Slashdot Mirror
Get Ready For The 20-inch Laptop
linumax writes "With so many DVDs featuring letterboxed or wide-screen versions of films, consumers' fascination with larger screen sizes is changing the size and shape of the laptop industry, stated an IDC report issued on Monday. The wide-screen format, found in only 39.2 percent of laptops expected to ship this year, will become dominant in mid- to late 2006. It will nearly eclipse standard screen dimensions by the end of 2009, the market research firm estimates. Samsung has already unleashed its upcoming 19-inch laptop. The product is expected to ship later this year. Dell, a major partner of Samsung, could easily adopt the large screen format for its high-end XPS laptops. And, LG Philips is also touting its 20-inch LCD displays for laptops."
I don't want to sound too much like flamebait but how on earth is this a Laptop?
I thought my brothers 17" Notbook was beyond portable, but this thing should come with a gift certificate to a chiropractor.
Give me the portability of a Tablet PC like the Toshiba Tecra anyday.. These large display systems are akin to SUVs in their power consumption, are they not?
~jennifer.k~
You got laptops with 20" screens now, why don't they put larger keyboards on those very same laptops? Those ittybitty chicklet keyboards kill hands for just about everyone I know that use them, save for the odd elf. They got alot of area on the laptop to place additional items like USB ports, relocating that %#$*()&! speaker jack, loads of other items can go in that blank space now.
First rule of holes; When in one, stop digging.
Pretty soon laptops screens will become so big that you won't even be able to carry them around, and you'll have to keep it permanantly on your desk. They'll have to come up with a new name though, I mean if you keep it on your desk, how about instead of "lap-top" call it something like "desk-top"?
It's a Good Thing this is going to happen. Why? Well, for one thing, it will also push the Tablet's into getting a little bigger. Oddly enough, Laptops and Tablets still don't screens that are big enough to fit an 8.5x11" full-size 1:1 ratio image of a piece of paper! People ask me if I find my Tablet too bulky (same problem with Laptop, essentially), and I tell them... actually, no, I want a bigger screen so I can write papers in real ratio format. Expect with this increase in size for some manufacturers to also start playing around with swivel screens to allow putting the screen in either landscape or portrait mode.
Of course, it's also great to have a portable movie playing machine. Nothing wrong with the entertainment side of the equation. I'm just saying that this is also going to push the adoption of swivel displays and increased tablet screens sizes.
. . . personally, I don't see the point of having to carry a screen, when I can carry a pair of goggles to view my applications with, and a pair of gloves (or smaller attatchments to my hands) to type on my virtual keyboard, and manipulate the programs with.
Simply put, I hope companies begin to innovate rather more than simply changing the dimensions of the screen I need to view with. I mean the things meant to be portable, not inexcusably large.
I assume this is being marketed in America?
The rest of us don't have laps that big.
I mean really, it's just silly now.
Don't see these as laptops; they aren't. If you click the link on the Samsung 19" machine, it's obvious that these are rather the heir to the all-in-one portable desktops that were available some years ago (they tended to look like a sewing machine, with a detachable keyboard and a screen behind a side panel).
You don't lug these around every day, and you're not expected to. Instead, they are space-saving uncluttered desktops without the hassle of cables and multiple beige boxes to move around. You can take it out into the dining or living room to work or play for a few hours with the rest of your household instead of being relegated to some study or den. When it's time to clear the table you can just unplug it and move it away.
The format just looks rather like a laptop since it's the all-in-one form people are used to by now, and lots of components are made to accomodate it. I would prefer the sewing machine model myself (and Sony has some VAIO's for the Japanse market that are pretty close).
Trust the Computer. The Computer is your friend.
My biggest gripe with all "big screen" laptops is that tiny keyboard stuck in the middle of the huge room of the bottom part. So instead of giving us correctly placed arrow keys, full-size enter, Ins/Del placed conveniently, just for websurfing and games on bigscreen, they stuff the remaining rum with numpad. Yeah, great for widescreen accounting and displaying several columns extra in Excel, isn't it? Oh, and yes, and since the numpad took some extra place, and the rest of horizontal space was wasted with inch-wide margins on both sides and some extra column of "custom" keys, stuff all the keys that in a normal laptop fit in a column right from enter, just below it right Control, where you rest your wrists.
Anagram("United States of America") == "Dine out, taste a Mac, fries"
Widescreen format may seem like it's aimed at windows users, but it's really a boon for us nerds, too!
I spend a lot of my day wishing I had a wider display, about another 4", for those stupidly-wide Oracle SQL*Plus queries, other-people's code which uses insane tab widths for indenting (I use two spaces), and so forth.
Really, I rarely want a widescreen when in GUI land, but wish for one daily as I live in Terminal Land.
Do daemons dream of electric sleep()?
In the office where my wife works all the computer systems (I assume except the servers) are laptops. They cost about the same amount of money and people tend to take them home on the weekend.
So the laptops are being used as car-portable desktops.
http://michaelsmith.id.au
A few months ago I was advising a friend of the family on purchasing a new computer. She was adament that she NEEDED a laptop with a widescreen monitor. After going through why she needed a portable computer over a desktop she had no answer. These new monster laptops are being marketed as full fledged desktop computers with added portability.
Personally I'd like to see a step in the other direction, something akin the Apple 12 inch iBook, except smaller and less fruit.
Bigger laps, bigger laptops!
This is a direct result of better PDA technology. Devices like the Treo, Blackberry, and ultra-light tablets are allowing the normal business user avoid lugging around a normal laptop and still have access to email and office suite apps. So the pressure to make laptops more portable has been relieved by the emergence of a new market segment and devices specifically aimed at being ultra-portable.
Meanwhile, the desktop users, all but the l33test gamers, and developers are demanding more powerful transportable devices. They don't need to travel accross the country, but would like the flexibility of using their PCs from their living room or the backyard without sacrificing their big screens and better power.
The transportable desktop replacement business is naturally growing while the ultraportable segment is shrinking.
Oh, you're one of those who haven't had the good fortune of actually trying a widescreen. The great thing about widescreens is the fact that you can open more documents, web browser screens, etc. side by side. It's a godsend for multitaskers and people using their laptops for work. And, with the higher resolution widescreens, you don't even need to worry about vertical height...the resolution is high enough to display whatever you need.
I too thought the wide screen laptops were stupid until I tried one out. Now I could never give up being able to have 3 documents open side by side at work. Think of it as dual screens on one screen...
Wise men say, "Forgiveness is divine, but never pay full price for late pizza."
Many of these laptops with odd ball screens have a real problem: The native resolution of the screen isn't supported by the video-bios.
Why is this a problem for Linux users ?
Last time I checked, Xorg/Xfree86 didn't support resolutions your video card didn't advertise. Which becomes a real PITA because now you are either forced to use the screen with chopped off ends, or full screen with the image being badly stretched out.
You could use the closed source XiG X server and you wouldn't have these issues. But a) it cost a pretty penny and b) they software itself is kinda dumb. (You'll install their X server, but you won't get any psuedo-rpm/dpkg's to trick the distro into thinking you have a regular X installed. It becomes a nightmare with dependencies.)
I thought it was part of an an international conspiracy to irradiate the reproductive organs of /. readers to keep them from breeding.
I'm pretty sure that will take care of itself.
I was quoted out of context in my autobiography...
I dunno, horizontal piano roll with vertical = pitch, horiz = time, makes decent sense to me. Mixers and other stuff horizontal is just fallback to the old hardware days. Even then though, eq's and stuff are normally laid out hi-mid-low top->bottom, which again makes a kind of logical sense.
:D
I just love ableton, and want a huge laptop to run it on
Game dev and music blog