November 15, 2008

Open letter to all laptop manufacturers:

I have been out of the laptop market for several years, and I am now jumping back in and looking for a new one. To my chagrin I have discovered that there is not a single model made by anybody that I would consider buying. Absolutely every manufacturer seems to be making a laptop with a screen that is:

• wide screen rather than 4:3 (i.e. WXGA rather than XGA)
   
• shiny (glossy) rather than matte

I was in a store recently looking down a row of your latest offerings. In the screen of every single machine I saw the brilliant reflected images of the store's lights and the outside windows. And as I stood in front of each one I saw my own image reflected. And of course all of them were wide-screen, which is really crummy for business use (who wants to constantly scroll up and down a document because the screen is so short?).

I was discussing this with a savvy friend of mine and he described the situation perfectly when he said that the entire new generation of laptops is good for one thing only - watching movies in the dark.

Have all of you forgotten that there is a business marketplace out here? Have you all lost your minds???

Sincerely,
Dave Ziffer
DaveZiffer@ProjectPro.com

3/23/2009 Update:

Well I am feeling very pleased with myself today. I promised myself that I would never, never, buy a laptop that was equipped with either a wide screen or with a shiny screen. This appears to have left me with no options for a new laptop whatsoever. But I found a buddy who had some brand-new Lenovo T60 machines still in the box. So I bought one off him. Now I won't have to scroll my portrait-orientation documents as I would on the nasty little short widescreen. And I won't have to look at reflections of office lights, outside-facing windows, or myself in the screen.

Too bad I couldn't take advantage of any of that new high-tech 64-bit stuff you guys are cranking out, but hey, I refuse to use a machine that I'd have to hate every day because not one of you can get the window dressing right.

12/3/2009 Update:

To see my more extensive discussion on this and related topics, click here.