On this topic: I've just ordered a T410s for a friend. The T410 does still use a magnesium alloy frame, but the "s" model uses glass fiber and carbon to achieve better-than-standard durability at a lower weight. They're not Toughbooks, but they'll do for most people not climbing mountains with their computers in tow.
On Thu, 10 Jun 2010, Keith Lofstrom wrote: > Some are tired of hearing me say this, but they are no longer making > business oriented laptops - that is, somewhat more suitable for editing > 8.5x11 pages and vertically oriented content. I don't think that's the case. I think it's more true to say that business is less oriented toward 8.5x11 pages and vertically-oriented content. > You won't advance green tech, cure poverty, or get rich watching movies. (And you certainly won't cure poverty by getting rich.) > All the new laptops are "wide screen", that is, screens with the top two > inches removed so they can get two screens out of a piece of glass. A screen with an aspect ratio closer to that of a keyboard makes sense for a folding computer (where the screen falls against the keyboard... duh). > The T410 is one of these, a 14.1 inch screen with less square inches > than the previous 4:3 aspect ratio 14.1 inch screens. Sigh. Right. It makes them smaller and lighter. I don't think anyone believes a 14.1 widescreen is larger in square inches than a 14.1 4:3 screen... at least not anybody who paid any attention to geometry in middle school. You're seeing deception where there is none. And as you note, pixels are where the real estate is: > I purchase used 15 inch 4:3 T60s and replace the 1024*768 or 1280*960 > screens with reprogrammed aftermarket 2048*1536 screens. So you're making a 17" laptop with the sides lopped off. Why, again? Oh, right. Because you can't stop thinking about paper and portraits instead of letting form and function interact in a sensible way and let our concept of presentation evolve with our media. (This reminds me of your other comment around this time about wanting a multi-column terminal display for long text files. Just write longer lines and use a wider terminal!) > 8.5x13 (w/banner) pages > scaled vertically > X in. Y in. in2 scale #horiz. > 14.1 in. 4:3 11.3 8.5 95.4 0.65 2.03 > 14.1 in. wide 12.3 6.9 85.0 0.53 2.72 > 15.0 in. 4:3 12.0 9.0 108.0 0.69 2.03 15.6 in. wide 13.6 7.6 103.6 who* cares So there it is. If you want to upgrade your 14.1" laptop to get more screen and probably a more appropriately-sized keyboard (with less dead space, front-to-back), you get a 15.6 in wide. You shave an inch off the height and gain a couple of inches on the side and the screen is more appropriately scaled to the chassis without compromising keyboard space. Heck, on the larger models, you can even slip in a ten-key pad and have a real keyboard. [* You, if you're in some dying form of print publication**, I suppose, but do we really need to hinder our design for the sake of the dinosaurs' tiny arms?] [** I do wish the e-ink readers of today were available in other aspects. Does anyone know if the Kindle can be put in "landscape mode"? The ONLY thing I like about their proprietary book format is that the pages are not in a fixed size. I wish there were a truly portable document format that was smart enough to adapt to presentation size. Yeah, it would certainly take smarter readers, but we have way better processing power than we had when the PDF spec was written. Perhaps some intermediary pre-compiled LaTeX -- processed enough to embed appropriate font and character information, but not yet laid out in pages -- could work.] > The 14.1 wide takes up more sideways desk space than the 15.0 > 4:3. By your measure, that's about a third of an inch. Good, you can lie another pen next to your keyboard for all that paper you're printing off all the time (obviously you're printing off paper -- otherwise, why would you care about 8.5x11 screen layout?) > Who needs more than 2 up side-by-side? If someone develops a good word > processing program with the controls and banners on the side, then the > wide screens won't be as disadvantaged. Who uses word processors? If you're writing for publication, you're doing it in LaTeX anyway, right? And if that's the case and you want to view your output 2-up, then you'll also need room for your editor window also. Give that a standard 80 columns and you've just filled your widescreen. > I am mystified that these wider, shorter screens are accepted in east > Asian countries with vertical writing systems. I'm mystified that they accepted keyboards. Such is how we adapt to our changing technologies, dinosaur. > Although the ideograms can also be displayed horizontally, proofing an > output page must be a pain in the butt. What is it with you and output pages?!? Output, today, is web pages and slide presentations and those are the same aspect ratio as the screens on which they are created. It's my understanding that pages are usually taller than they are wide because the lead used to separate the letter blocks would compress upon successive imprints (whereas the lines themselves were separated by more elastic stuff) and the letters would drift loose. Fewer characters left-to-right meant less visible drift and less resetting of type. (The length, however, had to do with paper-making and the reasonable reach of a person's arms in those days.) Anyway, widescreen's super nice. Indeed, it's so nice that I absolutely love working with my 15.6" Thinkpad docked on my desktop next to a 21" widescreen monitor of an identical pixel count/ratio (1680x1050). The 21" screen rotates and can be used to view huge versions of pages typeset for portrait printing or from downloaded PDFs published at paper aspects. However, reading lots of written text on the screen (like, say, a Wikipedia page) is much easier for me with the screen set in landscape position (I can also better read the text on my often-numerous browser tabs). J. _______________________________________________ PLUG mailing list PLUG@lists.pdxlinux.org http://lists.pdxlinux.org/mailman/listinfo/plug
