I'm sure we all agree that responsive web design has been one of the biggest subjects in the last few years and will continue with the growth of mobile. As a senior front and backend developer with a strong interest in research and development at my company, I am responsible to evaluate techniques like RWD. Whenever I received a link to a totally new CSS grid system, I became more and more skeptical. They did not feel "right" to me, but I wasn't sure why.
Then I happened to come across a great article by Ian Yates titled "Life Beyond 960px: Designing for Large Screens" which introduced me to the term "Screen Real Estate". Prior to that, I did some deeper research using rem units in CSS which was a fortunate coincidence. Suddenly I knew what felt wrong.
When talking about RWD we mostly talk about devices below the target width of our layouts. But what about larger screens? Most of you will agree that a non RWD website with a target width of 960px looks a bit odd or lost on such a screen. Things are becoming more obvious when we talk about people accessing our websites with a 60" TV. Sure, these TV sets will most likely still only have full HD resolution. But keep in mind that whoever sits in front of them is probably at least 4m/10f away from the screen.