Comments on: Ready for a 20-inch laptop?

Customers are driving the trend toward wide-screen portables, and manufacturers are more than happy to supply, study reports.
Photos: It's a wide-screen world

[hemen thacker]

It?s like carrying a desktop

I am thinking of going for this one http://www.oqo.com/. it will be my PC + ipod my movie player. my phone if I get a softphone connection. Also thinking of getting a Wireless connection T-mobile or so. It becomes my portable office and Entertainment system.

[hemen thacker]

It?s like carrying a desktop

I am thinking of going for this one http://www.oqo.com/. it will be my PC + ipod my movie player. my phone if I get a softphone connection. Also thinking of getting a Wireless connection T-mobile or so. It becomes my portable office and Entertainment system.

[mdburkey]

Just too big to be portable...plus I just don't LIKE widescreen.

Personally, a 20" laptop may be nice but it's just too blasted big to be convenient to carry around. I think the 17" unit's are too big now and don't really even like the 15.4" widescreen units due to their odd shape.

I really just don't LIKE the widescreen displays anyway. Too many applications don't look that good on them and you end up having to scroll like crazy to read through a document (either that or you have to put the screen in side by side mode which results in the text being too small to read comfortably).

Realistically speaking, 15.4" widescreen displays have less "effective" usable screen real-estate than standard 15" 4:3 ratio displays do. I'm just hoping that my current 15" SXGA+ laptop lasts a while, as I already can't even get a replacement (I can still get 1024x768 versions but the 1440x1080 has already gone the way of the dodo).

[StephanieA32]

Exactly. I much prefer 4:3/standard/non-widescreen

I don't like widescreen displays, particularly on ultralight notebooks, either. Yeah, yeah, yeah, widescreen movies are 'better' and productivity geeks crow about how many more applications you can spread out on a big widescreen display, but I rarely watch movies on my laptop and those productivity geeks aren't 5 feet tall.

I'm short and have to walk with my computer a lot so I need a small laptop which in turn must have a small screen that can handle a lot of different things, especially long documents and web pages and tall images. Widescreen laptop displays are meant to be BIG. Widescreen doesn't just reframe screen real estate, it adds it. And with that you get more weight and bulk that a person like me has trouble lugging around.

Widescreen displays stop making sense once the machine shrinks down to a certain size. Trying to cram two Word documents next to each other on a 10 inch or 12 inch display, even if it is widescreen, is ludicrous. You have to scroll up and down more and everything is smaller than it otherwise would be on a 4:3 screen.

Further, I think the widescreen ultralight machines are downright ugly. They necessarily have a squat profile and they look so trendy in a bad way.

I'm sticking with 4:3 machines and I just hope laptop manufacturers don't forget that there will be a lot of other people with similar distaste for widescreen displays.

[mdburkey]

Just too big to be portable...plus I just don't LIKE widescreen.

Personally, a 20" laptop may be nice but it's just too blasted big to be convenient to carry around. I think the 17" unit's are too big now and don't really even like the 15.4" widescreen units due to their odd shape.

I really just don't LIKE the widescreen displays anyway. Too many applications don't look that good on them and you end up having to scroll like crazy to read through a document (either that or you have to put the screen in side by side mode which results in the text being too small to read comfortably).

Realistically speaking, 15.4" widescreen displays have less "effective" usable screen real-estate than standard 15" 4:3 ratio displays do. I'm just hoping that my current 15" SXGA+ laptop lasts a while, as I already can't even get a replacement (I can still get 1024x768 versions but the 1440x1080 has already gone the way of the dodo).

[StephanieA32]

Exactly. I much prefer 4:3/standard/non-widescreen

I don't like widescreen displays, particularly on ultralight notebooks, either. Yeah, yeah, yeah, widescreen movies are 'better' and productivity geeks crow about how many more applications you can spread out on a big widescreen display, but I rarely watch movies on my laptop and those productivity geeks aren't 5 feet tall.

I'm short and have to walk with my computer a lot so I need a small laptop which in turn must have a small screen that can handle a lot of different things, especially long documents and web pages and tall images. Widescreen laptop displays are meant to be BIG. Widescreen doesn't just reframe screen real estate, it adds it. And with that you get more weight and bulk that a person like me has trouble lugging around.

Widescreen displays stop making sense once the machine shrinks down to a certain size. Trying to cram two Word documents next to each other on a 10 inch or 12 inch display, even if it is widescreen, is ludicrous. You have to scroll up and down more and everything is smaller than it otherwise would be on a 4:3 screen.

Further, I think the widescreen ultralight machines are downright ugly. They necessarily have a squat profile and they look so trendy in a bad way.

I'm sticking with 4:3 machines and I just hope laptop manufacturers don't forget that there will be a lot of other people with similar distaste for widescreen displays.

[zaznet]

Can't even find a 20 inch LCD at Best Buy...

I was browsing through a local Best Buy the other day checking out monitors and there was nothing over 19 inch in the LCD section.

If they aren't going to carry any screen bigger than 19 inch in the monitors, I don't have much faith they will figure out that consumers want large screen laptops.

[zaznet]

Can't even find a 20 inch LCD at Best Buy...

I was browsing through a local Best Buy the other day checking out monitors and there was nothing over 19 inch in the LCD section.

If they aren't going to carry any screen bigger than 19 inch in the monitors, I don't have much faith they will figure out that consumers want large screen laptops.

[lingsun]

How much battery life? 20 minutes?

How much battery life? 20 minutes? So how many batteries does it come with?

[lingsun]

How much battery life? 20 minutes?

How much battery life? 20 minutes? So how many batteries does it come with?

[mikealbertdeluco]

i will buy one

i have a 17" hp zd8000 now and i love it. for games and multimedia its great. i travel all the time with it. and battery life makes no difference to me as it is usually plugged into the hotel wall. but i will be moving to a 19" or 20" and i hope HP comes out with one as they are a great laptop. i think 20 " has to be the max for a laptop though.

[mikealbertdeluco]

i will buy one

i have a 17" hp zd8000 now and i love it. for games and multimedia its great. i travel all the time with it. and battery life makes no difference to me as it is usually plugged into the hotel wall. but i will be moving to a 19" or 20" and i hope HP comes out with one as they are a great laptop. i think 20 " has to be the max for a laptop though.