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?"

Old IBM portables anyone?

[Loconut1389]

Reminds me of the old IBM 'portable' computers- perhaps less the CRT.

Out of personal experience

[eebra82]

First off, Dell markets this laptop as a portable home entertainment system. You can obviously interpret that in so many ways, but my guess is that it is intended for portability WITHIN the house. So, for example, it can be used as a perfect workstation at the home office, and then transported to the living room for media center uses.

My close friend bought one of these beasts. I was fast to check it out and I've even borrowed it for personal evaluation purposes (since I wanted one myself). All I can say is that it is an outstanding machine and works perfectly if you want to watch movies while lying in your bed. It also interacts great as a media center and it has the power to play games.

What do people do when they buy a real laptop? They are usually intending to carry it around every now and then, because they might need it at work, at home and at other places. This machine does not really serve that purpose and it's obvious.

So when this reviewer is making this amusing approach of using the laptop at buses and subways, it's fairly obvious this was only an attempt to make fun of its massive size. And there's really nothing we can blame Dell for here, anwyay. With larger screens comes lesser portability. It's fairly obvious.

cargo in tow

[Neuropol]

To me they seem largely impracticle, but I can see that people are ready for a true desktop class portable to become available - some thing more than a 17" widescreen or the occasional 19". There's nothing like being able to work on a full dual or tri-head setup, close the lid on your work, head home and plug in to your extra monitors, and re-open the work in progress a few minutes later. Albeit with a 20" you can probably cancel your membership at the gym. Some thing of this size the user is not concerned with what their having to carry back and forth, they're just psyched they have a nice work portable area.

How well can they condense the guts of it? Can they stretch out the lcd all the way to tthe edge of the bezel and keep the keys tight to the edge so there's no wasted space? The world of 17" machines like the HP 9600 (total tank) requires massive power supplies to lug around, gives you limted long-term battery life and are the loudest machines I've ever heard with 3+ fans constantly whirring away trying to keep heat to a minimum.

Re:They are nothing more than desktops for Panera

[Zadaz]

I'm with you on this. I haven't been able to make the jump to a smart phone I have to synch too much too often for what I do, but I do cary my laptop everywhere. It's around 2 1/2 pounds, light enough I don't notice it. I get about 6 hours of battery life out of it (more if I dim the screen) and when I'm in my office/home I dock it with a 23" display and a real keyboard.

Makes me a little sad to see people breaking their backs with these huge things, getting into fights over outlets in cafes...

No marketer would ever call my laptop a desktop replacement, but I've been doing active development on it (or one of similar size and specs) for the last several years, and have no complaints. (I don't go to lan parties, and I have a separate machine for gaming, but that's me.)

the SUV of laptops

[victorvodka]

I'm reminded of a cartoon in the New Yorker about "Hummer Style" in which various normal objects were supersized and underpowered so they would appeal to bonehead Americans still living in a world where size always means value. For example, a cellphone the size and weight of a concrete block with a range of 200 feet from the cell tower and a battery life of fifteen minutes. In Japan, of course, the idea is to make things smaller and charge more for them. I'd love a laptop with a 1600 X 1200 six inch screen that fit in my pocket. I wouldn't mind using reading glasses and typing on a tiny keyboard, at least until I get "to the office."

Practcal for some

[slobber]

This is a pretty silly question - it would be practical for some and totally impractical for others. I lug around a 12 pound Dell 17" myself, and couldn't be happier about it. For the most part I take it to work in the morning and bring it home in the evening. It stays home on the days when I telecommute.

I think a much better question would be 'Could 20" be profitable for Dell?' It might well be - while it won't sell in the same quantities as 3 lbs 15 inchers, I'd imagine that margins on 20" would be notably higher.

Re:Ugh

[Dorceon]

You couldn't even open that thing in an airplane seat.

Can you even fit it in a legal carryon?

Re:They are nothing more than desktops for Panera

[metamatic]

While I am always looking for something even smaller everyone else seems to look for something larger.

Yeah, drives me crazy. Apple don't even have a small laptop offering; their smallest is 13".

What I really want is something like a VAIO UX, only with an operating system.

Lots of manufacturers don't even bother to release their small laptops in the USA, because everyone here wants honkin' huge SUV laptops.

Re:They are nothing more than desktops for Panera

[dhaines]

It's a tradeoff, some people's work is much easier with a lot of screen space. Others are more concerned with weight, keyboard feel, etc. So you might say: it's not how big it is, it's how you use it.

Just a few weeks back I was shopping for new laptops for my girlfriend and myself (yes really). We never encountered anything larger than 17 inches, but found even that size to be painfully large. We settled on matching (of course) 15.4-inchers, which are "just right."

Funny coincidence though -- like the woman interviewed in the video, my girlfriend prefers black laptops.

Re:They are nothing more than desktops for Panera

[bhima]

I would dearly, dearly love a "Macbook Nano" if Apple would only get around making it.

Re:They are nothing more than desktops for Panera

[Gerzel]

Well Perhaps there is a class of computer that fits between Desktop and Laptop.

One that
A. Is portable to a variety of places.
B. Is able to handle all major personal applications.
C. Has a screen large enough to accomodate easy viewing for a single person or a small group of people.
D. Is easilly moved quickly from one space to another.

In this model the Battery is not so much used as a power source but is more a UPS or power backup. Such a machine is not meant to be used in anyone's lap nor is it meant to be used outside of a desk-like enviroment. It is meant to be used where it can be plugged in to an outlet and sit on a table or desk for a short period of a few hours and then be easily moved.

Such a machine is far more mobile than a desktop computer or even one of those mini-desktops as all the major components are joined into one peice. Size does not matter as much as most trips with it are short from one point to another. The above article is really comparing apples to oranges, or rather trying to make an apple pie with oranges.

Re:Give me one luggable and one ultra portable

[DumbSwede]

I'm aware this is a common resolution for desktop LCD, as for the odd aspect ratio, that has to do with the size of the larger glass they cut these things from, rather than throw away usable glass they choose sizes that use up all the glass. I know all this, 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).

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

Re:the SUV of laptops

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually Japanese cellphones are HUGE. Twice the size of a normal US or European phone, and often accessorised with a bunch of tacky keychain gonk things. Although you're right about their laptops, when I was there I got a Vaio with a 6 inch screen, it can just fit into my coat pocket - now that's portable.

Re:the SUV of laptops

[sokoban]

True, that kind of torque is nothing to sneeze at, but the last Hummer I drove topped out at around 80 MPH, and even that was a terrifying experience. Hummers are decent tow vehicles if you don't mind something that large, but for any sort of long hauling there are cheaper and better solutions.

The fact that anyone would want one of these things as a daily driver is a total joke. They handle, accelerate, brake, and guzzle diesel like no other civiian vehicle.

That said, the H2 is an even bigger joke since it sacrifices the ground clearance, reliability, sheer power, and ruggedness of the Hummer, but doesn't make for a better ride at all.

This is a desktop replacement!

[AWhistler]

I have a Dell e1705. It is a great machine, but I use it as a desktop replacement, not a laptop. It is very nice to be sitting in my living room chair with a "hospital swingarm desk" (bought at OfficeMax) using this machine. I could not do that with a 17" widescreen 1900x1200, keyboard and touchpad attached to a PC on the floor...the monitor would always try to fall off the desk. I can use this machine in a much smaller space than a normal desktop machine. But I would not try to use it on an airplane or subway (or underground if I were in Britain).

It is very nice to be able to pick the machine up, move it to the kitchen, use it there, and move it back later. I could *NEVER* do that with a desktop machine without dismantling it. For one thing, there are too many pieces to move...the e1705 only has two pieces to move, and with the battery, I can unplug the power and move it too without powering down. The best thing about it is being able to conveniently take a fully-powered machine to a friend's house (think LAN party, but I don't use it like that).

The Dell 2010 is really a "briefcase PC" (I like that term...thanks). It folds up and closes with a handle just like a briefcase. It probably couldn't be used on my swingarm desk, but it still could be used in less space than a desktop, can move all in one piece, and unplug for short periods of time, and can move to others' houses. Trying to use this on the Underground is just silly. This machine is "this generation's" luggable.

Re:the SUV of laptops

[myowntrueself]

Don't humvees get like 8 or 10 miles per gallon on *sealed* roads? Wouldn't that factor down to 4-5 mpg off road?

I've often wondered how they can be called 'high mobility vehicles' when their 'mobility' is strictly limited to that of their attendant fuel convoy...

Much like these super monster laptops; mobility limited by availability of wall sockets (there, that should stop me being modded offtopic ;)

Re:Out of personal experience

[ffejie]

I agree. Something like this would be good for certain people. Take my parents for instance. They have a place they go to in the summer, and another in the winter. They want to have computer access everywhere, but have no desire to maintain two different computers (with different settings, emails etc on either). I pitched the idea of a network backup that would allow them to sync settings and other important files between two machines -- but that didn't fly. they wanted something simpler. So my mom got one of those huge Dell laptops (not one of these, it was a few years ago). She uses it in both places, and occasionally moves it from room to room, but generally it stays in the study, plugged into the printer and power, and sometimes even Ethernet (even though there is wireless around the house). When they go to a different house, they take the laptop. Generally it's a car ride, or sometimes a plane ride away. She doesn't take it on vacation with her and she doesn't ever use it on the plane. She has no desire for a laptop with a smaller screen (she's on 17") or lighter weight (must be 6-8 lbs) or even better battery life. She just wants something that is "portable" at the very roughest sense of the word.

Now, contrast that with my situation. I'm always on the go. I work from home, the office, the other office, the road, hotels, sometimes even cafes (although I hate it). I have a company issued laptop - Thinkpad - that suits my needs, although I wish it had better screen resolution (1024x768). When I'm home, I have a docking station with 17" monitor, same thing at work. When I travel, if I had to lug around something bigger than this, I would get pretty tired pretty quickly. Additionally, many times I'm just using my Blackberry to respond to emails quickly, without loading up the laptop. This is good for the many times I find myself without network access. The Dell reviewed would be a disaster in my hands.

The point is - different strokes for different folks.

Don't believe everything you find on the 'net

[BlueBiker]

RAID 1 will slow writes by a full 50% when mirroring across master and slave on the same IDE channel.

RAID 1 will show no read improvements at all on systems which lack optimizations to interleave reads across devices.

There are lots of other cases where real-world RAID performance won't match a naive estimation. For example, it only takes three drives to fully saturate an Ultra 320 SCSI bus these days.

Re:the SUV of laptops

[davidsyes]

http://www.flybook.co.jp/products/vm_3.html [flybook.co.jp]

Actually, it appears to be advertised as ideal for use on a plane. I neglected to mention to click on the hyperlinks directly beneath the VM still image.