The Notebook Review forums were hosted by TechTarget, who shut down them down on January 31, 2022. This static read-only archive was pulled by NBR forum users between January 20 and January 31, 2022, in an effort to make sure that the valuable technical information that had been posted on the forums is preserved. For current discussions, many NBR forum users moved over to NotebookTalk.net after the shutdown.
@Andrew, regarding the X100e, i think there was lot of questions been asked by people whom wanted a laptop smaller and cheaper than the X61 or X200, but still carries a Thinkpad logo. But the AMD single core CPU on the X100e is not exactly what people asked in terms of a Thinkpad Netbook.
I also prefer the 16:10 and they are impossible to find in the 15" laptops anymore. I travel a lot and did not want the extra size and weight of a 17" laptop. I finally threw in the towel and ordered a W510 as my current laptop isn't keeping up with my needs, but I dragged my heels for a good six months.
Several of us have speculated the prevalence of the 16:9 is due to the whole HD hype. I am also wondering what cost savings they may get from the slightly smaller screen.
It not just "couple of dollars". The cost of LCD panel is massively influenced by yield, the amount of non-defective panels in total produced. Defectiveness of LCD panel determined by number of dead pixels, therefore directly influenced by total number of pixels.
Reducing resolution from 1920x1200 to 1920x1080 is almost 20% reduction in total pixel count, that will increase yield almost 20% therefore - so you effectively could save almost that much of true production cost.
>> Marketing trying to justify it as "better suited for movies". Sure, no arguments here. But who buys laptop primarily just for watching movies?
16:9 is not even "better suited for movies". At least, not any of the movies my kids have. We don't have a TV or any very large screen at home, and my kids watch movies exclusively on the laptop screen, or sometimes on my desktop screen (a 21" EIZO). All the movie disks my kids have are 4:3 or 16:10. I just bought a new ThinkPad SL510 (with most basic config. - a very cheap way of buying a ThinkPad). So on the Sl510, the movies appear significantly smaller, with two wide black bands on the sides that the 4:3 or 16:10 couldn't fill out.
I also noticed that the letterboxing is still there even in 16:9 screens! My T400 has 16:10 which is fine for my needs. It's a good aspect ratio when it comes to working on papers and multitasking. The movie stuff is just an added feature for my laptop. I do occasionally watch an AVI and MKV these days with my T400 but school work is my priority.
Problems? See this thread at archive.org.
