That should be simple, given the ample range of different brands and models: I need a new laptop. However, after a couple of minutes and suddenly becoming somewhat frustrated: nobody is producing a decent professional laptop any more. Full stop, end of story.
Sure, you get them with 1 TB hard drives, dolby surround audio system, 4-core processors, 8 GByte memory, and an interface to your coffee machine. No problem. But you can’t get any with a decent screen.
What I mean: all models, from all the brands now have 16:9 screens, an extremly lenghty format that is perfect for watching movies and stuff. But for working (and for me that has a lot to do with writing, either texts or source code, or digging around databases) that format is absolute crap. There is a reason why you use an ordinary piece of paper in portrait orientation (shorter side horizontal) and not in landscape (longer side horizontal). Landscape orientiation simply makes the lines of a text too long to read, and/or you don’t get enough lines on the screen (while the right half of the screen simply goes empty). So much for the professionalism of the “professional models”.
When talking to the technical support of our main IT-supplier, he could see my point – and he even had a great solution: “just buy a docking station and a big stationary screen”. Perfect – that’s why I’m trying to buy a laptop (aka “mobile computer”). I wonder what the flight crew on my next flight might say if I try to bring a docking station and a big screen on board and start looking for the power outlets…
Thomas
PS.: Not that it would help, but interestingly enough the IPad seems to have the old 4:3 format.
