Re Retina display vs. non-Retina.

I believe the current Retina is really an Apple fishing expedition. Trying to see how many bite the hook. The technology of the screen is outstanding. The sealed system down below, not so much. And, being a CS geek, you'll agree that there is no technological impediment to putting such a screen on a regular chassis. But a sealed system is far more profitable and attractive to the maker since they will have you by the ballz for the duration.

Go into the Store and configure the top regular and top Retina with all the bells & whistles and you'll see that there is no computing advantage save the pretty screen on the Retina. And if you take the drive and RAM out of the equation by buying base and resorting to third party alternatives, the price difference is just unsustainable. Especially with the max SSD storage alternatives.

Also important to mention is the fact that the Retina does not offer a from-factory antiglare option is unacceptable to many professionals that require high-end graphics.

As I see it, the current Retina offerings are just fancy baubles for the unwashed masses to aspire to.We will have to wait for the market to react to the full lifecycle of the product; not just the current gee-wiz phase, but after they start breaking down and Apple bleeds from having to replace them left & right. Hopefully sense will eventually prevail and a more balanced platform emerges, that offers better bang for the buck.

Let the flames begin....

I believe Apple designed Retina display to be used as 1440x900

I disagree with your fundamental assertion.

The Retina display looks best with photographic material at 2880 by 1800 setting. As soon as a few more Applications are "Retina Ready" the idea that 1440 by 900 is "best for Retina" will quickly diaappear.

The Retina MacBook Pro 15″ screen resolution is 2880×1800, but because of how a retina display works the effective resolution is 1440×900, and yes it is better than a "regular laptop running 1440x900".

And that occurs because the 1440x900 resolution is an exact multiple of the native 2880x1800 resolution of the panel. You folks do remember this thing called DIVISION from your schooldays, don't you? Anyway, this means the zoomed down display pairs two pixels and this will result in a much finer grained image than a native 1440x900. Any other of those two resolutions will result in an uneven division (with remainder) and thus will be a off-focus approximation.

Given that the not-Retina-optimized Photoshop and other high end Adobe products have been reported as showing up fuzzy, it would be interesting to know from those who have them whether the problem minimizes or disappears at said 1440x900 resolution.

Best for Retina setting is actually set at 2880 by 1800. At this resolution you have the same icon size as you would have in 1440 by 900 setting. This is because they didn't want to make the icon size too small so they increased width and height of the icons by double to maintain the same size. This makes the icons look extremely crisp and clear.

So to answer your question, Best for Retina display looks a lot better than the stock 1440 by 900. The only exception is that certain apps don't support Retina display yet (eg Microsoft Office, Photoshop) etc. in this case, the menu and icons look "pixelated" because they just stretched everything by a factor of 2. Think of iPhone 4 and iPhone 3GS. iPhone 4 looks a lot better but if apps are not optimized for it, it looks pixelated.

In terms of gaming, I never use 2880 by 1800 because the fps is not there. I mean I always choose 1440 by 900 or one of the lower resolution to have a smooth experience. This is how it looks on other notebooks anyway.

There are other advantages and disadvanteges to the retina other then what has been mentioned:

Advantages:

-thinner

-lighter

-quieter

-likely better resale

Disadvantages:

-cost

-no dvd drive

Now onto the screen:

The screen has a gorgeous appearance. There is more then just resolution. The retinas are IPS or PLS technology depending on production date. The standard macbook screens are TN

Though TN screens have probably the fastest refresh out of all screen they have horrid color/brightness bias when you are slightly off center. If you look at them from above they turn green and from below the turn pink, from side angles they images dissapears (or something like that). IPS/PLS screens can be viewed from any angle. They also have very good color accuracy and are a more expensive but better technology. Hands down. Its the same tech that the 27" mac screens are. For reference you can get a 27" TN screen for a couple hundred. A 27" IPS starts at close to a thousand and is prefereed by photographers and graphic designers because it is truer. There are minutia about blacks versus whites with the different techs but whatever

If you do go for a retina hopefully you get the samsung screen (PLS technology) and not the LG (IPS technology) there have been numerous reports of screen ghosting with the LG panels and PLS is a slightly newer tech. It handles quite high refresh rates (like 5ms) where as most ips are slower...

If money is no object buy the retina. its gorgeous.. However the one I bought has major hardware problems so.. there may be issues with quality control.

Also what the guy right above me said is accurate. At the same resolution the retina screen will be way clearer. If screen is important then get the retina. Its bad ***

This article explains how text gets to be better on the Retina. Text is rendered BIG, then scaled to the selected resolution:

http://www.anandtech.com/show/5996/how-the-retina-display-macbook-pro-handles-sc aling

Unlike when using CRT technology, the number of pixels on the screen does not change when you set the "resolution" to something other that 2880 by 1800. There are transistors printed on the glass in fixed locations, and you will use them ALL regardless of what you set the "resolution" to (except if you set it to an odd size, some will be set to black bands).

Whether you feel you have invoked it deliberately or not, this will be accomplished by scaling.

I just don't understand why you keep saying Best for Retina setting is not 2880 by 1800. I have a Retina MacBook Pro and it clearly recommends max resolution. Plus when I said 'optimized' I mean Apple redesigned the icon sizes to have more "actual" pixels rather than just "up scaling".

1. If you're asking about using Wiondows on Retina, it's a different issue.

For some reason there is no 1440 by 900 option. Once again even on Windows, it recommends max resolution. The problem is unlike Apple, Microsoft hasn't designed for retina resolution yet and at that resolution things look really tiny. So I had to "up scale" by changing dpi settings. This works most of the time and makes everything look clear and about the right size.

When I chose 1680 by 1050 which is the closest resolution for normal MacBook Pro, icons looked a bit blurry when I looked at it close.

To answer your question, you can't downscale to 1440 by 900 in Windows using Boot Camp on MacBook Pro Retina.

Even we could downscale to 1440 by 900, I don't think it will look better than the normal MacBook Pro.