Thinking about coming back to Lenovo

I just got my Sony Z. The laptop IS amazingly light, and the screen is amazingly bright, and this machine is just screamingly fast. But with this high a resolution on a 13.1inch screen, 1600x900, I am not sure my eyes can handle this kind of super resolution for extended periods of use.

If I up the DPI, the fonts do look bigger, but the screen real estate does shrink a bit.

I think I am done with ultra high res small screens, it just gives me a headache.

What do you guys think, should I come back to a 1200x800 x200 or x200 tablet? Truth be told, this legendary Sony XBRITE screen, although bright, still does not compare to the IPS screen on my old T60p.

 

Coming from a Sony Z myself, I can say the following nice things:

• Very light and thin
• Great screen
• Rock solid keyboard

On the other hand, I gave up the Sony because:

• VERY proprietary hardware
• Consumer focused (no x64 support from Sony at the time)
• Limited BIOS options (couldn’t enable VT extensions and other)
• Infrequent driver updates
• Ran hot

The Lenovo addresses all the reasons I gave up the Sony, but Sony did a better job with my first three bullets (at least until Lenovo shipped me a T61 keyboard). At the end of the day, I’m FAR more pleased with the Lenovo. As a power user, I made the mistake of purchasing a Sony computer and it won’t happy again.

 

Well the screens on the x200 and x200s certainly are not going to live up to the t60p IPS screen. Nor is the x200t. But the x200t screens (I believe the LED screen without finger input is best?) are current the best on the thinkpads.

Do you have any other concerns aside from resolution, because I am sure you could try a similar laptop at a big box store to try out that dpi.

 

I think 1200x800 should be more than enough on a 12inch screen.

I have always read people praising the Sony XBRITE screen. But compared to the IPS screen, this XBRITE screen just doesn't look as good. I know I am nit picky here. So if I can't live with the XBRITE, I really don't know how I am going to be able to live with a non XBRITE regular 12inch screen.

Maybe I should get an X200 tablet and be done with it.

 

I find it tragic and comic at the same time that because of Microsoft people change their hardware when their software is unable to scale the screen visuals. We are in 2009, and still in stone age of user experience. If our TVs operated the way Windows does, we would probably watch them with CGA resolution still. Sorry I cannot provide better help than my sarcastic post, especially since you did the only right thing you could in Windows - notch up the DPI. Microsoft does not care for you, they are too busy making money on Office and Windows licenses to actually improve Windows enough so that it deals with logical units instead of pixels. Not to mention the whole software industry who seem to be completely ignorant that people have different megapixel screens and as a result of their ignorance hard code everything with pixels. They also hard code size of windows, which is basically another facet of the same problem - major pain in the a$$.

 

Why not go with T400s? Light and thin; rock solid keyboard, super fast, and bigger screen. Display quality, well that’s a minus. It’s bright alright, but with a very limited vertical viewing angle where colors look washed out once you out of the "sweet" spot. If you are working at the desk sitting on the chair - that is not a problem because you adjust display angle once. But if you are sitting on the couch or in bed where naturally laptop not going to stay still in on horizontal level - it will be a pain in the arse to constantly adjust display angle That is the ONLY complain about T400s, which is probably typical for any TN-screen. That is the only thing I miss from my T42 and T60, wider vertical viewing angle.

BTW, what screen technology does Z-series uses? Don't remember which one Best Buy was selling, but I remember one of the Sony lappys in there had reflective screen with a very nice contrast (deep dark colors), but vertical viewing angle was as crappy as T400s.

 

Aside from the now defunct IPS laptop screens, Sony is supposed to have the best laptop screen of any manufacturer. It's called XBRITE, amazingly non reflective, got some kind of coating, and it's 1600x900 in a 13.1inch display.

The screen is VERY bright. I generally set the display brightness to about 60%. If I did not have any experience with an IPS screen, I think I would fall in love with the Sony display. But man, there is just no comparison between this Sony screen and the IPS screen. The colors on this Sony just kind of looks washed out in comparison.

And the wide screen aspect ratio really bugs me, I am losing a lot of vertical real estate compared to my T60p.

Seriously, if Sony made a 14inch standard aspect ratio XBRITE display, I would definitely take it.

 

Sony does great job on the screen to be honest, but why do i move to Lenovo? At the end of the day I still want to downgrade to XP or upgrade to Win7 without losing some key function such as ajust screen brightness, be able to upgrade some hardward such as move Low-Res screen to High-Res, Upgrade CPU, memory, add GPS and 3.5G network, probably getting docking station, high cap battery, and other addons. I think I can live without good screen, but not the others. hehe, but it just me.

 

I second twister's comment on the t400s. If you don't mind a slightly larger footprint, it is a fabulous/fast machine with a screen so bright that I typically don't run it at full brightness unless I'm outdoors.

It's also quite fast (esp w/SSD) and has a *great* touchpad (multi-touch gestures) and improved keyboard.

I looked at the Sony Z but also found the pixels too small. I think the t400s 14" screen is just the right size for the 1440x900 resolution. my eyes could never put up with that resolution on a 12" screen like the x200s

good luck in your search!

 

I echo the comments regarding Sony and lack of software updates that leave your hardware stuck in a point of O/S time.

I like my new Sony AW series RGB-LED screen, but beyond that, I prefer everything else about my T61p.

Give me a Thinkpad with that Sony screen and I would be extremely pleased!

 

Yes. Hopefully Lenovo will wake up and start incorporating the high-quality screens people want again. Had they done this, this thread would never exist.

 

While you have a point, one problem is that so many apps are coded to match the current way of doing things that to fix it, MS would have to do something they ought to do --a brand-new OS from the ground up, the way they did (under-the-hood at least) with Windows NT or Apple did with OS X.

Due to users and software vendors clamoring for backward compatibility, I don't see this happening. For these reasons, I myself have found the sweet spot to be 1440x900 on 14 and 15" displays, and 1280x800 on 12-13" displays.