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?"

Obligatory Penis Comment

[by Anonymous Coward]

Would you use a 20-incher?

On behalf of my girlfriend, I have to say the answer is yes.

Re:Obligatory Penis Comment

[toupsie (88295)]

Is that how goatse got that way?

Re:You, sir....

[ettlz (639203)]

No, no, no! Not diameter! ...

Re:Obligatory Penis Comment

[pyrrhonist (701154)]

Would you use a 20-incher?
On behalf of my girlfriend, I have to say the answer is yes.

This brings a whole new meaning to, "hung like a baby".

6 pounds 8 ounces and 20 inches long!

Re:Obligatory Penis Comment

[d474 (695126)]

I liked the part where the blond girl says to the black reporter:

"I like black laptops."

We got the double entendre, honey. Cute.

They are nothing more than desktops for Panera

[garcia (6573)]

Most people don't want a "laptop". Instead, they want something that they can take to Panera and do their work w/o being in the office. My wife and father both have one of these huge laptops. They are uncomfortable to carry (they use backpacks), they suck power (she gets about an hour of battery life), and they are loud.

I rely on my Sidekick for most of my work (e-mail, calendar, and notetaking) and I use a Thinkpad for anything more serious. While I am always looking for something even smaller everyone else seems to look for something larger.

MORE POWER ARRR ARR ARR.

Re:They are nothing more than desktops for Panera

[Zadaz (950521)]

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.)

Re:They are nothing more than desktops for Panera

[metamatic (202216)]

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 (323241)]

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.

Leading question...

[HiredMan (5546)]

Would you use a 20-incher?

I can't believe you ended a Slashdot post with a question like this... it's like T-ball.

What are you tying to do - flush the trolls into the open?

Sheesh,

=tkk

Now he just needs...

[AsmCoder8088 (745645)]

this T-shirt [terrortshirt.com] and the look will be complete!

Out of personal experience

[eebra82 (907996)]

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.

Re:Out of personal experience

[garcia (6573)]

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.

So is my TV/DVD combo and they weigh about the same! :)

Ahhhh!

[MBCook (132727)]

So what did we (*buffering*) think of the (*buffering*) Dell (*buffering*)....

What a maddening video! I tried to pause it so it could load up (like You Tube, Quicktime, and every other civilized video player) and it wouldn't. It would load up the next second of video then stop buffering. Combine that with their bandwidth problems (thanks, Slashdot) and it's almost impossible to watch the video.

Still. 20"? I though 17 was too large. That thing is huge. And yet they gave it a 9.2. IT'S A FREAKING DESKTOP. As a laptop it should get a 6. Plus, it has two drives in RAID 0. That's an INGENIOUS setup for a LAPTOP.

If they marketed this as a compact, all in one, portable desktop I could see it. But it's not a laptop unless you weight 600 pounds.

Re:Ahhhh!

[corngrower (738661)]

But it's not a laptop unless you weight 600 pounds.

So what you're saying is that most americans should find this acceptable?

cargo in tow

[Neuropol (665537)]

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.

Good Luck

[bad_fx (493443)]

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

Envy

[Kildjean (871084)]

Dell has obvious imac 24" envy

Ugh

[be-fan (61476)]

You couldn't even open that thing in an airplane seat. Hell, my 13.3" macbook is almost too big for comfortable economy-class use. And the attendant back, pain, oh god...

I don't know what kind of idiot would subject themselves to this. Why not just get a nice big external display like everyone else does?

Re:Ugh

[Brandybuck (704397)]

Why not just get a nice big external display like everyone else does?

Because you still have the problem of opening that big external display in the economy-class airplane seat. :-)

the SUV of laptops

[victorvodka (597971)]

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."

Hrmmm

[sheriff_p (138609)]

The chick looking at it and telling the guy breathlessly that she preferred the big black laptops rather than small white ones made it for me :-)

+Pete

I'd love one

[CaptnMArk (9003)]

Big screen laptop would enable many things:

- normal keyboard (I'd love a proper keyboard, see www.pckeyboard.com)
- 2 hard drives (for RAID-1)
- bigger battery or two
- better cooling
- more I/O ports
- more expansion slots
- maybe even include a resting/charging place for a (wireless) mouse

Weight is a minor problem, price is a bigger one.

Vision issues

[kin_korn_karn (466864)]

I do all my writing on my 15" laptop. If it were any smaller, I would have trouble reading it. Jacking the font size up results in a smaller amount of the page on the screen at a time, which results in scrolling incessantly, which means I waste more time with the arrow keys and extreme right side of the trackpad.

So, there is a practical purpose for these things. Believe me, if I could work on a 13" screen, I would.

Re:Not much bigger than a 17 inch

[eebra82 (907996)]

If you're comparing the difference in size between 14" to 17" and 17" to 20", think again. Although the increment is the same, it's still a lot bigger.