My new Toshiba laptop has a resolution of 1024 x 768, is there any way to increase it on the laptop screen? Is there any program which will let me “fake” this? If I plug in another monitor, I can apparently change the setting on the second screen, why can’t I do it on the laptop? Thanks.
Yes there is, but it’ll be ugly. If you change the resolution to anything other than the native, physical 1024 x 768 LCD cells on that display, the laptop will have to “interpolate” the image and it will be blocky.
Only good way to change the resolution will be to get another laptop with a higher-resolution display.
No. You can decrease LCD resolution, but you can increase it beyond the native pixel size.
Pixels on a CRT aren’t “real.” There’s an electron gun at the back that shoots a beam of electrons at the screen, steered by surrounding electrodes. The beam varies its intensity as it scans across. It’s relatively easy to vary the number of horizontal scans it does (vertical resolution) and how many times it changes intensity in a single scan (horizontal resolution). Most computer monitors have adjustable scan rates, which is why the resolution is adjustable.
LCD panels have actual discrete pixels. There are electrodes and transistors behind each tiny rectangle. The resolution is determined by how many of those electrodes are built into the screen. It’s not adjustable at all.
If you force a computer to use a resolution other than the native resolution of the panel, it will remap the image into the native resolution. It looks nasty.
Actually, the answer might surprise you.
Don’t know how this applies to your model, but yesterday, I put a 1400x1050 screen from a Dell D600 onto a 1024x768 native Dell D500 and was able to use the full resolution. Of course this requires you to find a compatible screen at a higher resolution, which can be hard if not impossible for your model.
But yes, in a way, this is possible.
To clarify I swapped the entire top parts of the laptops, bezels, LCDs, connectors and all, and plugged it into the motherboard.
The problem is that resolution can mean different things and pixel can mean different things. Here’s how it works… Most times when using computers, the word pixel means “picture element” and it has no intrinsic size. This is why, for example, my LCD screen can be set anywhere from 800 x 600 pixels to 1280 x 1024 pixels. Obviously, the physical properties of the screen cannot change, the only thing changing is the definition of pixel size.
When talking about CRT monitors, the actual glowing bits in the monitor are called “dots.” So when you hear about “dot pitch” what that means is the spacing of the dots on the screen. When you change the resolution of the screen, what you are really changing is the number of color dots assigned to make one pixel. The more dots assigned to a pixel, the larger the pixel and the lower the resolution. This is how your monitor can have different resolutions, because the number of dots used to make one pixel can change. Obviously, you need at least one dot for each pixel (in reality you need more) but you can easily understand how the number of dots determines an upper limit for the number of pixels.
Where it can be more confusing for LCDs is that the color dots of the monitor are also often called “pixels.” So now we have variable size pixels and absolute size pixels in the same equation, so it is no wonder people get confused.
The bottom line is that any screen has a limit to its resolution that is determined by its physical properties. Obviously, the makers of monitors and of the hardware and software that control them understand these issues and so making sure that you have the proper drivers for your monitor will insure that you get the best possible performance and that your Operating System will give you all possible choices.
No. You cannot go beyond the limits of a notebook’s LCD panel native maximum resolution. 1024 x 768 is it for the onboard panel.
What you can do on some systems is to set the screen resolution to more than 1024x768 and then be able to scroll around the larger screen within a fixed 1024x768 display. I’d find that annoying, though, so I wouldn’t do it.