I'm a geek and I couldn't care less what WiFi chipset is in my laptop.
I was shopping for a ThinkPad X220 for someone, and it had the option of the regular screen or the "premium" screen for $50 more. They don't tell you what the "premium" screen is or why you'd want it. I presume the regular screen is shitty. Can you even imagine Apple offering such an option? A $1000+ laptop with a shitty screen, with a $50 option to upgrade to a non-shitty screen?
MacBook Pros have the option to upgrade to a hi-res screen (+$100) or a hi-res antiglare screen (+150).
But at least Apple makes it clear what you're getting:
> The 15-inch MacBook Pro comes with a 1440-by-900-pixel LED-backlit glossy display. You can also choose a high-resolution 1680-by-1050 glossy or antiglare display that gives you 36 percent more pixels.
I don't care about WiFi chipsets either and should have added that in my comment. I was just using that as an example of the type of thing geeks might care about.
I just took at the Lenovo page for the first time ever. Of all the PC manufacturers, I've probably spent the most time on Dell's, and Lenovo's site looks like a complete rip-off of theirs.
And that display choice is horrible. Like you said, the $50 gets you a "premium" screen, where the only discernible difference on the page is that it comes with a 3x3 antenna instead of a 2x2. I've never heard of YxY as a measurement for antennas, nor is it readily apparent what 3x3 gives me over 2x2 (speed? power?). Not only that, I have to decide whether a webcam is more important to me than a 3x3 antenna because I can only get the webcam (a $30 add-on, by the way) with the 2x2 antenna.
Whatever respect I had for Lenovo (which is more than any other PC manufacturer thanks to their apparently successful continuation of the ThinkPad) just went down the drain. Average people are supposed to get this stuff? Give me a break.
FWIW, the "premium" screen is IPS. The regular is TN, which like all TNs (including those on Macbooks ;)) is indeed shitty. I do agree the "premium" description sucks.
It pains me to feed the trolls, but just in case someone finds their way to this page in the future and actually tries to wade through all of the bullshit: Apple uses IPS displays in every product except perhaps the iPod Nano and/or Classic, and I only mention those two because I can't be arsed to check them.
Absolutely incorrect. The iPad has an IPS display, and I believe newer iMacs have IPS. Every single Macbook, Macbook Pro, and Macbook Air Apple has ever made has a TN screen. Most (not all) are pretty good as far as TN screens go, but they're still TN screens. I would love to see the source you found for Macbook displays being IPS.
To be fair, briefly explaining the value of an IPS to those not familiar with it is not trivial. If they just put "IPS" instead of "premium" they'd be rightly maligned for using meaningless acronyms. I suppose something like "IPS technology for truer colours" might work, but...
"I'm a geek and I couldn't care less what WiFi chipset is in my laptop."
Isn't this at the very heart of every "linux on laptop" screed out there - research your hardware before you buy! So... being able to know or choose what wifi chipset you get might appeal to many geeks. But... you have to assume what you order is what you actually get.
I got a laptop in 2003 for linux. I researched. And researched. I found the one laptop for sale at a local store had the graphics chip FOOXPJ59 in it, which worked with RH6 (or Mandrake, whatever I wanted to use). Plunk down my $1200. Get it home. No dice. Oh... they replaced it with a newer/better FOOXPJ59revC chipset, and there was a WinXP driver disk in the box. But the outside of the box indicated FOOXPJ59 as the chipset. I had to argue for about 20 minutes with 2 managers to get my money back on that after it was opened. They wanted to charge me 15% restocking fee, I was arguing it didn't contain what the box said it did - in their mind FOOXPJ59 and FOOXPJ59revC are the same thing.
Not really the same thing. The IPS screen on the Lenovo is just better. They don't need to have the TN option at all. The higher resolution isn't necessarily better. It makes the text smaller. Like the anti-glare option, it's a preference option not a better/worse option.
I was shopping for a ThinkPad X220 for someone, and it had the option of the regular screen or the "premium" screen for $50 more. They don't tell you what the "premium" screen is or why you'd want it. I presume the regular screen is shitty. Can you even imagine Apple offering such an option? A $1000+ laptop with a shitty screen, with a $50 option to upgrade to a non-shitty screen?