How Practical are 20-inch Laptops?

GeneralPacket writes "A 20-inch laptop might sound perfect for a game of Grand Theft Auto on the way to work, or navigating a mammoth spreadsheet. But are they really usable as laptops, or are they just luggable desktops? This week CNET attempted to work on the super-sized 20-inch Dell XPS M2010 laptop while travelling across London on the subway. The resulting video review is hilarious. This is not your typical tech video review — it's actually funny, and, refreshingly, completely advertising-free. The reviewer is in constant fear that anti-terrorism police are about to swarm him. Would you use a 20-incher?"

Not much bigger than a 17 inch

[RobTheJedi]

I have a 17 inch dell laptop, and yes I do use it on my lap, and no I am not a huge fat guy, I am however tall. It's actually very comfortable to use, more so than my wife's 14 inch dell. So yes I would use a 20 inch laptop.

Good Luck

[bad_fx]

Hmm... I have yet to watch the video, but good luck working on *any* laptop on the london underground during rush hour... ;)

Re:Old IBM portables anyone?

[Bing Tsher E]

Even the first generation IBM Laptop (the PC Convertible, about a generation newer than the 'Portable') was one heck of a lug to carry around. I still have one. It's got a nice 'hard case' to transport it in that makes it about twice the size of a briefcase.

First 20" Laptop?

[joetheappleguy]

I'm pretty sure that Acer shipped their Aspire 9800 before Dell did. Matter of fact, I think that Acer makes Dell's unit.

I've had a chance to play with it a bit and I noticed that the Acer 9800 weighs as much as a 20" iMac!

You feel like a little kid when using it - Like you shrunk somehow. :D

Don't copy that floppy!

[Rich Klein]

Do they realize they're copying this video from a month ago [engadget.com]?

It weighs 18 1/2 pounds!

[BeeBeard]

Check out the specs on this thing on Dell's website. [dell.com]

The dimensions are less of a concern as long as it fits in a backpack or roomy laptop case, but to even call this monster a laptop is disingenuous. It is more of a "portable" computer in the sense that it can all be transported in one piece should you ever attempt to break your back moving it.

Re:Actually it seems fairly luggable.

[arth1]

Someone also mentioned RAID 0...that's a very gamer kind of thing to add to a machine. If this was a Road Warrior lappie I would have instead opted for RAID 1 for data redundancy and "automatic backups." However RAID 1 slows, rather than speeds, disk access so it would be a downer for the gamer crowd.

RAID 1 has data redundancy, but not "automatic backups", with or without quotes. If you lose a file, you lose it from all the mirrors, and can't recover it any more than if it had been on a single drive. It only protects you from drive failure causing data loss. Since there's no hotswapping on this lapstop, you'd still have to stop what you're doing and get a new drive fitted in.

As for speed, you're wrong there. RAID 1 is slightly slower at writes than a single drive, but it does write in parallel to the mirrored drives, so the slowdown is minimal. However RAID 1 is much faster at reading than a single drive; as it will spread out the reads to all the drives in parallel. Reads are slightly slower than true striping (RAID 0), because it has to skip blocks instead of continuous reading, but it's way faster than a single drive.
If I were to put figures on it (keeping in mind that any figures would be wildly inaccurate due to different hardware and software implementations), I'd say that a two-drive RAID 0 will roughly give you a 90% write speed and 180% read speed compared to a single drive. Overall, that's a big win, unless you primarily use the drive for recording.

Re:Actually it seems fairly luggable.

[modemboy]

SO wrong on so many levels. Raid 1 does speed disc access: http://www.pcguide.com/ref/hdd/perf/raid/levels/si ngleLevel1-c.html [pcguide.com]
Slows write a little, speeds up reads.

This machine was out 2 months before Dell bought Alienware, I believe acer makes them.

Also it depends on what you consider your average dell lappie. The Inspirons are complete plastic crap you are correct, the XPS and Latitude line are quite nice, you get what you pay for...

Re:Why the shiny screens?

[enosys]

You can get some information on Dell TrueLife screens [screentekinc.com] from ScreenTek. It is not just a shiny screen. Basically the screen deals with reflections with an anti-reflection coating which minimizes the amount of reflected light instead of a rough texture which scatters light so you don't see reflected shapes. Overall, it reflects less light and you're supposed to get better contrast.

I have one and I'm not disappointed. Yes, the screen reflects like a mirror, and you could actually use it instead of a mirror in some situations when it is off. However, in most situations when it is on reflections are not a problem.

Re:They are nothing more than desktops for Panera

[Fnordulicious]

I do believe that the personal computer you're describing is called a "portable". There were quite a few of these on the market before laptops became so prevalent.

Re:Give me one luggable and one ultra portable

[SillyNickName4me]

but if you are going to have a full 20" display then make the dotpitch such that you can get a full 1080p picture out of it and support easily showing the 1080p on external HDTV (though that probably is doable with this rig as a 2nd monitor in some fashion).

First of all, I'd rather want a 1080p resolution display on such a machine as well.

Then, many video cards do not support the native resolution of a 1080p display but do support 1680x1050. Of course in case of this laptop, it would be possible to select video hardware that does support this resolution.

Only looking really good at their native resolution is one of the bigger drawbacks of lcd based technology such as tft. The consequence of scaling video to their native resolution is by far not as bad as when doing this for a computer display that has lots of text on it for example.

Hence, 1680x1050 is a lot less troublesome with regards to hardware and software support, and since such a display has only one native resolution, I'd think that this is why they opted for this 'weird' resolution instead of 1080p.

There are full 1080p displays in 15" and 17", why not this EXPENSIVE 20"?

And I'm sure there exist 20" displays that do 1080p, just not this one.

So much for the video.

[Kadin2048]

Yeah what the fuck is wrong with that video? (Let me count the ways...)

Seriously, I really tried to watch it. It would play for about three seconds, and then stop for "buffering." No surprise there -- I'm on a shared connection. I don't have enough bandwidth to watch something like that live.

So I thought I'd just pause it and let it load -- like any decent system ought to allow me to do -- but oh, no; it had better ideas. As soon as I put it on pause, it stopped buffering. I can tell, because the traffic through my router just abruptly stopped. When I hit play again, then it started buffering again.

How brain-dead is that? Even if I tried to play it through at its stuttering, three-seconds-per-load speed, and then rewind back to the beginning and play it again, it apparently doesn't "buffer" for very long, because it tried to reload the data.

I want to find the person who thought that encapsulating videos inside Flash objects was a good idea, and put their face in a bench vise. They could have just used a good-old streaming video object, but no. They had to do it with Flash. Well, the hell with them.

XPS M2010 Specs

[@madeus]

All talk, no facts.

Yeah, not like your post, which was a fountain of knowledge.

You could at least have linked to the specs on the Dell website [dell.com], which lists the the specs as:

CPU options:

        * Intel® Core(TM) 2 Duo Processor
        * Intel® CoreTM 2 Duo Processor T7200 (2GHz, 4M L2 Cache, 667MHz FSB)
        * Intel® CoreTM 2 Duo Processor T7400 (2.16GHz, 4M L2 Cache, 667MHz FSB)
        * Intel® CoreTM 2 Duo Processor T7600 (2.33GHz, 4M L2 Cache, 667MHz FSB)

Other misc. info:

        * Up to 4 GB of DDR2 dual channel2 memory
        * 20.1" Widescreen WSXGA+ display
        * 256MB ATI® MobilityTM RADEONTM X1800 Graphics Card for multimedia intensive applications.
        * Integrated 1.3 megapixel web cam and array microphone
        * 8 speakers and subwoofer
        * Up to 240GB3 of storage across two hard drives
        * Optional RAID 0 - 1
        * 8x DVD/CD Burner (DVD+/-RW)4

Weight & Dimensions

        * Width: 18.85"
        * Height: 2.90"
        * Depth: 15.90"
        * Weight (lbs): 18.305

I/O Ports

        * IEEE 1394 integrated port (1394 cable and software sold separately)
        * 4 USB 2.0 (Universal Serial Bus) compliant 4-pin connectors
        * ExpressCard Slot
        * RJ45 Ethernet port
        * RJ11 Modem port
        * Video: Digital Video Interface (DVI)
        * S-Video: 7-pin mini-DIN connector
        * Component Video, S/PDIF Digital & Analog 7.1/5.1 Audio out
        * 13-in-2 removable memory card reader

I'll tell you how impractical can be...

[RoadWarriorX]

I recently received an HP Pavillion dv9000 [hp.com] laptop to replace my E-machines M6805 under Best-Buy's lemon policy. When I bought the E-machines laptop, I purchased a Samsonite laptop carrier that fit the 17-in screen of the M6805. When I got the replacement, I took the laptop home to discover that the HP dv9000 was almost an inch and a half wider than the M6805. According to the spec of the dv9000 at Best Buy, the width of the laptop is 18 3/8 inches. So I decided today to go back to Best Buy to see if they had a wider laptop carrier. No go. The widest carriers that Best Buy even sold were around 16 1/2 inches wide. Even the Best Buy associate recommended going to a luggage outlet to find a compatible carrier. Talk about inpractical. :-)

Re:Ahhhh!

[diodegod]

Take a look at the page's source, 7th line down:

META NAME="DESCRIPTION" content="Why should YouTube.com have all the fun? Welcome to Crave video, where we get to have some fun with our camcorders as we explore the darker and more twisted side of the gadget world....

Yeah, why should youtube have all the fun? Because it's not a "buffering" pile of crap maybe?