News - ASUS readying 13in U31 ultraportable

[HEXUS]

Sleek Optimus-powered laptop should arrive in Europe before Christmas.

Read more.

[chis]

ANOTHER 1366x768 res laptop. And I'll bet it has no expresscard slot either. Even if it did, that resolution puts it firmly into film toy category. Bah!

[kingpotnoodle]

ANOTHER 1366x768 res laptop. And I'll bet it has no expresscard slot either. Even if it did, that resolution puts it firmly into film toy category. Bah!

1440x900 would have been nice, to match the upgraded graphics...

[miniyazz]

It's hardly the lightest either - for example, the equivalent Macbook is considerably lighter, for whatever reason.

[Faiakes]

The screen resolution is not that bad.

I had the UL30 and the worst thing (in the entire line) is the quality of the display and the flex of the keyboard. Turn your head ever so slightly and the colours wash off. Plus I'm not keen on the short left shift key.

[miniyazz]

True, 15.4" is where that res is really a limitation (and for some reason 15" laptop with higher res screens are relatively uncommon, it's basically a form factor where they can't decide if it should be big enough to be useful or small enough to be portable IMO).
But it still stings a bit that you get that same res at 11" (or sometimes 1280x800), and so you'd hope for more than 1366x768 with just under a fifth more screen size.

[this_is_gav]

The resolution isn't so much the problem as the aspect ratio.

I want 16:9 to die.

It's completely at odds to everything the majority do when they're on a system unless all they do is watch videos, and it's utterly hopeless if you've any intention of doing anything actually productive.

With standard desktop monitors it's not so much of a problem - there are still excellent monitors at 16:10 and they're at their old price of £300-500 for a 24". Fine.

With laptops it's different. Try searching for a laptop between 13" and 15" and see how many new non-16:9 laptops there are - in short, not many. They've suddenly flooded the market. It's hideous.

Thankfully, I'm not much of a laptop person - I'll travel with one occasionally and I'll use one every now and then at work, but other than setting up laptops for others, I refuse to use 16:9.