Larry's Library

So I’m slowly but surely working my way through meticulously resizing my scanned covers for my comic collection. As I’ve mentioned before I did switch back to CollectorZ’s Comic Collector after having spent several years with ComicBase. Anyway I like everything to look just right. Call it perfectionism or call it what it is (mild OCD) but I will go to GREAT LENGTHS to make my graphics/pictures beautiful. I’m making 1100 pixel height versions of much larger scans because I find from within the Windows app it just looks much better if it doesn’t have to do ANY scaling. My monitor has a 1920×1200 resolution so 1100 is Just Right and allows for the task-bar and other UI elements. So as I’m working through all of this my mind wanders off in other directions and I start thinking about the future of computing. Will it bring us a Gibsonian-CyberPunk deal where one just carries their “deck” around and the “screen” is only virtual? Will it plug right into our brains via USB 9.0? I’m NOT holding my breath after all I am STILL WAITING FOR MY FLYING CAR.

I often consider the idea of finally dumping this ball & chain desktop PC and simply buying a new PlayStation for gaming and a nice laptop for everything else (naturally supplemented by my Smartphone). But then I actually start looking at the available Windows laptops and I soon remember why I’m still sitting at this desk staring at a Big Beautiful IPS LCD screen. The vast majority of Windows laptops have screens that flat out SUCK. They range from too small, too large, too dark, too glossy, have poor viewing angles or are just too expensive. Most are woefully too stingy on the pixel resolution, while a few actually have TOO MANY pixels for the very small screen size they come with -a 10 inch panel running at 1920×1080 on Windows????? Yeah I’m sure that works REALLY WELL.

Things do seem to be improving but very slowly as there are a few IPS panels starting to show up in laptops finally. For many years now the laptop market has been a sea of crappy TN panels running at 1366×768. That pitiful resolution was crammed down our collective throats on a myriad of screen sizes -11 inches all the way up to 16! UGH. It’s amazing that we live in a day and age of marvelous super-high rez yet perfectly usable smartphones with screens from as small as 3.5 inches to as large as 6+ & yet they cant seem to give us a nice affordable laptop screen.

So for now I’m stuck with the ole ball & chain.