I don't actually need color accuracy, but I find myself slightly shocked by how bad other laptops look after getting used to the T60p. Laptop manufacturers: I'd pay extra for IPS (don't invent your own cute name for it or I won't know you have it) and I'd pay extra for high-res 4:3.

I suspect they know this, and simply shifted the market to 16:9 so they could later charge a premium for what used to be the standard.

http://lenovoblogs.com/insidethebox/?p=220

(I have no idea how accurate this is, but other computer makers have given similar explanations.)

In any case, I'm not saying it's fact, just loose speculation

I suspect the truth is more likely that 16:9/10 is so much more popular that its no longer economical to produce 4:3 laptops.

So you expect that a <$2000 computer (where almost all of that money is paying for it being a computer) whose screen can only be 1/8" thick to have better picture quality than a $900 device whose sole purpose is to display video and which has less extreme size contraints?

"There's simply no choice" -- I'd say of course, since consumers didn't care when they started to buy the worse ones, the manufacturers rightly concluded that they can kill the more expensive variants completely.

I've read more critiques of iPads that stated: "it doesn't have a wide screen." Were they written by competitors? Or are consumers really already trained to actually desire the worse?

I'll also always pick two monitors over one large monitor for the ability to separate workspaces.

Besides, 4:3 screens aren't square either. Why not demand 1:1 screens? Wide screens are more aesthetically pleasing (for most, not all).

I have 2560 pixels wide but I have a 27" iMac and sorta consider the screen almost a "freebie" with the computer (considering how little extra the 27" costs). A similar stand alone screen is crazy money though..

Yes, that and do a little email and Facebook.

Most people who buy laptops (or any PC) are not programmers.

We get the features we want.

Most companies aren't so stupid that they would cut the features most desired by their customers. When features are cut it's because it didn't hurt sales to cut them. Imagine people wanted great screens on laptops more than anything else, what would happen? Every manufacturer would make a laptop with a great screen. They don't and that means that most people kept buying laptops even when they lost their great screens.

It's pretty basic economics, the market won't bare bad products in the face of competition.

I bought it off ebay for a fraction of the macbook price (cheap as a 3G iPad)), and I don't worry nearly as much about spilling water on the keyboard as I would with a macbook.

It's sad that this display option is fairly rare on 15" laptops, many either giving you too low resolutions (1366x768) or absurdly high resolutions (1920x1080)

It's a real UNIX, it even ships with Bash...

The VPCZ117GG/X - 13.1 (33.2 cm) wide (FullHD: 1920 x 1080) ; VAIO Display Premium, LED backlight, Adobe RGB 96% coverage

[1]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Golden_ratio

Anyway, aren't a lot of movies in 2.35:1 or something anyway?

Just figure that crap out.

And the names are like car names. They don't want to give an impression that a computer is "bad" or "slow" or "crippled". Do you want to tell your friends "I got a Dell Crippled v3" so they go for the insane-o names. But apple has maybe 1000x less component combinations available as a baseline model. Remember they control the hardware, while these vendors sell mish-mashes of different hardwares.