why are we seeing this decline in screen quality?

[jayeye]

Is there a tacit agreement among laptop manufacturers that they all should ship poor quality displays? And what is it with the disappearence of 4x3? Do people do nothing other than watch movies on their laptops? How can anyone get any work done with the reduced vertical space of widescreen displays? I hate my 15'' T61 -- it's too bulky, and the only reason I got it was that I needed the vertical space. I was hoping that the newer batch of thinkpads would offer 14'' screens, but I was wrong.

I'm not even going to dwell on the declining image quality; others have griped about it already.

Is there no market for upscale notebooks for people who need to get work done?


mod edit: moved to T6x forum since your complaint seems to be T61-related.

[wswartzendruber]

I'm looking forward to it for the simple fact that you can cram more programming code on the screen. I also want the LED backlighting. Compared to the T61, what decline are you speaking of?

[Quagmyre]

Is there a tacit agreement among laptop manufacturers that they all should ship poor quality displays? And what is it with the disappearence of 4x3? Do people do nothing other than watch movies on their laptops? How can anyone get any work done with the reduced vertical space of widescreen displays? I hate my 15'' T61 -- it's too bulky, and the only reason I got it was that I needed the vertical space. I was hoping that the newer batch of thinkpads would offer 14'' screens, but I was wrong.

I'm not even going to dwell on the declining image quality; others have griped about it already.

Is there no market for upscale notebooks for people who need to get work done?

Well my friend, I hear you.

But it's the consumers themselves who gave cause to this. Cheap, cheaper, cheapest is the motto of these days among buyers, and the industry only reacts to this mindset.

People like you and me who would even pay a premium for getting high quality products are an ever shrinking minority which the manufacturers can't afford to address any longer.

Widescreen LCDs are cheaper to produce because they have less pixels available on their screen real estate than 4:3 screens with the same diagonal measure have.
It's a marketing trick which manufacturers don't explicitly have to agree about. It just came to them naturally.

IPS panels? I guess they'll never come back. I'm still wondering why the choice is only between IPS and TN LCD technology. PVA would provide a nice middle ground between the two, both in quality and cost.
Anyone knows if technical problems prevent making/using PVA panels for notebooks?

[Greg Gebhardt]

Like the other poster said, it is our fault as everyone wants cheaper and cheaper. Well now we got it. Not enough demand for the good sceens of days past and not enough willing to pay a premium for seeing them come back.

Now all we can do is look for the best of the worst!

[Pascal_TTH]

Well my friend, I hear you.
Widescreen LCDs are cheaper to produce because they have less pixels available on their screen real estate than 4:3 screens with the same diagonal measure have.

15,4 widescreen laptops bring WUXGA screens. I use to have 14" SXGA+ or 15" UXGA laptops. T60p was my last one. I buy a T61p 15,4 WUXGA and I very glad with this widescreen panel. I do not want to go backward to a lower resolution. Any 4/3 panelhave ever offered such a big working place.

When I compare foot print, 15,4 T61p is not much bigger than the 15" T42p from my collegue.

[Troels]

Widescreen LCDs are cheaper to produce because they have less pixels available on their screen real estate than 4:3 screens with the same diagonal measure have.
It's a marketing trick which manufacturers don't explicitly have to agree about. It just came to them naturally.

Also, just because that the 16:10 size cuts tremendously down on the wasted amount of glass substrate that must be thrown away. Blame the amount of flat panel TVs that must be produced, which already must be large and in 16:9 (some are actually 16:10 format glass).

Anyone knows if technical problems prevent making/using PVA panels for notebooks?

IPS is very old (but good) technology that probably could be licensed fairly cheaply from Hitachi at the time. IBM had their display business units which made a lot of research in TFT-LCD performance and manufacturing processes. They probably found that IPS was what they sought after and found it reasonable to research further on this, since it was something vastly different from the LCD panels produced by philips and samsung were all TN.

Everything technical about PVA is quite impossible to find. Try asking Samsung for the real technical documentation, and you'd see what i mean.
However, my guess is that there is problems with power consumption of the panel itself vs. TN or IPS and it may be a problem making the panel thin enough for notebooks, vs. achieving good image quality compared to the desktop variant.
Samsung is the company i'm least expecting to release a non-TN laptop panel to be honest, in these days with cost-effective consumer notebooks is what sells.

---

Myself, i could be ok with a 14" widescreen, if it wasn't for the fact that the panels for some reason aren't exactly good.
If they had to decide on a 15.4" - IMO, make the keyboard wider. It's really a bit too much space wasted.

[Quagmyre]

Great. So in the long run, we're going to be stuck with those cheap wide screen panels (which I could live with, sort of) using sucky TN technology (which is really bugging me when found in a high-end laptop).

Wow. What a future! Why does this happen just when I switched over to using laptops instead of desktops.

[carbon_unit]

Lenovo is building whatever sells the most of. I'm sure they have seen a decline in sales of high end Thinkpads and a surge of sales in low end Thinkpads. You can thank Wal-Mart and other big retailers for creating the mindset that "Cheaper is better".
Example:
When comparing a $2000.00 laptop and a $500.00 laptop most consumers will only see a difference of a few minor bells and whistles, warranty coverage and $1500.00. So why buy a $2000.00 laptop when you can buy 4 $500.00 laptops? That way everyone in the family gets their own laptop instead of having to share it, and since it is so cheap, when it breaks don't bother fixing it just go buy a new one. Who needs warranty?

There is a small but vocal group of people who would pay for high end equipment but not enough to sustain a business model.

[truk]

I DEFINITELY agree. My brother and my friend bought $500 laptops. Both died shortly after warranty ended. I HATE widescreen and want a 4:3 14" t series. I used to be able to STAND on my closed thinkpad without it giving even a groan, but I don't know if that'll work on these newer computers.

[ajkula66]

I could possibly get used to widescreen format if the panels offered were half decent, although it would take time.

Problem here being, even the LED-backlit LCD of X300 leaves a lot to be desired...

To put it this way: an old customer of mine who brought his new X300 to my house for "setup" (more for bragging purposes, but that's OK) had expressly forbidden me from taking a side-by-side picture of his new toy with any of my FlexViews...

At this point in time Panasonic remains the only laptop for serious business people, apart from possibly Mac that I'm not familar enough to discuss in a competent manner...and even ToughBooks sport a not-so-great TN panel...although at least 4:3 is still available...

[Marie-Anne]

I'm sure that at SOME time in the near future, Lenovo will offer a Thinkpad with a S-PVA panel.

I own myself a T60 with a LG/Philips IPS panel (see my signature).
Besides this I own a great NEC MultySinc LCD 2070NX monitor with an IPS-Panel.

For some time I've considered to purchase an additional HP LP2065 monitor which has an IPS-panel as well (they've doubled the price in trhe meantime!!!!!!)

The MAJOR brand of HIGH END LCD panel monitors is EIZO for many years already. In the past (and they still) offer very expensive HIGHN-END professional S-IPS monitors.

I was informed by someone at EIZO, that S-IPS is not anylonger "state-of-the-art". It's now S-PVA.

EIZO offers very expensive S-PVA monitors for those who can afford it. But they are offering now a relatively very affordable monitor with a super S-PVA monitor: EIZO S2231W (S-PVA panel manufacured by Samsung)

A future Thinkpad TXXXX with a S-PVA panel would fit the needs of most of the critical professional notebook users. (Lenovo, have you read my lips!!!!!)

Forget all about IPS; it's passed technology.

[ajkula66]

Marie-Anne wrote:

Forget all about IPS; it's passed technology.

I'll be happy to forget about IPS once Lenovo offers something that is least up to par with it, if not better, instead of absolutely crappy TN panels...

[Puppy]

Forget all about IPS; it's passed technology.

LOL, the fact Eizo is trying to push S-PVA panels have the only reason - cutting the costs while the color parameters of recent S-PVA are getting closer to IPS so it is acceptable for this segment. Unfortunately some other parameters like response time and viewing angles are still behind. Some people working as professionals in this area still strongly prefers IPS based monitors over S-PVA ones. Notice that Eizo offer both technologies. On the other hand NEC is more IPS-positive having H-IPS panels in latest models. I don't want to argue whether Eizo or NEC is the leader but NEC is able to sell more IPS based units

IPS is still the best LCD panel technology available with balanced parameters. Its only disadvantage is higher price. LG.Philips is able to produce cheaper IPS panels in high volumes. Just someone have to ask them and accept it will be a bit more expensive than TN.

Regarding notebook displays anything else would be better than TN of course. S-PVA panels have the only supplier - Samsung. IPS based panels are still actively developed by more companies. Draw your conclusion.

[carbon_unit]

IPS is still the best LCD panel technology available with balanced parameters. Its only disadvantage is higher price. LG.Philips is able to produce cheaper IPS panels in high volumes. Just someone have to ask them and accept it will be a bit more expensive than TN.

There is where the problem lies. There is not enough demand to produce these panels in a high enough volume to make it worthwhile to produce. 1 or 2 thousand panels a year is not enough.
There is a small but vocal group who is willing to pay for IPS panels but the majority of consumers will not pay more for the better panels. The cheap panel is good enough for them.
Low sales = low demand =low production = low profits = extinct.

[Puppy]

1 or 2 thousand panels a year is not enough.

Yes. Why not to make them standard feature of T series again ? Especially when R and T are getting closer. It would not double the price anyway.

[carbon_unit]

They never were a standard feature for all models on the T series, only for select models. Still low volume.
If there was enough demand for IPS panels or else they would still be in full production and getting cheaper every day.