As Lenovo retires its last line of non-widescreen laptops, it sounds like one of the final nails being hammered into the squarish aspect ratio screens we grew up with. I think that the move to 16:10 and related aspect ratios is a good thing, but I mourn the passing of the standard aspect ratio (SAR) screen as I mourned my old SAR NEC monitor when I moved to a sweet new 16:10 Dell LCD. While it’s arguable that SAR’s value is that it gives you more vertical space to work in (essential for coding), I think the increased screen real estate provided by increased resolution more than makes up for it. Plus as the laptop is increasingly a media platform as well as a tiny workstation, the wide aspect ratio makes for good movie watchin’. Yes, widescreen is great, but a moment of silence if you please for SXGA.

And check out this awesome chart: