Slashdot Mirror
Toshiba Introduces A 17"-Screen Laptop
George Wright writes "Toshiba have announced a monster of a laptop with their Satellite P25. Seems they've decided to copy Apple's idea of fitting a 17" LCD on a laptop, but have ended making a true aircraft carrier in doing so. Notable "features" are the 2.8GHz P4, the 802.11a/b and the 10lb weight (!!!). Still a relatively low resolution though :("
I don't understand technology movements these days. Laptops have saturated the market. Most people want a faster/quiter/cheaper home pc, yet no companies seem to be interested in this option. Then again, the majority of home pc's are still slow pentium 1/2 or celerons, as that's all most mums and dads need. Why aren't companies like Dell, Toshiba, HP etc... improving these? I understand a lot of it is out of their hands (hardware size etc...) but still... PS...First post :P
The next step: The 21" laptop.
People keep innovating until technology is completely useless. Then they go back, and settle for the things that are usable.
This look like: I have a bigger xxx than you have!! Biggest car, biggest house, biggest whatever. But who needs a 200 room house if he lives alone? Some thing for laptops. Who needs 17" to carry around? You only need a screen that big in the office/home, and there, you could connect the laptop to a decent LCD monitor.
Call on God, but row away from the rocks.
Seems that all laptops that come out these days have weird resolutions that have no bearing on how your text will be outputted to a printer. This one will have text that is too large onscreen, while others (Dell is particularly guilty of this) have super-hi res screens where everything is too small. Back when I was a Mac guy (13 years ago) having WYSIWYG was important to most users, but no one appears to care any more.
1440x900 WTF? Toshiba has a huge flop on their hands.
Although I haven't seen it (page is dead), it sounds bulkly (10 lbs?!). But the absolute kicker is that resolution. A 17" (!) screen that only does 1440x900?! Oh man that sucks.
My 15" Dell is running at 1600x1200 right now (and looks wonderful). Ah, love that UXGA. Toshiba made a huge mistake.
The ratio of people to cake is too big
okay, what gives with laptop manufacturers and screen resolutions? I've got a 12.1" XGA screen on my laptop, and it has a physical dot pitch of about 105DPI. This monster screen has a dot pitch around 95DPI, if that. I've seen 10" XGA screens which have beautiful crisp pixels (you're talking about 128DPI on those things - Toshiba used to make a laptop with one, in fact). If you built a 17" widescreen TFT with the same dot pitch as one of those, you'd be looking at a laptop with some 1800x1100 pixels. That would be worth doing. But it seems as TFTs get larger, the resolution gets lower, and we end up with beautiful screens like the Apple cinema displays being let down by the fact that their pixels are huge.
Why would I want a laptop with a bigger screen than my 12.1" one if I don't actually get that many more pixels?
Exactly what is the market for a Laptop like this?
Good point. In the business world (biggest purchasers of laptops I think), laptops are usually used from hotel rooms and airport lobbies. Having been in this situation for over 10 years now, where email, web applications, power point presentations, etc -- make up the bulk of the reasons why I carry the thing around the country -- I have a hard time seeing why anyone would want something any bigger than the smallest possible option. I could use a variety of these "new fangled" laptops to work on my presentation's in airport lounges, but I still choose to use an "old/slow (400 Mhz Cely)" IBM TP 240 at 2.9 lbs. I may give up the bells and whistles, but it sure beats lugging around a 6-10 lb. monster around the country.
(+1 Funny) only if I laugh out loud.
As opposed to now?
I don't know about you, but most people I know orient their keyboard so that the whole keyboard (keyboard and keypad) are centered against the monitor, not just the main keyboard. Call it an aesthetics thing. That doesn't even consider the fact that most keyboards are already off centered to the left to a small degree already.
I have to agree with the first post, if you have that much real estate to work with, why not have a keypad on there. Hell, why not just dump the whole small keyboard footprint and go with a full 104 on there?
It is human nature to take shortcuts in thinking.
you don't understand it? I don't see why. There's no real innovation to be had these days for joe sixpack.
Mom and dad can get to their hotmail account and check their stocks just fine on their pentium II (or even pentium 1...my wife's grandparents only upgraded because lightning fried their modem and screwed up their motherboard). Usually all they need is an operating system reinstall or a larger hard drive since they aren't capable of actually cleaning out their files themselves.
Saying that most people want faster computers is primarily the fault of Microsoft (flamebait, blah blah) wanting to up the number of features at the expense of speed, as well as these users not knowing how to defrag or that they should get rid of the dozens of things running in their system tray. And let's not forget Longhorn's aspirations towards 3d-accelerated desktops. Something Joe User simply doesn't need but will "have to have" once he hears about it. That and upgrading their RAM.
Saying that most people want quieter computers is the responsibility of chipmakers, not of OEMs. Put a Pentium 4 or Athlon XP into a box and it's gonna have fans. No question. Put a Crusoe or a C3 into a box for grandma, and you might even be able to go fanless if you do it right. But she wants that Pentium 4 the TV told her she had to have.
As far as cheaper goes, as long as mom and pop are buying from OEMs like Dell and Gateway, it's not gonna happen.
Personally, as far as desktops go, I think it'd be far more beneficial for people to stop looking at megahertz or gigahertz. A 1.2 GHz Athlon with 1GB of RAM is going to run faster than a 2.4 GHz pentium 4 with 128 MB of RAM for someone who doesn't realize he has 200MB of programs running in his system tray alone. When I build PCs from scratch these days, I do whatever I can to put a bare minimum of a half gig of RAM, preferrably a full gig. Why? Because modern software is bloated, and because average users don't do anything to help the situation. You can try to teach them.
But trust me on the RAM. it's honestly all the average non-technical person who wants to have a computer for internet and word processing needs to upgrade if their current system is 300mhz or higher
In SOVIET RUSSIA... erm...NSA AMERICA, the Internet logs onto YOU!
Last month I was flying cross-country (SouthWest Airlines) and a couple sitting across the aisle from me both pulled out brand new Titanium Powerbooks w/17" screens.
They were awful proud of their laptops and made disparaging comments about my "cute little toy" -- a Fujitsu Lifebook P2120. I was then subjected to a prosetylization sermon that would have done the Jehovas Witnesses proud.
It was my turn when BOTH of them tried to use those behemoths at the same time -- on the fold down trays in economy class, right next to each other.
Those beasts, while pretty, can't be used in economy class airline seats without seriously annoying the person sitting next to you. They're too big.
All they were doing was answering e-mails (offline), checking their calendar -- mostly showing off the new toys and attempting to spread the gospel of St. Steve.
Once I got the point across that I didn't WANT a big screen on a laptop, but preferred a lighter weight (3.5 lbs) and longer battery life (10+ hours with my secondary battery), they left me alone. It also helped that I wasn't running any version of Windows.
Learning HOW to think is more important than learning WHAT to think.
Can any Slashdot PC Hardware engineers enlighten us to the sorry state of PC notebook design? Why is this notebook 10lbs, and Apple can design one 3 lbs lighter? Why do PC Notebook components require 3 extra lbs!?? Also why can't PC laptop manufacturers start using DVD/CD Rom drives that do not have a disk tray (e.g. just insert the disk into a slot like the Apple Powerbook)
That configuration may work on a desktop but imagine that on a laptop.
Go on, do it.
You'd be offsetting the laptop on your lap. Either that or position your hands in a very uncomfortable manner to reach the main keys on the left side of the laptop.
When you use a laptop on your laptop you often end up balancing it on your knees by putting your hands on it. With your hands mostly on the left side that won't work out too well, especially with a bohemoth 17" laptop that sticks off your lap.
A full size keyboard just wouldn't be comfortable.