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As a computer savvy person I often get approached by my friends and family when they want to buy a new laptop. As most of them don't want to play games on it my recommendation was very simple in the past:
Just get a used IBM Thinkpad 42p.
Why, you ask? Because this thing has professional build quality, a great keybord but most importantly: a great 15" 1600x1200 screen.
In my eyes there is nothing more important than a good display with a high resolution for someone doing the basic stuff like surfing the web and writing emails and documents.
CPU speed just isn't that important for these tasks.
With this directive in mind I organized many used Thinkpads. However in the last few years, this machine has become quite dated and a single core Pentium M with 1.8 GHz just doesn't cut it anymore as running Windows 7 on it gets quite slow.
Thus I am facing the current dilemma as a friend of mine wants to buy a laptop for about 400 €
- I just don't have any idea what laptop to recommend and everyone does seem to think that screen resolution is not important by hiding it from the product info and not letting you filter the results for it.
Let's use amazon as an example (my friend wants to buy there because he has an amazon coupon):
In the notebook category you can filter your results by screen size, ram size, hdd size, cpu manufacturer and clock speed, manufacturer, price and shipping options with no resolution value anywhere in sight.
So now I have to manually inspect every one of them in the given price range but even in the detailed information there is often no resolution value to be found anywhere.
As an example for the Toshiba Satellite C670D-11G, I have to click on a link and load a link or read the review section to get this value while they list useless $&§% like "battery packaging type: batteries_packed_with_equipment". At least it lists the display as "HD+" which I can resolve with wikipedia to mean "1600x900" but others (like this one) don't even do that.
So that brings my rant to an end. Why do you think it's that damn hard to find out a laptop's screen resolution? Do sellers don't care? Do they do it because buyers don't care? Do they want to hide their laptop's weaknesses? Who seriously thinks 1366x768 is enough screen space?
  
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To be honest I find physical screen size more important to me than resolution, as I tend not to like having mega res on tiny screens. Everything is incredibly small and it hurts and strains my eyes. That's not to say I'm against having a filter for it in product searches - better search functionality is always a plus - but you have to understand that most people 1) don't need that much screen space and 2) prefer having font size that's bigger than an ant.
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I guess I'm just used to having a lot of screen space, but I play all my games on 1280x780 or lower and it's so much easier to move my mouse around. I'd never thought of basing recommendations for non-computer savy people off that though. Granted, most of the people who ask me cause they're college age all want a Mac.
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I don't think it's that hard to find the resolution on the constructors website (don't know on amazon or others) but it's one of the most important feature for a laptop. Last one i bought was the an xps 15" just because it was one of the only 1920x1200 15" laptop (even now it's hard to find).
I honestly can't work with a small resolution now. The size of the screen matters but the resolution is far more important (you can change the size of the font if you want).
I would be glad to have it as a search criteria, even though I usually choose a size for the screen and then try to find the best resolution possible.
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It's probably because most buyers don't care - why offer the search option if (almost) no one asks for it? To be honest, I can't think of a time when anyone has ever said anything about resolution when they're looking for a new computer. Computer savvy people and most gamers will know that it matters, but to the common consumer, ie. those who just surf the web, etc. how many of them do you think even change the resolution from the default setting?
And even for those who do know, there are more important things to them, ie. processor speed, memory, graphics card, etc.
I know how you feel though, whenever I see computer ads in general electronics stores such as best buy, they always list the processor name but don't include the speed. I don't follow what the newest processors are or anything so I just look at the name and I'm like... well, wth is it? and have to go google it for specs and such.
On January 02 2012 19:59 Count9 wrote:
I guess I'm just used to having a lot of screen space, but I play all my games on 1280x780 or lower and it's so much easier to move my mouse around. I'd never thought of basing recommendations for non-computer savy people off that though. Granted, most of the people who ask me cause they're college age all want a Mac.
yep... dem macs...
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Laptop resolutions are fine, but very few laptop screens are IPS. I don't understand why apple doesn't do this, they do not sacrifice quality in any other aspect of design =/
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@Count9: You can just increase your mouse dpi if you want easier mouse movement :-)
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1600x1200 sounds a bit high for a 15" screen :S
yeah, the screen real estate is good and all, but honestly anyone who is computer savvy is not going to limit himself with having only a laptop. I honestly can't imagine having a laptop as my main computer, I always considered it a necessity for when I have to go mobile. I bought a cheap ass HP 2 years ago with 15.4" and a 1366x768 resolution and I can say I honestly don't need more screen space for browsing/vim which are 95% of things I use it for. The primary source of hate I have towards it is the fact that I consider it too big. The next laptop I get is going to be a max 13" ultraportable, and honestly I won't care about the resolution at all, as long as it's small and light and has a decent battery.
While I can understand the need for a "decent" laptop if you are a student and have a problem with space in your living quarters (i'm a student, too) I would still use a micro-atx desktop build for your dorm room + a netbook for classes rather than a "beastly" laptop with lots of screen real estate.
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The OP is comparing apples and oranges - for instance, I do alot of programming so high resolution (mine is 1900 x 1200 on a 15 inch screen) makes a big difference because I can make things small and hence see more things at once. If you play games, high resolution also makes difference. However, if you just want to do basic laptop things like surf the net, then a 1368 x 768 is more than sufficient.
If you want to watch HD movies, you might as well plug the laptop to a TV.
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I have 1920x1080 on a 15" screen. Good eyesight is recommended but it's not like I have to squint or anything. I don't particularly need it but it is nice.
Anyway, worst part about cheap laptops with low resolution isn't the low resolution but the fact that most of those 1366x768 screens (almost all laptops have this, if it doesn't say it probably has), are absolutely terrible. Not only is viewing angle like 2 degrees for the perfect zone so you can't move your head, but also the color is just an overall shade of gray and brightness is lacking. Of course there are 1080p screens that are bad and 768p screens that are good (despite the fact that I have never seen one) but in my experience there aren't as many poor 1080ps around, at least that are equally crap to the ones I described.
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On January 02 2012 23:31 Sablar wrote:
I have 1920x1080 on a 15" screen. Good eyesight is recommended but it's not like I have to squint or anything. I don't particularly need it but it is nice.
Anyway, worst part about cheap laptops with low resolution isn't the low resolution but the fact that most of those 1366x768 screens (almost all laptops have this, if it doesn't say it probably has), are absolutely terrible. Not only is viewing angle like 2 degrees for the perfect zone so you can't move your head, but also the color is just an overall shade of gray and brightness is lacking. Of course there are 1080p screens that are bad and 768p screens that are good (despite the fact that I have never seen one) but in my experience there aren't as many poor 1080ps around, at least that are equally crap to the ones I described.
That's because up until now (yes times are changing) you had to look really hard to find laptops with high screen resolution. It didn't make sense to make the few high res laptops a shitty quality.
Now there's a shift to more high res you'll notice the quality going down.
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The most important thing for me is to have 2 monitors. I have work on one monitor and fun stuff on the other. That way it is way easier to ignore the work and just focus on the fun while not feeling guilty.
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EPT
