New laptop display

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Hi,

I'm looking for a laptop preferably 17.3" but 15.6" could be OK. The key feature I want is a good quality display with even illumination and decent contrast levels. Most laptops get criticised for contrast ratios under 180:1. (My current 5 year old monitor is rated at 800:1 which was good then).
I'd like to avoid integrated graphics.

Resolution should be 1600x900 or 1366x768 for the 17.3" screen or 1366x768 for the 15.6.
I've done calculations which show that a 5 pixel wide upper case character is 1.2mm, 1.4mm and 1.25mm wide respectively for the above display options.

This is significant because I use Photoshop Elements which does not use Microsoft fonts for its menus and tools, but instead uses an internal pixel based character set whose size cannot be altered except by changing resolution which is generally unacceptable for LCDs (full Photoshop CS is different). This means that at high resolutions on smaller displays the characters become microscopically small. On a 17.3 display at 1920x1080 the 5px character is a mere 1mm wide.

So I wonder anyone suggest a suitable laptop brand or model up to £850 which might meet this requirement? I assume that the rest of the spec at that price level would be satisfactory.

Many thanks
 
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Thank you for the suggestion.
I've checked Sony and the basic F series model is 16.4" with 1600x900. this could be a problem with the Photoshop text at 1.13mm for a 5px wide upper case letter but I'll think it over, especially as there is a free blu-ray offer for a few days.
The HD option at 1920x1080 I'm afraid reduces the letter width to 0.95mm which is virtually unreadable. I'm investigating whether Photoshop Elements 9 is any different or if there is a 'fix' to enlarge the menu text.
 
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I agree it is slightly confusing. I now have a spreadsheet to show the effect of different screen sizes and resolutions. Forgive me if I'm explaining at too great a length below, but it took me a while to fathom it out myself.

The Photoshop Elements window has the usual File, Edit, View, Help etc. menu along the top edge. However Adobe do not use Microsoft fonts for this and other application text. They use their own pixel based font which is apparently embedded in the .exe. The text font is based around a 5 wide x 7 high pixel matrix (with a bit of shading). The letters H, N and Z typically show the edges.
Perversely this means the the more pixels per inch on a given display the smaller the characters.
e.g. A 16:9 17.3" diagonal screen has a horizontal width of 15.08". At 1366x768 resolution, one inch is 90.6 pixels. so 5 pixels measure 5/90.6 inches or 1.4mm. Now if we go to 1600x900 res, 5 pixels measure only 1.20mm, and at 1920x1080 they reduce to 0.99mm.
Lots of Adobe users have tried in vain so far to find a solution to this and many of us are refusing to upgrade to the latest versions simply because the new facilities aren't worth the money as the displays continue to be so difficult to read.
The images displayed can of course be resized and played with at will.

Changing Windows text size (Control panel / Appearance and Personalization / Display) doesn't help as the pixels on the screen remain the same size. Changing screen resolution helps, but on LCD screens this usually blurs the definition

I realize this post may be a bit outside the remit of OC forums, but it may be useful for a few.
 
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