Is it just me or is real VGA more trouble than it's worth?

[BrettS]

Like a lot of people here I had been waiting rather impatiently for the real VGA hack for my Jasjar. Now that it's here and I've been using it for a week or so, I'm definitely beginning to see why MS didn't make this an option from the beginning, and I'm also beginning to wonder how much it's really worth.

Real VGA has two big benefits for me... it allows me to shrink the size of the bars on the top and bottom of the screen so I get more usable screen space, and it allows Pocket IE to run without it's stupid pixel doubling 'feature'... that's a big one for me.

Unfortunately it's got a lot of disadvangages too... it makes the bars on the top and bottom of the screen so small that they're difficult to use normally, and all but impossible to use while driving. Like I said above, making them smaller would be an advantage, but it's simply way too small. A lot of applications don't work well in real VGA mode... including the phone dialer, the calculator and others. The font size can't be changed for a lot of things... the start bar, the caller ID info screen, and others. This makes a lot of the information displayed quite difficult to read... again, especially while in a car.

As I've been thinking about it more and more, I realized that the only thing that I really need is for PocketIE to work without pixel doubling... then I'd be quite happy in non-VGA mode. While I doubt that will ever happen hopefully we'll get some third party browsers that will work nicely in non-VGA mode. Until then I think I'm going to be using non-vga most of the time and I'll just switch to VGA mode when I need to do a lot of browsing.

Anyone have any other thoughts on this?

Brett

[vijay555]

I think that makes sense. We need dynamically switching VGA really. For day to day use, the thumb is just too fat for VGA. It's barely ok to use for QVGA driving/walking etc.

But for browsing, VGA is great. But it's too much and too tiring all the time I think.

V

[afhstingray]

yea...we need a button like the screen rotate button that lets us change the res whenever we want

[eagle 1]

I think I would also agree. There are only two advantages to using the o2vga fix. 1) The only app that it improves is the browser, But as Brett stated, in the car it is too small. It works well for some sites very well and others it is too small. 2) the best advantage is that after I applied o2vga, ms voice command now shows the contact info when i say show "contact".

I also am beta testing the wm5 thunderhawk browser. It allows 640 x 480 and 800 x 600, and 640 x 320(?). The font that is used in thunderhawk is hard to read and the app is very slow. Due to the slow speed and font, I'm not sure the thunderhawk browser on wm5 universal is worth it. ALL in all, the original IE browser with zoom to small or medium seem to look the best.

[craigiecraigie4]

Brett: Couldn't agree more. It was great to see what the device can do, and how the screen really is, tiny! But in truth, the eyestrain was no joke, and finger operation became impossible. I did a lot of toggling between the two, and ultimately decided that what I was is the standard resolution, but with some hacks for:
- Smaller scroll bars (VJ mentions this somewhere)
- Shrunk edge bits in XL
- Smaller edges for Terminal Services (altho central area surprisingly gives same res)
- and of course a hack for PIE.

Now, surely the latter is manageable? It's simply how IE is rendering. Perhaps MS will fix this soon, or maybe someone can intercept the rendering engine. I even don't care if my images lose every second pixel in order to come to the right size at half the res.

[smb5823]

See the attached link to a bit of software, which once released for WM5 may solve the VGA issue. It allows switching between resolutions on the fly.
I tried it on my Blue Angel, and it worked great, albeit a little unstable.

Note the site says they've been working on WM5 compatibility since Feb, so this may be wishful thinking.

http://www.nyditot.com/Products.asp

[shivafool]

It's certainly not ideal, but besides web browsing I would add that word processing is nicer in VGA. Fortunately I don't have to do that much, but when I did need to for a meeting, I appreciated the VGA. With the keyboard and VGA, the term Pocket PC is more than just wishful thinking. :)

[shivafool]

It's certainly not ideal, but besides web browsing I would add that word processing is nicer in VGA. Fortunately I don't have to do that much, but when I did need to for a meeting, I appreciated the VGA. With the keyboard and VGA, the term Pocket PC is more than just wishful thinking. :)

[Carnivor]

I agree it is to much hassle to work smoothly in everyday conditions, personally I think its down to programmers to make font options more accessable, take the new version of pocket breeze, in qvga or vga it stays the same size on screen, and gives the user total control over all font sizes.

This is the sort of programming we need to utilise such a great display!!!

[dvl]

kinda bull---- lol

i remember when whe had 640 resolution on the pc.. everyone hated it when we started to use 800 res.. and lets not speak about 1024 haha..

i see loads of people using 1600 res nowedays.. higher res means better image quality!!

It also means better games better everything. So 640 res on the exec is SUPER, we only need adjust (like the pc) font size and get larger better resolution icons for those people who like to nagg (just like on real pc's)

VGA resolution is the future, and i am sure we get 800 res soon also and maybe even higher.. better looking programs etc etc..

and if your fingers are to thick for dialpad then you must have problems with any normal gsm LMAO

Just get a skin where the ok button close button are larger and nicer..

but that is just my penny worth :twisted: