What's new

1920X1280 desktop on a 10 inch screen?

netuser

Member
I'm sure it will be fine on running Modern apps on the tile interface it it will make movies and photos look nicer, but what about trying to work with apps on the desktop?
At our office we have absolutely ZERO work-related applications that employees use that run in the Modern interface. The only reason anyone would leave the desktop interface is to goof off or maybe glance at graphical weather reports.
I noticed someone using one of our 1080p 15.6" Windows 7 laptops and struggling to read their email in Outlook. They needed help to enlarge the text and icons to make the screen readable to them.
If some people are already having issues with 1080p on a 15.6' laptop, I can only image it is going to be much worse on a 10" screen with even higher resolution.
In Windows 8.1 is there a way to greatly increase the scaling of the desktop interface or is there any way to reduce the display resolution without making it blurry?
One of the things they need to do is use Remote Desktop. It's nice to have extra screen real estate in remote desktop for less scrolling around, but if it is all too tiny, it won't be workable.
If not, we will have to go with 1366x768 laptops so the desktop interface will be usable by more than just Millennials with 20x15 vision.
 
Last edited:

malberttoo

Well-Known Member
I'm sure it will be fine on running Modern apps on the tile interface it it will make movies and photos look nicer, but what about trying to work with apps on the desktop?
At our office we have absolutely ZERO work-related applications that employees use that run in the Modern interface. The only reason anyone would leave the desktop interface is to goof off or maybe glance at graphical weather reports.
I noticed someone using one of our 1080p 15.6" Windows 7 laptops and struggling to read their email in Outlook. They needed help to enlarge the text and icons to make the screen readable to them.
If some people are already having issues with 1080p on a 15.6' laptop, I can only image it is going to be much worse on a 10" screen with even higher resolution.
In Windows 8.1 is there a way to greatly increase the scaling of the desktop interface or is there any way to reduce the display resolution without making it blurry?
One of the things they need to do is use Remote Desktop. It's nice to have extra screen real estate in remote desktop for less scrolling around, but if it is all too tiny, it won't be workable.
If not, we will have to go with 1366x768 laptops so the desktop interface will be usable by more than just Millennials with 20x15 vision.

For Remote Desktop, you will want Microsoft's Remote Desktop Connection Manager. I have no idea what magic is in it, but it renders the remote desktop in a large, easy-to-see size. Otherwise yeah like you said, an RDP session is almost too small to be usable.

By the way there are two versions (2.2 and 2.7). 2.7 came out after I started using 2.2, and while it does bring some updated features, the screen scaling magic was gone. So I stuck with 2.2.

The link for 2.2 is here- http://blogs.technet.com/b/rmilne/a...p-connection-manager-download-rdcman-2-2.aspx

There is also a link in there to 2.7 and he talks about the differences there.

Hope it helps.
 
OP
N

netuser

Member
I'm playing with my personal Surface 3 mostly using it for watching videos, but I'm still finding the desktop UI quite tiny. As I said in the first post, our users don't have any work apps that work in the modern UI, so they will be pretty much using the desktop for all work-related activities.
I think a lot of our users will have a problem using a Surface 3 to run desktop software unless it's hooked up to a large external monitor via Miracast or a cable. However, since the main reason to get the Surface 3 is for mobility, that is not going to help them.

Extra screen real estate is nice to have, but not if it makes navigating the UI and reading text too difficult.
Since you can't lower the resolution on the screen, what are the best settings to make the desktop UI on the Surface 3 as large as possible, but still fit and flow properly?
 

GreyFox7

Super Moderator
Staff member
All the rage is replacing everything with your 5-6 in phone that has a quarter of the screen real-estate as this gigantic 10.8 inch screen and some have even higher resolution. what are we missing... besides magnifying glasses. :)
 
OP
N

netuser

Member
All the rage is replacing everything with your 5-6 in phone that has a quarter of the screen real-estate as this gigantic 10.8 inch screen and some have even higher resolution. what are we missing... besides magnifying glasses. :)

Phone and tablet apps UI are optimized for small screens. Windows desktop still is not.
I think there is a market for a 1366x768 version of this until legacy desktop software stops being important to use. Macbooks let you change the screen resolution and still look sharp, but I don't think that can be done with the Surface.
If too many users can't deal with the desktop because it's too small, we will have to stay with 720p laptops.
 

jrioux

Active Member
...In Windows 8.1 is there a way to greatly increase the scaling of the desktop interface or is there any way to reduce the display resolution without making it blurry?...
With my poor eyesight, I set the screen resolution to 1366x768 and the text size to Large. They are Winows setting in the Control Panel. You should try it.
 
OP
N

netuser

Member
With my poor eyesight, I set the screen resolution to 1366x768 and the text size to Large. They are Winows setting in the Control Panel. You should try it.

I had tried connecting the Surface to a 1366x768 projector and it lowered the resolution on the Surface to match. This caused the local screen to shrink and not fill the screen as well as look a little blurry.
 

pyxus

New Member
I had tried connecting the Surface to a 1366x768 projector and it lowered the resolution on the Surface to match. This caused the local screen to shrink and not fill the screen as well as look a little blurry.
I set the scaling factor to 175% (at native resolution) - works great. Did you try that?
 
OP
N

netuser

Member
I changed the resolution to 1366x768 manually and it doesn't loo blurry, but it doesn't take advantage of the entire screen I can't find a resolution that fills the screen besides 1920x1280.
I see a recommended resolution of 1440x1080, but the slider doesn't have a stop for that resolution. Is there any workaround to get to 1440x1080?
It would be nice to be able to quickly toggle the resolution so you could change it as needed with a click instead of digging through the menus. Videos and modern apps are going to be better at full resolution.
Digging around the Control Panel, I did find a Display setting where you click "Let me choose one scaling level for all my displays." That gives more options for increasing size.
 
Top