(Warning: boring nerd rage ahead)
I need help finding a new laptop.
For the last couple years, I’ve have a Fujitsu P1610 (which replaced my stolen P1510). It should last me for another year or two, but I’m pretty hard on my computers. This one has started developing problems typical of an overused, aging machine — your standard hardware failures, screen damage, random crashes, unexpected hangings, paradoxical package syndrome, retrograde memory leakage, Hamitic keyboard, fan tearing, Indian screen burn-in, dysfunctional Haskell, LCD torsion, tab key thrombosis, trackpad sclerosis, dry RAM syndrome, scroll-wheel arousal, systemic rainbow failure, peristeronic disk fragmentation, hyperactive tilde key, heat-sink apricity, kernel duplicity, space bar plasticity, and cross-site chlamydia.
So I know that in the next year or two, I’ll be in the market for a new laptop. Here’s my problem: as far as I can tell, nobody makes the laptop I want. I really only have two criteria:
- Weight under 2.5 lbs
- Screen at least 1280 pixels wide
This isn’t an impossible combination. My current laptop fits it. The Fujitsu Q2010 fit it. The Fujitsu U820 fits it but is actually too small and light (the size of a CD case, with a 270 dpi screen!). The problem doesn’t seem to be technology. And, given the recent popularity of netbooks, it’s probably not lack of demand for small laptops, either. Everyone just seems to assume that if you want small, you also want a cheap and crappy display. Is there nothing between the netbooks and the Lenovo X series (which are a bit bulkier than I want)? Other than buying a laptop that is several years old (hunting down a Q2010) or has a touch screen that I don’t really want (the newer model of my current one, the P1630), do I have any options?
(Side note: I find it odd that there are so few laptops with high-DPI screens (>175)? Everything above 150 on that Wikipedia list is either a Fujitsu or a smartphone. Aren’t we supposed to be moving out of the era of pixels by now?)
xkcd 