Saturday, July 25, 2009

What happened to Dell's studio 17 WUXGA?

So I've been looking for a laptop this last few months to replace my aging Thinkpad T42p...a great laptop with a UXGA screen. I prefer it this way because you just get more on the screen.

It seems there is nothing in a 4:3 screen anymore because the purpose of laptops is no longer for work, but for movies. HP even makes a big deal about it in their laptop descriptions.

That's okay, I guess, even though websites scroll vertically. So I still need a good vertical resolution. 1024 x 768 is reminiscent of my first laptop back in '99. Here we are 10 years later and most resolutions are still 768 in the vertical range. Lame! Even ones that push 800 or 900 are too squished! I'm used to 1200 vertical pixels and I cannot go lower because by the time you add up the pixels for your taskbar and toolbars, you have about two inches with which to view the web page. And if it's web-based email and it adds it's own toolbars, you're left with about enough to read one line of text at a time before scrolling.

So the only option really is WUXGA. I had settled in on the Dell Studio 17 with a nice WUXGA screen. I sat on it for a couple weeks because I wanted to get into a store to physically look at a 17" screen and see if I could handle it's added size.

I finally went in to Walmart where they actually had a Dell studio 17 and it seemed acceptable in size. I use the laptop all day at work as a desktop replacement because I travel via car to our remote sites a lot and I work from home sometimes...so something compact and light, while nice and portable, would only lure me into maintaining a desktop also.

Okay, so I get on Dell's site today and there are no more Dell studio 17 models with a WUXGA screen. What the????

I guess "joe moron" consumer decided that he didn't want to pay extra for the WUXGA screen when they only use their laptop for movies so Dell did away with them. I can't find any of any brand for less than $1000. The Studio I was looking at two weeks ago was $750 (after coupon code).

I guess this is the time of year the laptop companies change their models around in anticipation for the back-to-school mad rush. Any student (freshmen) going for anything more than a Netbook is going to be disappointed after the first week of lugging that backpack around. I graduated 10 years ago when nobody had a laptop, ipod, cell phone to carry around...just a few notebooks and a textbook or two, and that was too much to carry.

1 comment:

Randy said...

Okay, I found the Studio 17, but you have to be in the "Business" area. Two weeks ago you couldn't find a studio in this category at all.