested feature, it's not going to get resources spent on it. Why would you? That would essentially be throwing away money. Those hours could be spent on something else that will actually generate revenue instead. Reply
Murloc - Tuesday, April 15, 2014 - linkhe was answering to eddman, not you, look at the comment indentation. Reply
inighthawki - Tuesday, April 15, 2014 - linkI was replying to eddman. Anandtech's comments section could use a small upgrade. After like 4 levels of replies it's impossible to tell who is replying to whom. Reply
JDG1980 - Tuesday, April 15, 2014 - linkYou're missing the point. You have to *actively do something wrong* for DPI scaling to not work properly. The standard guidelines for Windows API programming have included support for HiDPI for years. If you don't have time to program your own custom controls that support HiDPI, then use the standard controls. If you have time to reinvent the wheel for your project, then you have time to do it right. Reply
Gigaplex - Wednesday, April 16, 2014 - link"If you have time to reinvent the wheel for your project, then you have time to do it right."
I wish this was true, however it's not. As deadlines loom, you do whatever you need to in order to get it to work. It would be nice to use standard controls for everything, but they aren't flexible enough for that. Reply
darthrevan13 - Wednesday, April 16, 2014 - linkThen why set the flag to true? So that there would be more problems? Reply
Zoomer - Monday, April 21, 2014 - linkSame issue with VLC - fidelity in rendering the work is essential. Small UI vs your artwork rendered wrong - not hard to see what customers will choose. Many pros already memorized the keyboard shortcuts anyway. Reply
twtech - Tuesday, April 15, 2014 - linkIf you are ever involved with software development, one of the things you will learn is that there is always more to do, and there will always be more to do than you can ever get done. So you must prioritize what you're going to work on.
If you want to devote the time to DPI scaling, that means something else that you could be doing is not going to get done. When most displays were all roughly around the same PPI, it just didn't make sense to prioritize DPI scaling highly relative to other work. Reply
phoenix_rizzen - Tuesday, April 15, 2014 - linkYeah. Everyone seems to forget that before LCDs took over and relegated us to a wasteland of 720p and 1080p panels, hi-resolution and hi-dpi monitors were commonplace. 1600x1200 was common in the 90s, and usually under/around 20". 1280x1024 was even more common at 14-17".
Don't feel like doing the math on those, but they should be over 100 DPI. Reply
Brett Howse - Tuesday, April 15, 2014 - linkYou should do the math - 1280x1024 @ 17" is 96 DPI (called out in the article) and 1600x1200 @ 21" is also exactly 96 DPI.
So not high DPI. Even going down a couple inches on screen size isn't going to change the DPI much. Reply
MonkeyPaw - Tuesday, April 15, 2014 - linkInterestingly enough, I had an Acer "Centrino" laptop circa 2004 that I believe had a 14" screen at 1280x1024. I remember needing to use 125% scaling. It was my first high DPI experience. Reply
solraun - Tuesday, April 15, 2014 - linkGreat article! Thank you for calling out Adobe. But you are right, they are probably working overtime for a solution.
One important point though:
The resolution dictates how much detail any screen can display. The screen size determines how far away you want to be.
Actual dpi is unimportant.
The bigger the screen, the further away you will want to use it. The actual field of view, or angle, that the screen represents in for your eye stays the same. Sit in front of your monitor, then take out your smart phone and place it in the distance you would normally use it, but in front of the monitor. It will mostly match the outlines of the monitor.
So for me, if I am using 1080p on my 24'' screen or 1080p on my 5'' smartphone: it is the same number of pixels per degree of my view.
Similarly, I just bought a 4k 24'' screen, and while many people say 4k makes only sense on bigger displays, I disagree. I would have to sit further away from a 30'' monitor, and I don't have the space.
I Reply
bountygiver - Tuesday, April 15, 2014 - linkthat's why windows 8.1 has a feature that solve this.
It queries the dpi and screen size and calculate the viewing distance and decide how it scales.
And I love how it scales real time when you move the apps across different monitors. Reply
Taracta - Tuesday, April 15, 2014 - linkAdobe, with postscript and PDF (especially PDF which was meant to scale from the 10s of DPI on monitors to thousands of DPI on printing presses) in their portfolio that were meant to scale with DPI and their applications don't scale properly! RIDICULOUSNESS! Reply
bengildenstein - Tuesday, April 15, 2014 - linkWhat? We're now giving Apple sole credit for the trend to improve mobile screen resolutions? Utterly preposterous.
The DPI race did not "begin" with the iPhone 4. Screen resolutions (and by direct implication PPI/DPIs -- given a fixed screen area) have been steadily increasing over time, with Android devices showing a far smoother increase curve than the single iPhone "retina" release. Additionally the increase in resolution requires a larger industry of components to support them. And smartphone resolutions continue to increase while the iPhone screen remains stagnant at a sub-HD resolution.
I'm not arguing whether Apple is influential. But I think it's high-time that we stop crediting them with creating innovations that have already happened and were trending at the time of their release. Reply
Taracta - Tuesday, April 15, 2014 - linkApple deserve the credit for the increase in DPI and screen resolutions. Without Apple you would not have had the Android device push ever higher DPI and laptops with now 4K screens. The only thing that was happening was the defaulting of resolutions to 1080p because of HDTV but DPI was actually going down as you were just getting bigger and bigger 1080p monitors. Actually 1080p was a regression from the 1920X1200 monitors that had existed before!
So yes, Apple deserve the credit for starting the trend of increasing DPI and resolution. Reply
evonitzer - Tuesday, April 15, 2014 - linkIn the phone space, not exactly. The OG iPhone, 3G, and 3GS were all 320x480 devices (165ppi). Meanwhile, Android phones had bumped their way up to 480x800 and 480x854 (265ppi @ 3.7"). The 3GS was released in June 2009, and 4-5 months later the OG Droid came out with a higher resolution. Then in June 2010 Apple released the iPhone 4, which further bumped up the resolution to 'retina', or 330 ppi. I'm not sure when the first 720P Android phone came out, but roughly 16 months later, Android phones matched the 330ppi and have kept going up.
So I dunno. Perhaps the Android manufacturers would have stagnated without Apple countering them in 2010, but I would suggest that Android phones were pressuring Apple to improve and so they did. Push and pull from good competition. Who deserves the credit? Reply
Brett Howse - Tuesday, April 15, 2014 - linkIt's all about marketing. The "Retina" branding of the screens worked with consumers.
You could say the same about the Touch ID. Not the first phone with a fingerprint sensor, but certainly the first one that average consumers would know about.
In tech, it's rarely about who gets to market first, but more about who resonates with consumers with a product and in these two cases I'd argue Apple did that.
They are not always the product innovators, but sometimes they are the ones that get average people to know enough to ask about an innovation. Reply
hackbod - Wednesday, April 16, 2014 - linkIf you think us having high density displays in mobile today owes *anything* to Apple, you are delusional. This would have happened without Apple lifting a finger, it was *already* happening without them, and was actually happening long before the iPhone came out.
Android devices were clearly increasing screen densities first, and in the Android world as soon as that happened, the platform had the full extensive density support it has today that allows seamless scaling down and up in density, to 320dpi and beyond, without changes to applications (once they were tweaked to be compatible with the implementation in Android 1.6, which was even a bit before the Droid). Nobody needed to push this along: screen resolution has *always* been one of those marketing numbers manufacturers use to convince people that their hardware is better, and in fact for the densities we are talking about here this is one of the more useful numbers because its impact is clearly visible right on the screen. The fact that they continue to push screen densities up to 480dpi and beyond pretty clearly shows that nobody needed Apple to make up a word and act like they were the Big Innovator in order to spur things on.
But this was all happening well before Android or the iPhone. This increase in screen density actually happened well before that, in the Palm device world, with the introduction double density (160dpi) screens on Palm devices and support in that platform for scaling based on density. In fact this experience with how important it is to handle multiple densities on mobile devices had a big impact on the design of Android, planning for this from the start and thus having better intrinsic support for it.
If you are actually familiar at all with the development of the mobile market, I think it is pretty clear that this increase in density is actually some intrinsic aspect to this market compared to what happened in desktops. There are probably a lot of reasons for this; for example, mobile screens can't really grow in size so increases in screen pixels need to be done as density increases rather than screen size increases, and these screens are starting at a much lower resolution so the simple 2x jump in density is a lot easier (keep in mind that 2x screen density means 4x the pixels to render, and when you are talking about desktop screens starting from their current resolutions that actually pushes you up in to resolutions that are pretty expensive to drive).
Thinking that Apple had anything to do with pushing this part of the industry just shows a severe lack of knowledge about the history of the mobile market. Reply
Taracta - Friday, April 18, 2014 - linkI could say the IBM started the high density displays with the T220/T221 4K 22" monitors in 2001 with a ~200 DPI but I won't because these were not followed up on like the Sony laptop display you mentioned. I believe that it only counts when you follow up on it and make it part of your product portfolio, which is what Apple did, which forced the others to do it too.
So I give credit to Apple and not IBM, for them mainstreaming HiDPI by requesting HiDPI panels from their ODMs suppliers. This in turn allowed the others to have access to the technology but Apple was the leader in mainstreaming it. Reply
Gigaplex - Wednesday, April 16, 2014 - linkApple didn't make the panels, they bought them off suppliers that were making them anyway. Often those panel suppliers were also Android manufacturers, so don't try to tell us that those screens wouldn't have made it to Android without Apple. Reply
yasamoka - Wednesday, April 16, 2014 - linkHint, those displays were MADE for Apple. Upon Apple's request. Nobody cares who made the displays, they didn't appear out of thin air and then Apple went: OH PERFECT, this is a perfect fit! Reply
psyq321 - Thursday, April 17, 2014 - linkSony introduced a 4" 1024x600 display (296 PPI) in 2007 --> look up Sony Vaio UX
Sony also introduced a 13" 1920x1080 display (170 PPI) in 2010 --> look up Sony Vaio VPC-Z
So, no, Apple did not invent high DPI screens. Apple invented a marketing name for them ("Retina"), though.
By the way, Apple's notebook displays were low-DPI garbage before Retina Macbook Pro. I switched to Retina Macbook Pro since Sony stopped innovating and retired Vaio Z and Apple finally decided to produce a real high-end notebook. I could not even think of this before Apple decided to put a decent resolution display in their notebook. Reply
psyq321 - Thursday, April 17, 2014 - linkBefore I switched to 15" Retina Macbook Pro, I had all generations of Sony Vaio Z.
Sony switched to 13" Full HD panels in 2010. Two years before Apple's switch to "retina" screens in their laptops. Before Apple Retina Macbook Pro, the DPI of their notebooks was pathetic.
Also, Sony had Vaio UX with 1024x600 4" screen in 2007. Reply
munim - Tuesday, April 15, 2014 - linkThese problems are why I won't be upgrading from my 96 DPI 24 inch monitor for the foreseeable future. Reply
jhoff80 - Tuesday, April 15, 2014 - link"The Surface Pro's on-device screen is set at 200% scaling which is necessary to make that resolution work on a 10" screen"
No, it isn't. Out of the box, the Surface Pro and Surface Pro 2 are set to 150% scaling on their own displays. And for what it's worth, 125% scaling is completely usable as well - I've used it that way since release of the Pro 1 (since upgraded to the Pro 2). Reply
bountygiver - Tuesday, April 15, 2014 - linkExactly, even with only 125%, I have no problem navigating most legacy applications with touch. Reply
Brett Howse - Tuesday, April 15, 2014 - linkSorry about that - fixed now. Reply
darthrevan13 - Tuesday, April 15, 2014 - link"Few high resolution devices"? That's no excuse! You can move the slider up to 150-200% even on your current low res display and then things will have to get 1.5-2 times bigger. It's not hard at all! I am a developer and I can't understand that. Microsoft released the API for this at the start of 2007, that makes 6 years not including this one.
Most of all Adobe has no excuse at all! They should offer all of their next version apps which scale correctly for free! Reply
JDG1980 - Tuesday, April 15, 2014 - linkAdobe is a company full of whiners. When the Surface Pro came out, the pen didn't work in Photoshop because it used the Microsoft Ink API, instead of WinTab. (WinTab was supposed to be a free standard, but is tied up by a patent troll.) When Adobe was asked to fix this, they said "Waaaah, Ink API is too hard and we don't like it, so MS will have to support the old API instead." Unfortunately, Microsoft backed down instead of forcing Adobe to do the right thing. And we're seeing this same thing again with HiDPI support for Windows: "Waaah, it's too hard, we don't like the APIs, please Microsoft fix it for us". It's been pointed out to them multiple times that many other apps manage to do it just fine, but no, Adobe is a special snowflake and it has to be their way. Everyone else has to conform to them. Can't expect them to do any real work for the thousands of dollars per unit that they're being paid by graphics professionals. Reply
jhoff80 - Tuesday, April 15, 2014 - linkThat had been a problem for nearly a decade. However, Adobe has now added Ink API support to Illustrator and Photoshop in their newest updates.
And while I definitely fault Adobe for taking so long to add the Ink API, Microsoft still needed to get a Wintab driver. Adobe is not the only company that wasn't (at the time) using the Ink API. Even now, Photoshop is covered, sure. That doesn't help with Mischief, or 3D modeling programs, or any number of other Wintab-only applications. Reply
Imaginer - Tuesday, April 15, 2014 - linkYou do not need to wait for a Microsoft WinTab driver. Wacom's FeelIT drivers for Tablet PCs has been updated for the Pros since last year around May.
And, the drivers work for any Wacom pen-enabled displays. This driver, allows me to have two side buttons to assign functions and work with on particular pens out there (most definitely not the Surface Pen). Reply
jhoff80 - Tuesday, April 15, 2014 - linkYes, that is exactly the driver we were talking about waiting for. That issue is fixed now on both ends. Microsoft/Wacom have their Wintab driver, and Adobe now also supports the Ink API. But when the Surface Pro first came out, neither of those things were true. Reply
twtech - Tuesday, April 15, 2014 - linkIn an ideal world, every huge old codebase like Photoshop's would be very clean, and adding another pen interface would be relatively straightforward.
In reality, they probably had WinTab-specific code sprinkled in there in various places, which made fixing the problem more difficult, and includes the possibility that the WinTab stuff wouldn't work right afterward if any mistakes were made during the process of making that code generic. Reply
JDG1980 - Wednesday, April 16, 2014 - linkWell, that's why we pay them the big bucks. It's their responsibility to keep their code base clean and maintainable, not everyone else's responsibility to pander to their pile of spaghetti code. Reply
kasakka - Sunday, April 20, 2014 - linkMy experience with Adobe is that while the guys working on the image manipulation algorithms are absolutely brilliant, the folks behind the UI and QA are borderline incompetent. Adobe's software has been riddled with a shitload of small UI flaws (ranging from wrong fonts to incorrectly positioned controls to more severe stuff) for years and they don't seem to bother doing anything about it. These are probably the same people we can thank for not having proper DPI scaling. Reply
skiboysteve - Tuesday, April 15, 2014 - linkGreat article. Kudos on writing this up so clearly Reply
r3loaded - Tuesday, April 15, 2014 - linkThe problem is that developers for the Mac are far more enthusiastic and invested in their platform, so when the rMBP was launched many of the big names rushed to add HiDPI support to their programs (either straight out of the gate or within a couple of months), giving a good user experience. There's also a general culture of following Apple's guidelines on UI design and UX best practices.
On the Windows side, many developers can't give a crap about UX problems and blatantly ignore Microsoft's guidelines and best practices, preferring to do it their way. They still haven't got around to fixing their programs. I wonder if many ever will.
Unless there's a big shift in culture and attitude, we're going to continue seeing scaling issues in Windows programs (issues that are in reality the fault of developers, not Windows itself). Reply
jhoff80 - Tuesday, April 15, 2014 - linkTo be honest, this is exactly why I feel that Metro needed (and still needs) to continue being pushed forward, as much as most power users hate it. Sure, there are some great desktop / Win32 apps, but they haven't really been relevant for years, and most developers just don't care enough any more to update them in really essential ways for the future (High DPI being the prime example). WinRT / Metro definitely still are rough around the edges, but in forcing developers to cut ties, it also forces a lot of progress on these fronts. Reply
microlithx - Wednesday, April 16, 2014 - linkNow if only the Modern environment wasn't a walled garden, I would support what you're saying. Unfortunately, I can't get behind ignoring the desktop for high DPI in the future so long as Microsoft tries to mimic Apple's lock down fetish. Reply
Imaginer - Tuesday, April 15, 2014 - linkI have complained about AutoCAD not scaling properly under 1080p resolutions and at 125% scaling or even 150%. But I believed Autodesk listened since, because on my Surface Pro (and Pro 2), I haven't had an issue with their ribbons or layout.
The only minor complaint, is their help and search minibar cannot be moved and it obscures the minimize and maximize buttons on their main AutoCAD window. Reply
nportelli - Tuesday, April 15, 2014 - linkPC screen DPI took a hit when "HD" TV's came out. I had a 15" 1920x1200 laptop, after HDTV became popular I could barely find a 15" 1080p laptop. My old CRT monitor ran in a '4k' resolution. None of this is new, we've just been set back about 10 years due to people thinking 768p screens are acceptable. Reply
phoenix_rizzen - Tuesday, April 15, 2014 - linkExactly. There's a reason Windows 9x, WinNT 4-XP all came with two default values for DPI: 96 and 120. 120 DPI screens have been around since the CRT days, and using 120 DPI setting in Windows on a 120 DPI CRT was a very pleasant experience. Granted, some of those displays were 75-100 lbs behemoths, but they were around.
Once LCDs started taking off, 720p and 1080p with <100 DPI become "the norm" and everything stagnated there for a decade or so. :(
Considering the timelines, there's really no excuse other than laziness for why things don't work in a resolution-independent fashion ~30 years after the release of Windows 95. Reply
azazel1024 - Tuesday, April 15, 2014 - linkThis is actually part of the reason why I really like my T100 and its 768p resolution. With a 10.1" screen, the ~155dpi to my eye is pretty darned good with 100% scaling. Much higher DPI and everything gets too small without scaling and, sadly, I use plenty of those Adobe applications on a regular basis.
I certainly wouldn't mind if my laptop and desktop displays were a wee closer to 150dpi also (14" 768p and 23" 1080p respectively). Or, say, 140ish dpi for the laptop and 120ish dpi for the monitor would probably "perfect" to my eye, until MS/Windows gets around the scaling issues with legacy applications. Reply
Imaginer - Tuesday, April 15, 2014 - linkOne other thing about UI adherence, is that some software developers may not take advantage of the touch scrolling aspects that I found you can do with things like File explorer windows and some browsers (Opera).
I am giving you the evil eye Valve's Steam. Your UI for the longest time only had a fixed scaling, not being able to keep with the OS's DPI scaling. Thus your excuse for that "Big Picture" mode that is SLOW (at my initial trying and at times still is now). If you could just tune that scaling, it would be fine for a wireless trackball and keyboard HTPC setup (and maybe some mouses that work on couch cushions...). Reply
yhselp - Friday, April 18, 2014 - linkYes, Steam. Steam... The UI is so small even on a 23" 1080p monitor that it's practically unusable. Hundreds of thousands of people strain their eyes on a daily basis and Valve haven't done anything about it, all these years. Given how much money they make off it and the high profile of the application it seems ludicrous. Reply
eSyr - Tuesday, April 15, 2014 - link> APIs to retrieve monitor DPI No No No No Yes
Ehrrr, WHAT. How about GetDeviceCaps() ( http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dd144877%2... ) with nindex set to HORZSIZE or VERTSIZE. This is part of WinAPI since. like, forever. Reply
Brett Howse - Tuesday, April 15, 2014 - linkThat's the old XP style - you need to read your entire link:
Note GetDeviceCaps reports info that the display driver provides. If the display driver declines to report any info, GetDeviceCaps calculates the info based on fixed calculations. If the display driver reports invalid info, GetDeviceCaps returns the invalid info. Also, if the display driver declines to report info, GetDeviceCaps might calculate incorrect info because it assumes either fixed DPI (96 DPI) or a fixed size (depending on the info that the display driver did and didn't provide). Unfortunately, a display driver that is implemented to the Windows Display Driver Model (WDDM) (introduced in Windows Vista) causes GDI to not get the info, so GetDeviceCaps must always calculate the info.
So it's a calculated value and not always accurate. The new API uses Extended display identification data (EDID) to provide the actual screen size. This specific API for the monitor DPI rather than system DPI is new to Windows 8.1. Reply
bji - Wednesday, April 16, 2014 - linkWhy couldn't Microsoft have updated the old GetDeviceCaps API to use the EDID data internally so that it could be more accurate in more situations, as well as providing a new API with more detail as well? Or maybe it did and its documentation is now out of date? Reply
kasakka - Sunday, April 20, 2014 - linkMany monitors and TVs have reportedly messed up EDID data so it's probably not completely reliable. Reply
invinciblegod - Tuesday, April 15, 2014 - linkNow that I think about it, how would you side swipe with a windowed modern app (to access settings)? Would you sideswipe the application or the edge of the panel? If it's the edge of the panel, that would be sort of weird since it's not part of the window (ironically, Mac users would not find this dichotomy confusing as they already have one in the Menu bar). Reply
Brett Howse - Tuesday, April 15, 2014 - linkAlways swipe the right side to access settings.
If you have two metro apps (or more) open an snapped, it will do settings for the active (last used) window. If you're not sure which is active, the bar in between the two (or more) metro apps will have three dots and a bar, with the bar always on the side of the active app. Reply
Brett Howse - Tuesday, April 15, 2014 - linkTo specifically answer your question about windowed - obviously we're not sure yet what they will do but I imagine it will be the same as now with the active window having the settings but we won't know until we see some bits from Windows 9. Reply
Laststop311 - Tuesday, April 15, 2014 - linkpoor dpi scaling has kept me away from high dpi notebooks. I'm hoping for an alienware 18" m18x with gtx 980m 20nm flagship maxwell in sli and a 4k ips screen. Even tho my personally upgraded m18x r1 is still goin strong with 4.2ghz core i7-2960xm + gtx 680m sli the massive battery gains i will get going to 1st gen 14nm broadwell + 1st gen 20nm maxwell from 2nd gen 32nm sandy bridge + 1st gen 28nm will make it worth it. Just hope sli gtx 980m is enough to game in 4k on at least 1 step below ultra settings Reply
Antronman - Tuesday, April 15, 2014 - linkIf you actually want an alienware, you don't the first thing about technology.
Here, let me fill you in:
Alienwares = Overpriced, underperforming Dells. Reply
bznotins - Tuesday, April 15, 2014 - linkI tried running Win8 in VM on a 13" MBP and even with the tweaks noted in this article, Chrome still doesn't look half as good as it does in OSX. I have no idea if this is a Win8 problem or a Chrome problem (or both), but regardless it keeps me from considering a high DPI Windows laptop. Or even running Win8 fulltime on my MBP. Hopefully they get it fixed at some point in the future. Reply
Accord99 - Tuesday, April 15, 2014 - linkChrome probably, it used to work well in HiDPI back late last year but something that Google did broke Chrome completely for a period of time, then only partially fixed.
I don't care too much because I prefer using Firefox which works well. Reply
darthrevan13 - Wednesday, April 16, 2014 - linkIt also could be the VM driver. It looks okay on a native windows machine with high DPI Reply
rxzlmn - Tuesday, April 15, 2014 - linkHow about the other side of the high DPI development, hardware scaling? I have read multiple times on forums that high DPI screens would often not be able to properly scale down to a lower native resolution (i.e. that is an exact fraction of the original resolution), due to internal electronics still doing some kind of interpolation instead of pixel binning.
For instance, I plan to buy a 4K laptop in the near future (the Lenovo Y50 probably), and one point why I want 4K and not 3K or something else is, that 4K would be able to natively scale down to both 720p (for games) and 1080p (for desktop stuff that is not usable via Windows DPI setting, yes, I'm looking at you Adobe).
Does anyone have any insight on whether a 4K display on a notebook would use pixel binning to scale down? Or not? And if so, why, and will this be an issue that is intrinsic to the monitor, or somehow be tweakable by SW? Reply
Antronman - Tuesday, April 15, 2014 - link4k display on a notebook would have to be achieved with top-end mobile graphics.
The display would likely need a 30Hz refresh rate to avoid screen tears. It would really only be something practical for 2D artists who do a lot of their work on the go.
As far as scaling, I imagine it would work exactly the same as on an external monitor. Reply
darthrevan13 - Wednesday, April 16, 2014 - linkBeing a week before the Toshiba Satellite P55t no one has any answer but looking at their 65L9300U UHDTV with 60hz and real HDMI 2.0 that launched not too much time ago things aren't looking so bright because when put on a lower resolution things get a little blurry. The scaler is hardware based (to keep up with the enormous resolution and refresh rate) not software based so until someone makes a silicon that viably handles 4K, 1080p and 720p you'll be stuck. Reply
B3an - Friday, April 18, 2014 - linkI don't know why people like you think that 4k is hard to do. An average GPU can easily handle 4k @ 60hz. It's only for gaming that requires something more powerful. Reply
B3an - Tuesday, April 15, 2014 - linkBrett - nice article. One thing i wanted to point out though is that the workaround you mention for Chrome does not work. Turning on HiDPI still has issues. The UI is messed up and pixelated, and text still isn't rendered correctly - the spacing of the letters is messed up. You can also see this in your text screenshot, look at the word "committing", the two M's are too close together. With other letters some are too far apart (depends on the word). Chrome is just screwed up, it's best you FF or IE. FF has small issues though but the text atleast renders correctly. Reply
Tujan - Wednesday, April 16, 2014 - linkPerhaps the ideas about a notebook,or a tablet concerning the displays are somewhat different than a standalone monitor with different manufactured possibilities. That is a Hi ppi on a notebook is not 'exactly' a PNP device. It may even be moreso (not pnp) presently when graphics cards,and monitors have several different plugs available HDMI,Display Port,VGA,DVI ect. . At least more presently,the high PPI for purposes of updating applications might be considered something other than PNP - to that requiring a driver from the manufacturer. Or that would provide a foundation for its feature set.
I say this not necesarily as a priority. But in a role model that would consist of running with the display driver,and would as well become consistant with the programming coordinates.
The System wide DPI thing as with XP,this was one example of a the difference in application independent resolutions. The application itself,the system menus,title bars,start menus,desktop fonts as well as default texting was something wich was system wide among ALL applications.
You also said that Apple applications are PPI aware. And that exactly takes the coding to create applications for the PPI in use.
Then that the 'SetProcessDPIAwareness',a setting in the Windows newer application programming base is something that can do pretty much the same.
Funny thing about VLC,is that I'm wanting to ask what file type the video was which had anything to do with the DPI.
And with this,most of the modern day programing I'm suspecting is the standardization of,and off of the XML type 'Webbies coding. And this is a complete modernized code based from the W3C,type and formerly HTML type standards. Then those standards would be instilled to the screen programming.
Thus not C+,C++,python etc.
With the Adobe,the picture there,it isn't said if the screen was a 24"4K,or a 12" hi PPI screen.
I'll wrap my comment up with what I noted at the first, is the monitors they are PNP (are they not ). Or are they just 'not exactly pnp'. There is video drivers but not a monitor driver.I'm just looking to show where you would 'map the platte',for /from .
So where am I going ? With Windows code base as XML - the webbies. There is still the matrix of the PNP monitor. That perhaps isn't pnp- or shouldn't be. Now there are graphics drivers for other programming (Try OpenGL) . That are plenty more than just page elements.
Windows also has some apps which is Dirx capable. That is perhaps a solution. But I suspect there is some fantastic code that needs to run independent DPI/PPI. That is requiring the metrics to do so. With whichever/whatever operating system is being used. Or what monitor is being used.
Try running for example,a legacy 640x480 dimension ,that scales in leisure on that 4K monitor. You can of course turn on ,and turn off whichever monitor pixel you want. But look,it scales in inches. The application.
Try running a legacy 800x600 resolution to the same. See it is the 'monitor',that is stuck in its resolution . It is somewhat might be the same,as having a virtual op.sys.run in a virtual window for a different second virtualize op.sys. .
You can run virtualized monitors,in application space,that scales to suffice the viewing logistics.
MOst of this article has put across the independent applications space. But not yet the independent resolution of a the application in the monitors dynamic space. And everybody needs those numbers.
I would say the monitors must be able to use independant low resolution in dynamic space .
Just saying.
P.S.Thanks for the charts. Reply
Tujan - Wednesday, April 16, 2014 - linkmean if you need 96 ppi . You have it . If you need 640x480 in 24 inches . You have x amount of dots/pionts per inch to address. Either use those pixels. Or dont use them. You may in fact have a window doing x amount of hrz. . Then another window doing a different hrz . Just to make things easier to understand . Reply
Pinkynator - Wednesday, April 16, 2014 - linkI have a reasonable idea: don't invent custom DPI.
If an old 23-24" monitor is 1920x1080 (that's 96 DPI, IIRC), a new model should be 3840x2160 (which should then be double, 192 DPI, and that's more than enough for a desktop monitor for anyone in the world not to notice individual pixels).
Don't have a high-DPI app? Just scale assets in both dimensions by exactly 2. Your toolbar icons don't get blurry due to resizing. Fonts don't get blurry, either.
Have a high-DPI app? Okay then, let the app give Windows its new high-res icons and let it render fonts with greater accuracy.
Movies and games? They can render at 1920x1080 and will look exactly the same as they previously used to. No blurring because of resizing algorithms: every pixel gets quadrupled, plain and simple.
With this "solution", everything looks just like it used to (no compatibility issues whatsoever), except when app developers explicitly decide to make things look better - and handling a straight-up 2x scale is a lot easier than today.
"But wait!", I hear you cry, "I like my 125 DPI on this screen! It shows more of the UI!"
Let me know how that goes in a few years, when your vision starts deteriorating due to aging, and you find even 96 DPI to be a wee bit too small. Reply
DarkXale - Wednesday, April 16, 2014 - linkI really recommend you actually, you know, read the article? Reply
Pinkynator - Wednesday, April 16, 2014 - linkI did. You didn't understand what I wrote :)
You're not looking at the big picture. Handling DPI issues is insanely hard on legacy systems, which is why the only painless solution is to quadruple everything - based on 96 DPI. Then you get 192 DPI (or 288 DPI) "for free".
Everything else is going to be hacks. We're still not truly in the era of high-DPI Windows machines, so there's STILL time to just unhack everything and go for easily-dealt-with multiples of 96. Reply
UsernameAlreadyExists - Wednesday, April 16, 2014 - link>"Handling DPI issues is insanely hard on legacy systems, which is why the only painless solution is to quadruple everything"
And this here is the reason for the Retina display (and also the rather crazy current iPhone resolution), as the iPhone apps do not handle scaling at all. This was probably the cause for the rather low resolution with the last Symbian phones, 4x would have required 25% more pixels than iPhone 4, and would have been too expensive at the time of their release.
However, I think going forward and just breaking things is the correct way. Winforms have their problems, but XAML makes rather many things easy. (The paradigm shift is rather big though) Reply
Lundmark - Wednesday, April 16, 2014 - linkPeople who like image quality should get a MacBook. Reply
wwwcd - Wednesday, April 16, 2014 - linkThis numbers of DPI or/and PPI(which is the same thing) didn't make me satisfaction. I will wait for 8K(+) resolution for my next large dimensional PC/TV display. Reply
aron9621 - Wednesday, April 16, 2014 - linkPer display DPI scaling in Windows 8.1 is a joke. Try connecting a 180ppi Dell U2414Q and a 96ppi Dell 2413 to your computer, Windows is so dumb it doesn't even detect the correct DPI setting for the monitors, and worse, it doesn't allow you to change it. Oh yes, you can increase/decrease the DPI, but only for BOTH screens simultaneously, it doesn't matter if you have "Let me choose one scaling for all my displays" checked or unchecked, the only difference that setting makes is the way it breaks DPI unaware applications. So you are either stuck with one screen with normal elements and one with tiny ones, or with normal elements on the other screen and giant ones on the former one. And I yet have to figure out how Windows chooses which screen it opens the application on. Reply
caywen - Friday, April 18, 2014 - linkThis. Windows seems to have no idea how big my 24" samsung monitor is. I even have samsung's monitor driver installed. In display settings, Windows thinks my Yoga 2 Pro's 13" screen is 4x larger than my 24", presumably because it's still assuming resolution == size.
I really hope Microsoft fixes this. They should at least provide a way for us to say, "Windows, this monitor size is this big" and for Windows to say "righty ho, now I totally know this display's real DPI."
I feel like Microsoft is fumbling the ball. They give developers every gun to shoot their foot with, and give users useless tools to mitigate it. Reply
Gigaplex - Wednesday, April 16, 2014 - link"This application is the worst example of usability on a High DPI system that I've seen."
I'd pick small elements over element cropping/overflow any day. It's especially annoying when OK/Cancel buttons on dialogs are off-screen because their location wasn't calculated correctly. Reply
aeeroO - Wednesday, April 16, 2014 - link960x480 WHAT KIND OF SORCERY IS THAT? Every apple fanboy knows it's 960x640...Anand, where are you? Reply
StrangerGuy - Wednesday, April 16, 2014 - linkI find it especially baffling how could people even defend DPI laziness...in mid 2014.
What, you don't like progress, or are you still living in 2000? Reply
valhar2000 - Wednesday, April 16, 2014 - linkSo, once again, Microsoft gets blamed for the mistakes of other software developers. If only Adobe had a letter "s" in their name that could be easily replaced with a "$"... Reply
e_sandrs - Wednesday, April 16, 2014 - linkYou could use the Euro sign for the e and/or the Thai Baht for the b and/or the Vietnam Dong for the d? That's the best I could do. :)
A₫o฿€ Reply
berger0 - Wednesday, April 16, 2014 - linkAnyone know a work around to fix Chrome? In Chrome 35 they removed the HiDPI flag. I found some post that had me put the flag in the registry, but chrome looks really bad now. Anyone else running Chrome Beta or Canary seeing this issue? I am running the YogaPro 2 Reply
weebnuts - Wednesday, April 16, 2014 - linkThanks for the Google Chrome tip, it used to scale fine until a month or so ago, they must have changed things in the new versions when the new windows 8.1 update was released. Reply
Icehawk - Wednesday, April 16, 2014 - linkI just ran into this issue this week when I added a Dell 27" to my family of older 19x12 16:10 monitors - aside from the aspect ratio change in order to use the new Dell as my main monitor I need scaling or the text is too small - now my old monitors are cartoonishly large. Was hoping to skip W8 but will try W8.1U1 and see if it works better with the different DPI levels and doesn't drive me insane with Metro, ahem, I mean Modern. Reply
kgh00007 - Wednesday, April 16, 2014 - linkCheers for the tip on Chrome, it looks way better now on Win 8.1 on my 40" 1080p TV! Reply
fokka - Wednesday, April 16, 2014 - linki'm really thankful for the article shedding more light at this topic, maybe this will bring more developers to update their programs to feature better hidpi-skaling. Reply
vlad0 - Thursday, April 17, 2014 - linkGreat talk on DPI @ build2014
http://channel9.msdn.com/Events/Build/2014/2-535 Reply
liffie420 - Thursday, April 17, 2014 - linkThis is not really a comment on the article itself but something that the screen shots bring up dealing with web pages. This does not apply to all pages however, but with most people using a widescreen display (we are talking at least %95 at this point) regardless of actual resolution why is it that we page developers can not manage to scale the page elements to wide screen?? Having done a very small amount of hand coding html back in the day (16ish years ago) I know you want to aim for the LCD to be sure your pages load correctly on all browsers and across connection types. But why is it you can't fill the sides os your browser window with the actual site. Im in the newest chrome browser with a 22" lcd at 1080P yet the site itself only falls in the middle leaving a couple inches of screen empty. Yes you can F11 in most browsers and full screen but that still rarely fixes the issue. Just a pet peeve of mine is all. Reply
dorekk - Saturday, June 21, 2014 - linkBecause very wide lines of text are extremely awkward to read, so it's much better to make the text area of a website look roughly like a portrait-oriented piece of paper. Reply
Androidtech - Thursday, April 17, 2014 - linkI find it rather perplexing that a mobile operating system like Android is more capable at scaling resolutions than something as old as windows. I thought things are supposed to get better with age and experience. Oh well at least this summer we will have some new code for websites to scale properly ! Reply
caywen - Friday, April 18, 2014 - linkIn actuality, IE11 on Windows 8.1 isn't clear of these problems when doing multi-monitor. I have a Yoga 2 Pro connected to a 24" 1080p display. IE11 looks beautiful on the Y2P display, but when moved to the 24" display, the whole UI becomes enormous. The title bars are almost 1" thick! Clearly, Microsoft still have a few hurdles.
Other windows, when dragged between displays, instantly snap to their "normal" size on that display, but the effect is strange.
I think what they ought to do is:
- Support high-DPI virtualization where applications can advertise that they support, say, 200 or 300dpi. The author can then write their app specifically to that. Windows could then do the same DPI virtualization, but the scaling would then be much sharper (and almost always downwards).
- Draw *only* from the virtual buffer to each display. That way, there would be no snapping effect - just the app always being the right size even when between displays.
- Create a virtual buffer at the highest DPI of all the connected monitors and have 96dpi apps draw scaled-up into that buffer. The difference would be that text draw calls would draw at the native size rather than at 96dpi. At least the text in these apps would be razor sharp, if not the icons and other things. Reply
AnnonymousCoward - Saturday, April 19, 2014 - linkThe name "retina display" doesn't even make sense, because a retina senses light. Apple just went with "[some word associated with vision] display". Reply
Hrel - Monday, April 21, 2014 - link"but in almost all cases a better solution was to simply lower the resolution of the monitor, even if it introduced blurriness to the LCD image." - I worked at a local computer store back before Vista came out, and long after when we were still selling mostly XP and the client base was largely senior citizens. That quote was the bane of my existence. "Great, now they can see what they're looking at and my eyes are about to explode from the strain of looking at this shit image". Reply
Silma - Tuesday, April 22, 2014 - linkA few remarks:
- IBM offered high dpi monitors years before Apple did.
- the dpi scaling isn't per monitor in Windows 8.1 for the user. Windows 8.1 somehow adapts the scaling you choose for monitor A to monitor B. As a user of a 15.6 3200*1800 laptop and an external 2560*1440 27' monitor I can guarantee you the results are absolutely subpar. I am praying for the day where Windows recognizes I know better than it does what dpi scaling I want and let me specify individually dpi scaling per monitor.
- As for Adobe it is a disgrace. If you want to feel how many CS customers are pissed do a search for dpi scaling in their support forum. The official answer is that it is all Microsoft's fault and they are working with them. However 1. They refuse to give any timeframe. 2. It may be that the API needs fine tuning but by and large the problem lies with bad old programming from Adobe. There are many many desktops applications that scale perfectly with Windows 8/8.1 including some Adobe applications. To me it is unacceptable that PhotoShop still hasn't been fixed despite the astronomical upgrades prices (and now the cloud subscriptions extortion). That's why I switched to gimp, which sucks as much scaling-wise, but at least it's free. Reply
Netscorer - Friday, May 09, 2014 - linkMy Windows 8.1 laptop alternates as desktop or HTPC, driving 3 very different monitors: the low res laptop built-in display, high-res Desktop monitor and 1080P huge 65'' TV screen. I am sick and tired tweaking resolution and scaling settings every time I connect to different monitor. I wish MS would allow to simply remember monitor profiles and automatically switch to the best settings. Maybe it's there somewhere but I have not found it yet. Reply
drgadgetz - Sunday, February 01, 2015 - linkJust had a new Toshiba P50T - hi-res 3200x2160 laptop. As an app developer, I find it disturbing that the UI scaling is not adapted by most of the developer tools like SOAPUI and Adobe CC Applications. I also find it annoying that large corporations like Adobe will release massive distributions of their software without testing their products with the mainstream technologies - in which UI scaling is a mandatory. Yes, they tried to solve the UI scaling of Photoshop, so why dont they do it for all their product offerings that I pay a subscription for in advance for a year. If they have resolved it then why not implement it on all their products.
Another fault I find in the new hi-res laptops is the ability to be backward compatible. Could it be because the new Windows 8.1 is not completely tested as well.
I guess the only good news to these big UI Scaling fiasco, is that this companies like Adobe can use the help of some of us expert developers in fixing their UI problems. And maybe so that they can speed up their releases and bug fixes.
Common now, someone in Executive management listen to the people in these forums...Get this fix now or Donald Trump will tell you, ' You're FIRED!'. Reply


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Seagate Enters the Enterprise SSD Market with Pulsarby Anand Lal Shimpi on 12/7/2009 11:59 PM EST
- Posted in
- Storage
53 Comments
Back to Article
Shadowmaster625 - Wednesday, December 16, 2009 - linkI just found out there is a utility that dramatically improves the performance of low end flash devices. It is called Flashfire. I have it running on an atom netbook with WinXP running on a 4GB compactflash card. (!) And you would not believe how well this thing performs! You'd have to see it to believe it. I am hoping you guys will review this utility and benchmark how well it improves the performance of JMicron controlled SSDs, and other low end solutions.
I am looking for the absolute lowest possible price solid state storage solution for running a minimal XP installation. After seeing how well my 4GB CF solution works, I am convinced that it can be had for less than $20. But I dont want to waste my own money on a bunch of questionable CF cards and IDE/CF adapters that may or may not be bootable, etc. Reply
nofumble62 - Saturday, December 12, 2009 - linkSeagate don't have fab and never make flash. Does it mean they must buy a NAND flash house eventually? Reply
skroh - Friday, December 11, 2009 - linkI could be misinterpreting, but I don't think there's any secret sauce in the way the life expectancy increases with drive size. If you notice, it's a perfectly linear relationship. 50 GB = 1.5 petabytes of data written, 200 GB = 6 petabytes. Four times the capacity equals four times the data that can be written. Same amount of writes, just more locations that those writes can be spread across, and therefore more total data.
The article seemed to take the stance that the larger drives were "better" somehow in this regard, and I don't think that's true. You don't get more life out of them unless you write the same amount of data to the 200 that you would have to the 50 (or 100). Reply
leexgx - Sunday, December 13, 2009 - linksure somewhere it was constantly Writing data, Bigger SSDs norm do last longer then smaller SSDs due to more Blocks that can be erased and be reused that is know to happen and does happen (time it takes to Write data would be 5 years guessing there due to not reading it to check it)
i have now, at no point does it say more then 5 years from the 50 gb to the 200gb drive what you posted is correct more data can be Written in the same time with the 200gb drive (Write speed goes up with the bigger the drive so 6 petabytes can be Writen to the 200gb in the same time that it takes to Write 1.5 petabytes to the 50gb one) Reply
leexgx - Sunday, December 13, 2009 - linksure somewhere it was constantly Writing data, Bigger SSDs norm do last longer then smaller SSDs due to more Blocks that can be erased and be reused that is know to happen and does happen (time it takes to Write data would be 5 years guessing there due to not reading it to check it)
i have now, at no point does it say more then 5 years from the 50 gb to the 200gb drive what you posted is correct more data can be Written in the same time with the 200gb drive (Write speed goes up with the bigger the drive so 6 petabytes can be Writen to the 200gb in the same time that it takes to Write 1.5 petabytes to the 50gb one) Reply
leexgx - Sunday, December 13, 2009 - linkso it take 5 years to fail 50gb drive as it would the 200gb drive at constant Write Reply
AnnonymousCoward - Thursday, December 10, 2009 - linkAnand,
Why do you keep saying SSDs outperform by an order of magnitude when none of your numbers indicate this??
System Boot: 48s vs 70s
CS4 launch: 4.5s vs 5s
Pinnacle launch: 12.3s vs 13.3s
WoW load: 4.85s vs 12.5s
"Fresh Test": 6.6s vs 31s
Power: 3W vs 7W
Everything is between 1.1-4.7x and the average is 2.2x. This is nowhere near 10x. Reply
leexgx - Sunday, December 13, 2009 - linkif you never used an SSD before your you do not understand the it, when going from HDD to SSD or back
i could not see my self using an HDD for my system dive {OS,programs and games}, in todays SSD standards i have an Slow SSD , corsair S128 its read and writs is 90MB/s and 80MB/s, yes samsung F1 or F3 Hdds are faster then mine in data Rate speeds but its the instant access times or high random access speeds (or high IOPS) no HDD can match it, that makes sdds open most things right away Reply
LTG - Saturday, December 12, 2009 - link>>Why do you keep saying SSDs outperform by an order
>>of magnitude?
Maybe because the single most important spec on any drive, random access time, IS an order of magnitude better for SSDs.
Or I did I miss where he said, "it's 10x better for any benchmark I ever mention on AnandTech"?
You are commenting from one viewpoint, he is commenting from another.
If you were a mechanical hard drive yourself you'd have no legal case for defamation here.
AnnonymousCoward - Monday, December 14, 2009 - link"it's 10x better for any benchmark I ever mention on AnandTech"? That's a ridiculous attempt at a point; not a single benchmark broke 4.7x.
Your argument using access time is also flawed. When someone says "This system outperforms this other system", that's talking about real world performance, not some specific internal parameter. Reply
semo - Friday, December 11, 2009 - linktry doing the above simultaneously. HDDs are not good at multitasking. Reply
AnnonymousCoward - Friday, December 11, 2009 - linkThat's what the "Fresh Test" is. 4.7x. Reply
DukeN - Wednesday, December 09, 2009 - linkhttp://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9141627/Mic...">http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/...unces_it...
This could be good Reply
AnnonymousCoward - Thursday, December 10, 2009 - linkI thought they had a joint Flash venture with Intel, so now they will be competitors? Reply
Genx87 - Wednesday, December 09, 2009 - linkOnce WD and Seagate enter the markets we may see these things start approaching Raptor like pricing. Which is good enough for enthusiasts. And eventually filter these things closer to mechanical drives. Reply
strikeback03 - Wednesday, December 09, 2009 - linkThey already provide a much greater boost for the additional cost over standard HDDs than the Raptors do. Reply
ClagMaster - Tuesday, December 08, 2009 - linkI am not sure it is wise to write an article about SSD performance when the author does not have the actual article in his hands that he can personally test. Then, he can precisely tell us the make of the controller, its efficiency, and the true performance of the Pulsar SSD. Until that happens, I respectfully submit that most of this article is conjecture. I wish more concrete facts about this SSD were published.
I think its great that Seagate is advancing the capacities of the Enterprise SSD over that of the Intel X25 products with the Pulsar. Even though its OEM, this drive will soon make its way to Newegg (which sells plenty of OEM products) to the hands of consumers. We need information ASAP on this product.
However, I think Seagates behavior with the Pulsar Enterprise SSD says a lot about its confidence with this product. Surely Mr Shimpi certainly pulls enough weight as a credible hardware reviewer to be entrusted with an Engineering Sample prototypical of the actual OEM product to perform performance testing.
After Mr Shimpi's dealings with OCZ last March with the Vertex(leading to his most excellent article on SSD performance), perhaps Seagate is afraid of what Mr Shimpi might uncover with the Pulsar. Reply
Casper42 - Tuesday, December 08, 2009 - linkSo it seems to me that they are simply using the same size NAND modules and then amping things up using parallel channels.
2 channel / 50GB
4 channel / 100GB
8 channel / 200GB
I am wondering if there is a reason why they didn't make a 6 channel / 150GB model as this would be a direct competitor (based on size only) to the standard 146GB SAS drive that are found in MANY Enterprise servers. Reply
notty22 - Tuesday, December 08, 2009 - linkI'm curious that if after 5 years, performance had degradaed enough to warant retiring s 50 gb drive. If you wrote data say precious pictures and stored the drive, would they be there 5 years later, say 10-20 ? Reply
mcnabney - Tuesday, December 08, 2009 - linkFrom the article:
"...but perhaps Seagate has input into the firmware design."
Ah hah hah hah hah
araczynski - Tuesday, December 08, 2009 - linkSSD revolution?? someone forgot to wake me up...
good to see seagate putting in some rebranded hardware into the mix, should help the prices drop a little faster, to the levels of mass market acceptance....
was just throwing out some old purchase order records....couldn't believe i (well, the company) paid $178 for a dvd+-rw drive back in the day... so maybe in 5 years the HD's will be the floppy disks. Reply
Kougar - Tuesday, December 08, 2009 - linkBright Side of News is indicating the Pulsar drives will utilize "up to" 16 channels per drive, more than Intel's 10.
http://www.brightsideofnews.com/news/2009/12/8/sea...">http://www.brightsideofnews.com/news/20...aunches-... Reply
Casper42 - Tuesday, December 08, 2009 - linkBeing that the 200GB (256GB) model here uses 8 channels, that would imply the 16 channel model would be 512GB (or 400GB according to Seagate). Reply
PandaBear - Tuesday, December 08, 2009 - linkthat Seagate and Micron has worked together in a secret JV (joint venture) with a small team of engineers since about 1 to 1.5 years ago.
The focus of the JV is to put a programmable analog amplifier (the one called read channel in the hard drive industry) inside the flash to improve its voltage sensing performance. HD has these sort of analog components like pre-amp (the amplifier on the actuator, because head signal is too weak to reach the controller by itself) and read channel (programmable A2D converter and decoder) for quite some time, and flash is starting to see problems that can only be fixed by analog mean.
So it seems like Seagate's flash may have a special way of adjusting the memory's parameter via vendor unique commands that aren't available to others (except Micron), and they use that to their advantage in their own designed controller (with 3rd party IP, but everyone has 3rd party IP for their SATA interface, ARM processor, embedded memory controller, etc, so it is not saying much. Reply
Roland00 - Tuesday, December 08, 2009 - linkIt appears there is a new controller on the block with the Phison Controller found in the Patriot PS-100.
Specs on the box make the drive look like it is Indilinx comparable and I have seen this drive priced at 2 dollars per gigabyte after rebate. Reply
SleepyGreg - Tuesday, December 08, 2009 - link$11 per GB! Is that a typo? That would make the 200GB model over $2000! Reply
crimson117 - Tuesday, December 08, 2009 - linkRemember, assumption makes an ass out of u and mption. Reply
arnavvdesai - Tuesday, December 08, 2009 - linkAt a cost of 11$/GB & a reduction to 3W from 7W, are these drives cost effective. Yes I understand you are speed restricted but is the difference in cost recovered by the difference in speed & power consumption. Also, I am curious whether the higher speeds help reduce the number of servers we might need especially larger data centers considering that we can match capacities. Would having higher drive speeds cause a unit of 'work' be executed fast enough that we would need less machines than using standard mangetic drives. Reply
Mr Perfect - Tuesday, December 08, 2009 - linkIt would depend on everyone's individual case, I'd think.
First you'd need to know how many drives you have in each of your servers and then multiply that by 5 watts(assuming your drives are 7 watt, andthe SSDs you buy are 3 watt). Then you'd have to take that per-server power savings and multiply it by how many servers you had. At that point you'd know how many fewer watts you'd be pulling off of the PSUs, but you'd still have to figure how many fewer watts those PSUs will pull form the wall(are they 75% efficient? 80%? 85%?). When you get the drop in power from the wall, you could multiply it out by whatever your local power utility is charging you per KWH. Of course you'd also want to figure out how much money you'd save by not having to cool all of that extra power dissipation too.
Quick, to the beancounterarium! :D
Kibbles - Tuesday, December 08, 2009 - link"Such low write speeds are either artificial or the result of the same sort of issue that continues to plague Intel's X25-M."
Is that supposed to be Seagate? Since it says the 50GB, and Intel only sells one size. Reply
juzz86 - Tuesday, December 08, 2009 - linkI just picked up on something the author said which I've never seen before but often wondered. If I were to format my 80GB X25-M G2 with a 70GB partition, would I see better performance having that extra 4.5GB set aside as spare area? Is this just a relatively simple way of getting even better speeds? Or am I barking up the wrong tree? Reply
GullLars - Tuesday, December 08, 2009 - linkIf you have TRIM firmware and use the standard W7 drivers so the command actually hits the drive, you will see no difference as long as the ammount of used area is the same. With trim any free area is effectivly spare area. If you however run a RAID or use controllers or drivers that don't forward trim, you will see better _sustained_ write numbers with a smaller partition. In order for the drive to make use of this unpartitioned space, you either have to partition the drive when brand new, or directly after a Secure Erase.
In reply to the article. It seems to me from the performance numbers that Segate might have fused its own IP with Intels and made it's own 8-channel controller. It would make perfect sense, and explain why the performance numbers of x25-E 64GB and Pulsar 50GB are so simelar.
It makes me a bit sad that Samsung didn't go for a 16-channel design on the higher capasity drives that will use 16 NAND chips or more, since this basically limits the random read IOPS and peak write IOPS. These 8-channel drives will have to go head to head with SandForce's SF1500, wich are 16-channel SLC drives targeting the same market.
BTW, i think all new high-performance SSD released in 2010 should start using SATA or SAS 6Gbps as standard to help accelerate adoption rates and remove an unnecessary botleneck (seq read). Reply
jimhsu - Tuesday, December 08, 2009 - linkThe distinction between peak and sustained performance is highly interesting. Performance profiles for today's SSDs (post JMicron) are highly complex, and depend on free space, recent writes, TRIM/GC availability, and any concurrent operations. For example, a recurring issue seems to be IO stalling when a large sequential write operation is taking place (i.e. copying a huge file to the SSD while trying to use the drive normally).
Might Seagate have found a workaround to this? All things considered though, I would much rather see a max IO latency figure. Reply
Proteusza - Tuesday, December 08, 2009 - linkAvoid the Streissand Effect (and its related effects) at all costs. Whenever a company withholds information or seems like it is withholding information, it makes them look bad.
I'm not saying Seagate has anything to hide, but if it were more upfront with its technology and what forms part of the Pulsar, it would be in a stronger marketing position. Hiding information just doesnt do it for me, but I suppose I've been spoilt by Intel and AMD lately, which generally reveal almost everything about their new hardware. Reply
Jovec - Tuesday, December 08, 2009 - linkThis site is big enough now to demand a minimum set of specs and information if the product company wants to be reviewed. Reply
chen4119 - Tuesday, December 08, 2009 - linkWhat about STEC Mach8 SSD drive? They've qualified for EMC, IBM, and SUN enterprise storage systems and they did really well this year. How do they compare to Intel SSD drives or Indinix controller drives? Just wondering how come there are no mentions of STEC in this blog. Reply
mckirkus - Tuesday, December 08, 2009 - linkThey're super high end enterprise drives. It's the same reason you don't see RAMSANs in WD Raptor reviews. Reply
yuhong - Tuesday, December 08, 2009 - linkYea, back when Bill Watkins was CEO of Seagate, he promised that Seagate would sue SSD makers, and later indeed Seagate tried to sue STEC. That lawsuit was dropped in Feb 2009. Reply
gfody - Tuesday, December 08, 2009 - link+1, I found out about STEC while evaluating an EMC SAN. Apparently they have their own controller and use MLC. Where's Anand with the scoop? Reply
pcfxer - Tuesday, December 08, 2009 - linkugh EMC. A company that brags about firmware updates that don't require rebooting then release a CRITICAL firmware update that requires some....REBOOTING. As it turned out, that firmware (applied days before christmas) decided to choke and puke on MY CHRISTMAS DAY! EMC, never again.
Let me save you the pain my friend, look else where. Thecus...iron storage, ixSystems, ANYONE but EMC. Reply
semo - Tuesday, December 08, 2009 - linkaren't they also the only SAS SSD maker. If not the only then maybe one of a few. I remember IBM was very sceptical about SSDs but if STEC have convinced them otherwise then they must have a winner on their hands Reply
Penti - Wednesday, December 09, 2009 - linkI think Hitachi and Intel is coming with SAS SSDs soon. There are other FC vendors though. Reply
StormyParis - Tuesday, December 08, 2009 - linkyou did manage to stretch over 3 page views with ... not much to say... Reply
pkoi - Wednesday, December 09, 2009 - linkAgreed, Reply
reinkarnation16 - Thursday, December 10, 2009 - linkOh cmon! The guy loves to write! So just let him! :D
& I am sure there are a handful of our species who would crib about the preview being just one page short! Reply
vol7ron - Tuesday, December 08, 2009 - linkYes, thanks for the heads up, but a one page article of things to come would have been a little better.... especially since all of this will be repeated in what I'm sure will be a 10 page review. Reply
spaz mk will - Tuesday, December 08, 2009 - linkI'm still on the Intel bandwagon because of the 1.8 inch SSD's, but boy do I wish they would get around to releasing the X-18m G2. Reply
Pandamonium - Friday, December 11, 2009 - linkI'm in the same boat as you. I wish the my Latitude XT2 used standard 2.5" disks, but it looks like they had to go with 1.8" disks because of how small the chassis is. One of the guys on the AT forums has a contact with Intel distribution and word is that the X18-M G2 is due in early January. Reply
Zok - Tuesday, December 08, 2009 - link50 GB? That's not very much porn... Bill Watkins would be ashamed. Reply
piroroadkill - Tuesday, December 08, 2009 - linkHaha! I actually have that quote printed out and stuck on my wall Reply
archcommus - Tuesday, December 08, 2009 - linkGlad to see Seagate finally entering the SSD game. I find it odd however that on the page discussing details of Seagate's SSD, there are three images of Intel SSDs. Reply
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fyleow - Tuesday, December 08, 2009 - linkAnand probably wasn't supplied with any other pictures of the Seagate driver other than the rendered one with horrible lens flare used on the first page. Reply