Dell Precision M4700 and M6700 - Preliminary Info

its easy to get lost in debate about 16:10 vs 16:9

What is important to me is the amount of content that can be displayed on the screen and not having it so tiny as being hard on the eyes. And I'm not talking about movies. But if we talk about watching movies on a laptop, there are sooo many different aspect ratios in films. 16:9 displays still show horizontal bars (letterbox) for some movies. Personally, letterbox doesn't bother me one bit. Making laptop screens vertically shorter so I don't have to see those letterboxes, that bothers me.

Doesn't anyone use laptops for WORK anymore? Is it all about selling to consumers who watch nothing but movies?

 

16:9 screens are better for spreadsheets that I work on, which tend to have lots (hundreds) of columns.

It's also convenient if I want to work on windows side by side.

I'd hardly say they're "bad for work."

 

Actually, if you compare max resolution (WUXGA vs. FHD), the columns would be the same between the two aspect ratios, while 16:9 would have less rows than 16:10. Not much worse but definitely not better.

 

1920x1080 16:9

1920x1200 16:10

both give the same width

both do not give the save height


but I think aspect ratio debate might become less of a hot topic as these new retina type of screens start to appear from other manufacturers with very high density pixels

 

Not too sure if retina is a bit of an overkill, but FHD on 15.6 inch looks pretty good in terms of pixel density, i honestly cannot see any pixels even 2 inches away from the screen. On 17 inch tho it could be just a tad higher than FHD, but to double the resolution might just be an overkill IMO. Plus all that it takes (scaling and stuff) to make it look good at different resolutions or even native resolution (since native is just too high).

 

It's a very good point. Dell please pay attention to that!

And tell me why I have to do that (to buy an external display)? Especially if I have already paid $2000+ for the expensive workstation with 16:9 screen, that I don't need? And what about my work on this workstation in a remote place? Should I bring that external display with me too or may be try to borrow it there? Really, it sounds ridiculous to pay big bucks for expensive workstation and then additionally buy external monitor just to work with it. Think about it...

 

Nor me, but that's business.

Yes! That's where the money is Jeeves.

In fact, would it be an understatement if I said we've been down this road before? Unless somebody out there invents a time machine 16:10 is not coming back folks. Lets move on.

Speaking of moving on, isn't it time we retired VGA? What a waste of a good port space. At least Firewire knew when its 15 minutes were up.

 

Precision still includes a Firewire port too.

But seriously, I still run into projectors that only have a VGA connection. It would be easy enough to just get a DisplayPort->VGA adapter for such situations, I suppose. Though, one thing I like about the Precision is that all the ports you might need are there.

(At least there's not a serial and parallel port hanging on there. )

 

Aaron,

Actually, I would love to have a serial port. You'd be surprised at how many companies still use serial, though, most companies' workstations are mainly desktops. I'd buy a new M6700 with a serial port even though I just got an M6600 last August. Instead, I'm ping ponging back and forth between this old laptop or that old laptop that have a serial port...

 

doesn't exist some serials into a CD-rom bay? At least lenovo had an ultra-bay with small and big serial ports module if you sacrifise cd(dvd)