Samsung outs Ivy Bridge notebooks Two new 15.6in laptops are inbound from Samsung, each bearing an unannounced Intel Ivy Bridge processor, a third-gen Core i7 quad-core to be (a little) more precise. Samsung Series 5 550P Both members of the Series 5 550P family will also arrive with 8GB of memory, DVD-RW drives and 300Mbps (2x2) 2.4GHz and 5GHz 802.11n Wi- …
As a Desktop replacement?
Who are you kidding?
Ok, so you open Microsoft Office 2010 on a screen that size.
Then say goodbye to approx 20% of your vertical resolution with that silly ribbon interface.
When will you laptop makers stop trying to sell us laptops with these silly resolutions? I know the screens are cheap as chips but the CPU you put inside is the latest & greatest and costs a pretty penny. Lets have a proper screen please.
Oh, the 1600x900 is not much better.
now for the downvotes.
Minimise the ribbon, put the 10-20 commands that are the usual amount most folk use on the QAT, retrieve the screen estate.
I have to confess though, that I like the ribbon, and most folk here are converts, once they work out (i.e. I tell them) how to customise it.
Although, I do agree - 1366x768 is a woeful resolution for a 15" screen, even though I do remember being happy with 640x480 on a 14" monitor, and then 800x600 on an 15"er.
Ain't progress wonderful?
Why are you expecting downvotes? Yours are commonly held opinions amongst us El Reg commentards.
That taller screens became rare around the same time as the introduction of the Ribbon interface does seem perverse indeed. That a Mac offers the largest MS Office work space, being 16:10 and ribbonless, is just nuts.
....... that 99% of the folks here wouldn't buy?
Things like crappy sub-par screens will only improve for us if the tech sites get together and refuse to review kit that's not up to scratch.
Maybe the tech corps will get the message if they start getting told "No we wont review it as it's not up the standard our readership would want!"
1600x900 minimum for 15 inch or under, 1650x1050 minimum for anything larger.
This trend is ridiculous, it's becoming harder, rather than easier to find usable laptops, because they all disqualify themselves due to screen res.
We should all start trolling amazon and other online stores that let you review products, and give lousy ratings to machines with crap screen resolution, with the goal of lowering their ratings so fewer people will buy them. By "we" I mean the people commenting here - I mean, clearly we like complaining about stuff on the internet...
I want a 15" 1600 x 1200 or better. Which is what I have. But I want a new one.
What are these for? Coffee table or Starbucks table video watching for 2 or 3 people?
15" 1920 x 1440 4:3 would be excellent for documents. I don't mind black bars top & bottom if I do happen to watch video on it.
Or even a laptop with a rotatable to portrait mode 4:3 screen 15" 1920 x 1440 Why have we gone back to scrolling? Books invented about 2000 years ago. That's what "codex" means. More efficient than scrolling.
I do find it amazing that the makers are producing really good spec kit with good CPU/GPU/HDD/SSD and case technology and then throwing it all away with grossly sub standard screens.
The difference in cost between a crappy screen and an average one cant be more than $5 surely?
In fact I'll gladly lose the HDMI port the Thunderbolt port, a couple of USB ports and the shitty Beats Audio if it will mean I get a half decent screen with usable resolution and at least 75% gamut.
I know Anandtech have been trying to campaign for better screens but I think they too would do better if they just stopped reviewing them.
I think they think (possibly correctly) that the average user doesn't know the difference between screen size and resolution - and they think that by getting a larger screen, they'll get more space on the screen. Certainly, that works on some people - not sure what portion of the market. Maybe I'll be a pushy ass next time i'm in a computer store, and ask the other customers if they know the difference, until the store clerks kick me out.
Apparently, though, it must be a large enough percentage that these crap-screen laptops have pushed the good ones out. I think it's because people talk about processor speed, and ram, and harddrive space, and screen size when comparing computers - missing what's arguably the most important spec.
Is it a far eastern thing? Chinese is all greek to me but perhaps these low resolution screens work better with ideographic scripts, the dip in resolution trends happened around 5 years ago when Dell and others were closing down european operations and moving more of their design and manufacturing to China. Apple have not followed this trend, keeping product design mainly in Calfornia, is it a coincidence that their screen dpi tends to be higher?
Europe and North America, no question that 15"/768p for Office applications is unsatisfactory, for once everyone commenting here agrees on that point.
but that's fine, I think most people would be happy with a 1080p 15" screen.
Thing is I don't think TVs are to blame, I can't remember the last time I saw a TV smaller than 19", all laptop screens are smaller than this so they are produced for laptops. The real problem is that there is simply no choice.
5 years ago if you bought a laptop from Dell, you could choose to have a high resolution screen for extra cost, this was available on most of their laptops I had a look last week and couldn't find a single laptop where the screen was available in different resolutions.
Hopefully Apple will put out new macbooks with high res screens and the other manufacturers will copy their lead.
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