pixel anaemia

[automobus]

Last December, a friend was considering buying a cheap laptop to replace his ThinkPad with SXGA+. I wrote a letter, a rant, in response. Maybe you might find it amusing. I will re-use it, when next I need to convince a person not to spend their money for such constrained tool, not to pay twice (once from wallet, next with operator time).

For the love of rods and cones, no, do not get ProBook 4540s E3V00UT.
What makes its screen much better than a good one from year 1999?  Not
much.  You are not "grandpa" 80+ years old, you do not deserve pixel
thirst.  Or hunger, draught, what else to call it?  Pixel girdle?
Would you buy a size small shirt, if it is a dollar cheaper than your
ideal size (large, I imagine)?  Scratch that.  Think about the cork
floor installation.  Recall, a special hammering tool was used for the
end pieces.  Imagine that tool, with one-half of the slide-zone.  A
fraction of momentum-buildup, a fraction of its power, a fraction as
useful as the real tool.  Instead of only a few blows to install a
piece, it would take twenty smaller blows.

Nevermind my bad analogy.  Just a few short years ago, Apple started a
wasteful fashion in world of consumers: ship products with so
fμ¢‹!¥⚥ many pixels, designed for the dumps of the 1%.  So many
pixels, Apple's own software engineers do not know properly what to do
with it all.  Did you see Amazon's recent television commercial?  At
left, iPad voiced with English accent, presumably to imply "rich snob". 
  At right, Amazon Kindle, a more "common Joe" American accent voice.  
iPad says "I say, look here, I have pixels for your retina".  Kindle 
says "I have more pixels, and at a lower price".

(this paragraph is not written about reality)  They are so close to
glueing LED-backlit pixels onto your credit card, even onto gift cards
at the supergrocery and pharmacy.

In this day, this day of modern high-yield high-consistency
perfected-process manufacturing, pixels have a rather short average
lifespan.  I imagine, the average pixel lifespan is less than two
years.  Made in China, trashed by the rich worldwide.

(this paragraph is not written about reality)  Soylent Green is pixels.

Maybe there are more pixels than ants.

Your television has more pixels.  That is ludicrous!  The television
has big moving objects.  Things which talk and have sound effects.
Patterns of light to convey a story.  You know, crayon and paper
puppets made by preschoolers can also convey a story.  But a laptop
computer, a workmachine, a screen which takes your focus, presents text 
for hours upon hours, presents information, going in and going out, 
letters to humans, challenge-response form-submission dances where a 
human is made slave to machines generating malformed glyphs, rounded 
blue buttons with softly throbbing light effects, menus and titles and 
borders and margins and padding and shadows and spinners and sliding 
frames and disappearing-reappearing controls and visual feedback 
devices, all this good and bad and stuff and crap,
this is seen,
on the screen,
of a computer machine.

But no, the _television_ gets pixel priority?

Lock me up.  I am going mad.

As I was saying, in this day, when pixels are so plentiful, why should
a man, who has work to do, get such a crummy display?