why no 16:10 screens?

[ThinkRob]

Beancounters are more numerous,I presume !?

Dunno... but they write the checks. Which pretty much means that they decide what is sufficient for folks like me, hardware-wise. And high-end screens ain't on the list.

I absolutely can and will pay top dollar for good screens for my personal setup, but at least as far as work machines are concerned I don't have the leverage to be able to claim a nicer screen as being necessary to improve my work. I doubt I'm the only one.

[Tasurinchi]

Beancounters are more numerous,I presume !?

Dunno... but they write the checks. Which pretty much means that they decide what is sufficient for folks like me, hardware-wise.( I doubt I'm the only one.

I can´t agree with these statements, while I´m not a beancounter myself (and I have no insight on how Lenovo works), I can say that in most companies I´ve been working before, beancounters had little to no influence on management decisions. Quite the oppossite, in my experience management will come and sort of say "make it cheaper", and beancounters would have to find a way to make it cheaper, but decisions will always come from above.

[ajkula66]

I guess that it all depends on how "beanconters" in the particular company justify their jobs...

My current laptop - issued last year - has a MSRP of something like $4,300...mind you, I did NOT ask for it since there was nothing wrong with the previous one that I got in 2009...and still have in my locker. "Nothing wrong with it" might just be an understatement of the decade since it was babied and barely utilized by silly old me...not that one has to really "baby" a ToughBook, but that's just the way I am with all the expensive toys that my employer provides....

Had it not been for Sandy and the devastation that was brought upon NYC's East Side, that fully-loaded and oh-my-God-expensive CF-31 wouldn't have seen any use at all...but in an environment where battery life *really* counts, it proved itself to be a real friend-in-need...LOL...

[jayeye]

Brain-damage, mostly. I suppose they don't want to maintain more than one tooling line per diagonal screen. I hated 16:10 on laptops, and I hate 16:9 even more. My work laptop is an old 4:3 T61, which I'm holding on to despite threats by IT that it's no longer supported and that I should upgrade. I don't *want* to upgrade. It works fine the way it is, and nothing they offer gives me enough vertical pixels.

Beancounters is not the problem in my company; they urge us to get fashion accessories^W^WMacbooks, and gratuitously upgrade every two years.

WHen the ipad came out, I was hoping that 4:3 screens would make a comeback, but I was mistaken.

Don't people do anything other than watch movies on their laptops?

[ThinkRob]

I can´t agree with these statements, while I´m not a beancounter myself (and I have no insight on how Lenovo works), I can say that in most companies I´ve been working before, beancounters had little to no influence on management decisions. Quite the oppossite, in my experience management will come and sort of say "make it cheaper", and beancounters would have to find a way to make it cheaper, but decisions will always come from above.

I wasn't referring to at Lenovo.

I was referring to their customers. If my employers have been any indication, explaining why they should pay an extra hundred or two dollars per laptop for a screen which -- on paper (or at least as far as non-technical users can tell) -- works just as well as cheaper screens might be a bit of a hard sell. They tend to put money towards CPU and GPU upgrades that they'll never need...

[Rochefort]

They tend to put money towards CPU and GPU upgrades that they'll never need...

That's the real issue

[Tasurinchi]

I wasn't referring to at Lenovo

I was referring to their customers

This I can fully agree, that's why I'm getting cheap Dells as company laptop

[pianowizard]

This I can fully agree, that's why I'm getting cheap Dells as company laptop

You mean, the Inspirons and Vostros? The Latitudes are actually nearly the same price as Thinkpads, while the Precisions are actually more expensive than most Thinkpads.

[Tasurinchi]

You mean, the Inspirons and Vostros?

Nope, Latitudes...

The Latitudes are actually nearly the same price as Thinkpads

Really???? I wasn't aware of that. I definitely need to talk to head of infrastructure! I have now a "basic" E5410 that feels 90% cheap plastic.

[pianowizard]

Really???? I wasn't aware of that. I definitely need to talk to head of infrastructure! I have now a "basic" E5410 that feels 90% cheap plastic.

Okay, the E5*** is the cheapest of the Latitude models. It's almost like a Thinkpad Edge, though slightly better.

The bottom line is, all Dell laptops aren't the same. The range of Dell laptops is much larger than the range of Thinkpads. After seeing the best Precisions, you may think your Thinkpads feel cheap; I certainly did.

[EasyMac308]

We have Latitude E6420s at work and I have to say that they're an improvement over the last Dell machines I'd touched. Aside from the things we all gripe about with the new Thinkpads (keyboard layout, aspect ratio) they're quite solid little machines. The only exception to that were the few we got that had bad LCD cables. Other than that, they've been quite reliable and feel quite sturdy (more than the T410s they're replacing, for sure).

[crashnburn]

Still geeks & non-geeks have their screens in front of their eyes !
I dream of an IPS option for the coming Haswell models.....yes, I dream

Hey, I don't disagree. There's a reason I use PVA/MVA panels for my desktop...

That said, my experience with non-geeks is that while they can certainly notice the difference between TN and other types, their response seems to be "eh, this is good enough" -- especially when they learn about the typical price difference.

My bet is that it'll eventually be like high resolution panels: few non-geeks cared about XGA vs QXGA... until QXGA became "retina" and a hot item. If only we could find a way to make PVA or S-IPS into a marketing-drive status symbol...

Yes, the marketing may help. But truly speaking the only thing that makes it GROW is the EXPERIENCE.
Once you go black you dont go back.
e.g. Thinkpads - I pushed my cousin and father to buy and use it. Bought for them. Now they swear by Thinkpads reliability & machine feel (These were bought circa 2007-09).
e.g. How people got used to iPhones and iPads and touch phones. Even people who swore by keypads. Again, some may not have moved from blackberries.
e.g. How a bunch of movie stars in India were first given cellphones and service for free.. for months - (Because it was too expensive when launched e.g. Cell phone call was 16 times the price of a landline call - Now its probably half that of landline call).
Then, they (stars) could not live without it.

In the words of brilliant Steve Jobs - People dont know what they want. (A lot of people dont).

But once you hand them and get them used to a "lovely experience" they will want it.

Just the way no one would tolerate a Black & white TV or Laptop or Phone today - But the Kindle kicks [censored] for hours of reading.
Just how you would not think of a Dot Matrix printer today..

Eventually & hopefully, the screens will ALL catch up match Human Eye's ability to perceive visually.

[precip9]

There is a specific reason that has been put out on the web. I don't claim it's true but it is at least plausible.

Setting up to cut a custom screen size is costly. When formerly, 16:10 screens were offered, all the laptop makers had supply chain problems. Deliveries were unreliable and costly. After the widespread adoption of LCD TVs, the problem became exacerbated, because now, the laptop makers were secondary customers.

In some recent year, perhaps coinciding with the demise of 16:10 screens, laptop prices dropped sharply. Someone else will have to do the history, but if correct, this coincided with the focus of the laptop makers on a properly designed laptop with price as a secondary consideration. After this point, the makers refocused the supply chain on reliable deliveries at the lowest possible price point.

Someone else may be able to dig out a quote from a Lenovo executive who said, paraphrasing, "if you can get us a pre-order for 100,000 or so 16:10 laptops, we're game."

Perhaps, with saturation of the TV LCD market, the makers will once again solicit laptop makers for custom orders on more favorable terms. This would bode positively for 16:10 screens. On the other hand, there really is a "race to the bottom" that currently absorbs industry attention. When it hits bottom, with $50 tablets, perhaps there will once again be a blip of interest in laptops for workers and thinkers, instead of toys.

[ajkula66]

"The last man standing" - not counting Apple - is, as usual, Panasonic with their "business rugged" CF-52...

[pianowizard]

Does anyone know which was the lightest 15.4" 1920x1200 laptop, excluding the Macs? My Dell Latitude D820 weighed 5.82 lbs even with a travel bezel. Would be nice to find something below 5 lbs. Definitely not the CF-52, which weighs a whopping 7.5 lbs!

After trying so many laptops with different aspects ratios and resolutions, I think my favorite is still 15.4" 1920x1200. 4:3 is too tall and too narrow, while 16:9 is too short.

[precip9]

There is a good chance it is the W500. IBM was the first to use magnesium and carbon fiber together.
"Configured system: starting at 2.67 kg (5.9 lb)"


1920x1200 is so rare, "anding" it withe a weight requirement comes up with almost nothing.

[Medessec]

I really like where Apple's going with their Macbooks, as well as Google with that one Pixel Chromebook they're making. I haven't lost all hope, screens with better ratios are cropping up on occasion.

For what I use, I hold that 16:10 is the best format for media development. More particularly, 1920x1200 is a spectacularly useful screen format. Two things(open windows) taking up both left & right halves of the screen in Windows works best on 16:10, on 4:3 the windows are too narrow and on 16:9 they're far too squashed. Having two things one on top of the other (top/bottom) in 4:3 works better, but because you get more pixel density with 16:10 most of the time(1680x1050 over 1400x1050, 1920x1200 over 1600x1200) it wins out yet again to actually have on the laptop.

16:10 is an awesome compromise between the fad widescreen and actually having vertical screen space to work- that's why I like it. I develop media and play PC games, go figure.

The Panasonic Toughbooks may still have 4:3 panels with the latest hardware... but really, who's going to try that hard to keep 4:3? We shouldn't have to anyway... it's frustrating. I kinda do want to get around to making a Frankenpad, to see how the performance differs from my T60p T7600 UXGA. But that's going to be really awkward if that T50 modded motherboard comes out for the T42/43 chassis... we'll all be boasting our T43 laptops as the ultimate 4:3 machines.

[ajkula66]

Well, since you like WUXGA, Panasonic CF-52 should be right up your alley...i5, 16GB of RAM and so forth...nevermind the price tag...LOL

[pianowizard]

There is a good chance it is the W500. IBM was the first to use magnesium and carbon fiber together.
"Configured system: starting at 2.67 kg (5.9 lb)"

I am looking for <5.0 lbs. Dell's Latitude E6500 is advertised to "start at 5.2 lbs", which sounds pretty close to my criterion, but that starting weight refers to a unit with 1280x800 and with the optical drive taken out. The 1920x1200 UltraSharp panel would add a lot more weight.

Well, since you like WUXGA, Panasonic CF-52 should be right up your alley...i5, 16GB of RAM and so forth...nevermind the price tag...LOL

There is one problem, besides the price tag: the CF-52 weighs 7.5 lbs, heavier than many 17-inch laptops!

[Medessec]

There is one problem, besides the price tag: the CF-52 weighs 7.5 lbs, heavier than many 17-inch laptops!

Weight's not an issue for me. My gaming machine, a D900F, weighs in excess of 10 lbs, and I carry it to classes and back sometimes.

I've been eyeing the CF-52 for a long time, but I've always tended to stray from Ruggedized laptops... not because I can't afford it, but because I just don't need it when something else can do the job. But the CF-52 is a special case, because it's not very often you come across a 15" WUXGA laptop that's really that good. The ones I've seen have been sub-par compared to the T43p/T60p UXGA IPS panels I've used, as well as my W700 and my D900F's WUXGA.

But I think I've been spoiled a bit by them.

[precip9]

The bottom line is, all Dell laptops aren't the same. The range of Dell laptops is much larger than the range of Thinkpads. After seeing the best Precisions, you may think your Thinkpads feel cheap; I certainly did.

The latest Dell Precisions are advertising an extra fan to protect the battery. That one statement can't take in all the factors, but a machine like the Precision, slightly larger, with extra cooling and an all-aluminum case, gives reason for hope that it actually has a thermal budget for maximum load, all the time.

And that's what a true workstation needs, not something that's a few degrees or a hot day away from flakey. It's worth the extra pound.

[Adda]

And that's what a true workstation needs, not something that's a few degrees or a hot day away from flakey. It's worth the extra pound.

Like music to my ears, finally someone gets it!!!