What's the deal with all the 15.6" notebooks popping up everywhere?

I'm completely out of the loop on 15.6" notebooks, which seem to be growing in number every day?!? Just looking at dimensions, I can see that a 15.6" is about .8" wider than a 15.4". The 15.4" also appears to be about .25" taller than the 15.6".

Is it mainly for watching movies and similar entertainment-oriented purposes?

Off the cuff, I know that Acer has had an Aspire 15.6" for a while and HP recently started selling the G60. Dell has a 15.6" model Vostro in its small business line, the A860. Toshiba has also quietly added a 15.6" model designated the Satellite A350.

The lack of fanfare, or even simple acknowledgment of their existence, is a factor in my confusion. They just seem to appear for sale without any sort of announcement or press release. It's also curious that most/all of them are rather low-spec....The Dell tops out at a Pentium Dual Core T2390; the HP G60 uses AMD processors and doesn't even benefit from ATI integrated graphics, instead using the same nVIDIA GeForce 8200M as the cheapest Compaq models.

Initially, I thought Acer was just trying to unique or unusual...but apparently everyone else if following suit and I'm clueless as to who the target audience is for them?

 

Has to do with LCD panel manufacturers. 15.6's might be cheaper per pixel to produce than 15.4's.


That's the only thing that would make sense to me.


Any note on the resolutions? Do they tend to be higher, lower, or the same as 15.4s?

 

the new screen sizes are of 16:9 ratio, while conventional sizes are 16:10 or 4:3. the new ratio is best for viewing movies.

 

The area of a 15.6-inch screen is less than the area of a 15.4-inch screen, so that is a positive from a cost standpoint. The dimensions are as follows:

15.4-inch, 16:10
13.05 in wide
8.16 in high
105.49 sq in area
98 DPI at 1280x800 (standard res)

15.6-inch, 16:9
13.60 in wide
7.65 in high
103.99 sq in area
100 DPI at 1366x768 (standard res)

The difference is pretty small, probably not enough to offset the cost of new machinery, but that it's smaller isn't surprising.

I personally think 16:10 is widescreen enough - I spend very little time watching movies on my laptop, but a decent amount on the Internet or in Word or something like that where vertical space is kinda nice. And even with movies, resolution varies greatly - you go all the way from 4:3 on some DVD's of older movies to 2.35:1 on some. So I'm not sold on the wider screens.

 

If given the choice (specs weight etc. the same), I would take 15.4". Simply put, watching movies isn't what I'm going to be doing all day, and I appreciate the additional vertical space. It's easier to scan through documents... Fat scroll bars = not for me

 

They are doing this for manufacturing efficiency.

All of the HDTV panels are 16:9, and computer panels are 16:10. It is more efficient, and they get more usable panels by going to everything 16:9.

Cheers,

 

Its due to the HD fade I think, everybody is all about "HD TV" and also HD TV's are becoming used as computer monitors more and more.

So they just made the change for 16:10 --> 16:9, not just movie viewing a lot of console ports like to run 16:9 native.

Honestly its a bad move IMO, we had plenty of horizontal view space already and do a ton of vertical scrolling, so now we have to do even more scrolling because the chopped it down.

They didnt even make it wider since the resolutions are so low, they just cropped the vertical and gave a wider aspect.

 

it just plain sucks.

what i like about 16:10 is, 4:3 has borders left, right, 16:9 has borders at top, bottom. so you get in both cases quite a good image.

i'd prefer 1:1 to work actually (1920x1920 or so ) but well, widescreen can't be stopped. it definitely sucks.

 

We'll have to disagree on that part. If it leads to even cheaper prices, I have no problem with it.

I actually run my HTPC into a 16:9 projector, and it works fine.