My desktop has two LCDs. Does that count? While your point is completely valid, it's been my experience for most users, vertical resolution is more important.

Quite a few of my colleagues have resorted to turn their external widescreen monitors by 90 degrees in order to have a better vertical view for their work tasks. While this may sound silly, it actually makes a lot of sense for some work contexts.

I believe you are correct about this. For instance, my Samsung 2343BWX and Dell sp2309w monitors probably use the same 23" 2048x1152 panel, but because the Samsung is matte while the Dell is glossy, images on the Dell look somewhat more pleasing.



For screens narrower than 2048, I partially overlap the two windows.



To me, vertical and horizontal are more or less equally important and that's why 1920x1200 is my favorite laptop resolution: it's as tall as 1600x1200 and as wide as 1920x1080. For a long time I tried to like 2048x1536 but eventually gave up because its pixel density on a 15.0" screen was just too high.



I don't find this silly at all because I have been doing it for over 3 years. Have you seen the photo of my computer/monitor setup in my office: http://forum.thinkpads.com/viewtopic.php?t=52525 .

I used to have a Dell 2001FP turned sideways. It was great for things like Office and Internet. My other panel was a junk TN panel. I decided to replace it and bought a Samsung 2333T. The 2333T is great, but when I put it next to the Dell, I realized how old and yellowed it had gotten over the years. I bought another 2333T to replace it cause they were so cheap at the time. It can't go sideways and 1080 isn't wide enough for FF with the sidebar, but I do miss the 1600 vertical resolution.

20" 4:3 is probably the best size and form factor for portrait mode. While it is possible to achieve even greater vertical space with 24" widescreens, as pianowizard demonstrates, the screen results being too tall for comfortable view at typical distance without significant neck/eye motion, which of course ends up in strain.

But in general, I have a problem with anything in portrait mode, because the Cleartype-style subpixel rendering, which make text look so much smoother in general, don't look as good on it (being tailored to specific subpixel orientations).

BTW, I also have one of these 20" monitors, albeit the 2007FP, which is about 3.5 years old now, and it does have some yellowing on one side. Still a great screen, though.

24" is indeed a bit too tall, even at arm's length from my eyes (which is the distance that I use). However, there are a few 22" 1920x1200 monitors e.g. the Lenovo L220X, and you might find these not too tall.

BTW, I have come across some 27" 2560x1440 monitors that can be turned into portrait!

I was about to buy the L520 with HD+ as I have read that it has the same display as the T520 reviewed by NotebookCHECK. Both reviewed panels seem decent.

Which is the "very bad" HD+ panel and how does one recognise it without relying only on perception?

According to the FRU numbers it should be the same display in the T520 and L520:
http://support.lenovo.com/en_GB/product-and-parts/detail.page?DocID=PD011130#8
http://support.lenovo.com/en_GB/product-and-parts/detail.page?DocID=PD008483#HD+

If you can't easily tell which is "bad" just by looking at it, wouldn't that mean that it's not bad after all?

I'm sure I could when I had the three HD+ panels next to each other but I'm more likely to compare whatever I get with my current 1200x800 display. I hope that even the worst of the three Lenovos HD+ panels would be better than my current one therefore it might be difficult to spot that I get a relatively bad deal.

I'm a big T series fan but it's totally up to you. My T410 rocks. But I'm waiting for next year to upgrade to a T530. 15" HD screen=

Ah, I see.

Personally, I'm almost always able to make a comparison between LCDs when I'm looking at them side-by-side. It's rare, though, that I'll find a panel remarkable in one way or the other when viewing it on its own. There are some exceptions to this -- the X301 had a remarkably low-contrast screen, and the WSXGA+-equipped T500/15.4" T61s a remarkably good one -- but for the most part I don't tend to notice the screen quality unless I'm doing a side-by-side comparison.

I suspect that most business (i.e. non-multimedia) users are like this; we don't really care too much about inspecting the quality of the screen since we're usually focused on what it's displaying.

I would recommend any of the Thinkpad series according to your special needs, high quality, durability and premium keyboards make any of these a good choice.