Re: [gentoo-user] OT: advice sought on new laptop for Gentoo

[Paul Hartman <paul.hartman+gentoo@gmail.com>]

On Sun, Sep 5, 2010 at 7:58 AM, John Blinka <john.blinka@gmail.com> wrote:
> Hi, all,
>
> My trusty Inspiron 8200 is on death's door and so I'm looking for a
> new laptop - one that will run Gentoo straightforwardly, of course.
>
> I really liked the 1600x1200 display on this machine, which I greatly
> prefer to the 1600x900 display on the more modern Inspiron 1545 I own.
>  Most of what I do now is through a web browser, and I can see much
> more of a web page with 1200 lines of display than I can with 900.
> And I dislike the massive width of the 1545 which makes it much less
> portable than the old 8200.  I'd love to replace my 8200 with a
> machine of similar dimensions, but thinner and lighter.  However, I
> cannot find any machine on Dell's website with a 4x3 aspect ratio -
> they all seem to be approximately 16x9 now.
>
> So,  is 16x9 all that's available now in laptops?

Basically all laptops are widescreen (or shortscreen <g>) now, your
best bet is to try to find one that is 16:10 instead of 16:9, it will
at least give you a little bit more vertical screen space.

If money is not an option: there is a 15.X" WUXGA which is 1920x1200,
16:10 ratio. It will probably be very difficult to find one with this
screen and the laptop will probably cost a fortune (or be old). I
think Lenovo and Asus made laptops with this resolution screen at a
sub-17inch size. Maybe Apple, too.

The most bang-for-your-buck will probably be 1920x1080, they are
mostly 17" models as well (lower pixel density) but it's easier to
find a 15.X" version of these than the above. Asus had a "gaming"
laptop about 6 months ago which sported a 15.X" 1920x1080 screen and
Core i7 processor for around USD$1500.

Since 16:9 panels are the same shape as the ones TVs use, I assume
that's why they are cheaper and why the industry prefers them.

I care deeply about vertical pixels, but also about DPI. I really
don't like using a tiny monitor, nor do I like to use a monitor with
less than 100dpi. This requirement usually makes the rest of the
details worth themselves out naturally. :)

My laptop, which is a few years old now, has a 1400x1050 (116? dpi)
and that is a very comfortable resolution for me. In order to get the
same vertical pixels on a new laptop I'd have to go up to 1680x1050
(16:10) or 1920x1080 (16:9) and it would probably be at least an inch
wider than my current laptop, which is 13" wide.

At home on my desktop machines I have a 4:3 20" 1600x1200 (100 dpi) as
well as a 16:9 23" 2040x1152 (100 dpi). The latter is essentially the
same height as the former, but wider. The 1600x1200 can be rotated,
often times I use it in 1200x1600 orientation if I'm mostly browsing
WWW or working on documents. (The particular graphics card and/or
drivers on that computer don't support acceleration in rotated mode,
though, so performance suffers.)

I also have in my pocket a Nokia N900 which has a 800x480 screen (5:3
aspect ratio) with 256 dpi in a roughly 3.5" screen. I haven't tried
to install Gentoo on it... yet. :)