New 4:3 laptop

Any suggestions on this front?

Must be 4:3
decent screen pref matte
numpad would be good (I know hard without the widescreen but...)
must be quality ie not Acer (person has bad experience of Acer)
I was looking at Lenovo (done lots with then in the past so know them very well) but again they don't do a 4:3 laptop anymore.

Rare as hens teeth it seems to find a 4:3 laptop these days...

what about a 16:9 and put some black tape to cover the edges and turn it into a 4:3


nah seriously, 4:3 might be hard to find............unless you are willing to go second hand?
have you hit up ebay for some of the discontinued models by say dell, hp etc that did do 4:3's ?
other than that you could be onto plums - unless your machine can do the 4:3 reolutions, reason i say that is my (desktop) has a gtx8800 and i can set the resolution down to 1600*1200 so you would be in a 4:3 mode but is it the fact you just dont like the widescreen size of the screen ?

It's not for me it's for a "friend" lol I don't mind the widescreen aspect but they want to use it for some design work and would rather have a 4:3 view.

I did say I think that's going to be hard with brand new kit and they'll be wanting a warranty etc so will want to buy new.

I did suggest a Lenovo G550 at just shy of £500 notes

T6600 CPU
4GB RAM
500GB HD
Geforce video
etc etc

It even has the numpad but 15" widescreen is putting them off

I'll keep my eyes peeled, thanks for the suggestions

Suggest they get a hefty spec machine with the wide screen and a run a VM in 4:3 mode for the design work??

EDIT: If they get Win7 with it, they can download XP Virtual PC for free..

Edited by Spasch (Tue 09-Mar-10 19:43:39)

Thats the same as putting tape over the sides of the screen though ultimately the whole point was that you can fit more top to bottom on a 4:3 screen doing as you suggest does't help that you just end up with two strips down each side.

I think they're going to have to go with widescreen and put up with it as options are really limited if there are any.

Thanks anyway

the really easy option is asking them if it really has to be portable?
they could get a nice big 4:3 screen for their desktop

i know the subject says laptop but run through their checklist and work out if it really needs to be mobile?

I was actually going to suggest this to the op, but my net connection died so couldn't post.
But yeah if they can put up with widescreen on their travels, then when at home use a decent 4:3 external monitor they might be a little more contempt with that solution...

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In reply to a post by metalhead41:

I was actually going to suggest this to the op, but my net connection died so couldn't post.

is it me, or does this sound like a sunday morning look at the papers and saying, aaawww i was going to pick those exact numbers.......

What size screen? What resolution?

If they want a 15" screen then get a 17" laptop and run it in a 4:3 resolution (this way you don't even need to put tape down the side of the screen).
What exactly is the benefit of 4:3? Resolution wise it makes no difference as generally wide just gives you more pixels in the x axis and the same in the y.

Other option is just don't run the app in full screen. Get a 17" screen at 1920x1200 and you have great res and if you (by which I mean they of course) want to run something in 4:3 then shrink the width of the window to 1440 (now you have a 1600 by 1200 screen which is a reasonable res for what is then essentially a 15" viewing area).

Also, benefit of 17" wide screen is it gives lots of room for a numeric keypad...