Double Lamp or not?

Hello all,

I'm a newbie on this forum, so I might have missed some of the info I'm inquiring about in this post. I stumbled onto the forum in my search for information concerning the upcoming AR31 notebooks.

I am a photographer looking for a laptop large enough to do my basic photo editing on the road. Although I do the occasional wildlife shoots, I am not looking for a travel laptop. It should just be mobile enough to take it into an external studio so that I can upload my images immediately and show them after quickly sliding in minor tweaks using Adobe Photoshop Lightroom which will be the most used software on the machine.

I was looking at the AR31 series, because of a combination of design and features. However, one thing has me in doubt, i.e. will the AR31S be worth the extra cost (almost twice the price) compared to the AR31E, especially considering the fact that the only difference of importance to me will be the display. WUXGA vs WXGA and Double Lamp or not.

I haven't managed to find a place where I can compare the two in real life, so I was wondering whether any of the posters here might have? Any additional input is also appreciated!

tx!! Wim

 

i think you're better off with WUXGA since you're a photographer; you actually need and will use that high resolution screen to display your photograph properly. surely you know this.

now under all situation i think you're also better off with dual lamp. it is; brighter and the colour looks more vivid and stunning, especially when watching movie/viewing photograph. If you use WUXGA screen you can't have it without double lamp. since it takes more light to pass through that TIGHTLY packed pixel.

instead of an VAIO AR; i actually recommended picking up a Qosmio. it is just superior overall, and i think many will agree; especially on the screen. the AR had grainy screen and light leakage you know...

 

Well, actually colour is more important than resolution. Sharpness and detail can be judged by zooming in onto images, but for colour balance not all image details should be visible. If the colour is correct that's more important.

WUXGA does give me more room to put the picture because it reduces the tool panels in Lightroom so they take less space, freeing up some for the image.

I'll certainly check out those too. Though design is important to me, and I prefer the Sony design. If the Toshiba has a clear lead in terms of display quality however, I might be swayed.

tx!!

Wim

 

I just noticed that the new series has appeared on the official Vaio webpages. And there are three of them: AR31E, AR31M and AR31S.

Seems like the AR31M is right in the middle. At an expected price of around EUR2000, it has the double lamp X-black LCD like the AR31S, but with WXGA resolution of the AR31E.

I did check out the WUXGA resolution in a store (they had the AR21S) and found its pixels too small on a 17 inch screen for running Windows at a standard font size. I know this can be enlarged, but picture buttons in most applications will not be affected by this and remain a bit smallish to my liking. Hence I am inclined to go for the AR31M... The only thing is it's a bit shorter on disk space, but since I mostly use external hard drives for storage, it's large enough to contain my working files.

Are there any other relevant advantages the AR31S might have over the AR31M that I'm missing?

Wim