A better 17" LCD is now available from HP

interesting

hmmm

Hopefully we can get one of the PCTorque guys to comment on this. That would be aboslutely divine.

lol, nice, but still , (its an HP),

I wait for pctorque's reply ...

dont we all.

I think HP is taking Pre-orders in anticipation of having these LCDs in supply but I could be wrong. Sager has been following different LCD options in the making for many months. If there is a supply of these coming I'm confident Sager will review the LCD for its quality and make it an option if it is a good LCD.

Be careful what you call "better" without having tried it out to see if it has any ghosting problems or how good of an angle view it has. A higher resolution does NOT mean an LCD is better. In fact, I'm betting most people would go for the resolution of 1440X900 over 1680X1050 for normal daily use and even gaming especially if there's a price difference in the option. An LCD looks its best running at its native resolution and many people feel 1440X900 is a very comfortable view. If you bought a higher res LCD just to have something capable of higher yet you run it at a lower res, it will not look as crisp as one built and spec'd by it's # of cells to run the lower res. I'm hoping this LCD becomes available and has good specs so those that need the higher res have this option, but right now we have to wait on this info. Give HP a call and ask when one with the WSXGA+ can ship out. I noticed they have a link for the ZD7000 that says units that are ready to ship and only the units with the WXGA+ LCD are on that list.

Just for S+G's I configured a laptop with the new LCD and delivery date is April 14th. That's not to say it actually will ship on that date, but there you go.
P

Here are the supposed specs on the LCD: http://www.lgphilips-lcd.com/en/prod...g=view&idx=181. I can't confirm for sure, but that is what someone on the zd7000 forums said.

Just ordered one, I'll let you guys know when it ships (ETA April 14th). And a review of course.

Yeah too bad HP isnt all that great. After owning a 15.4" WUXGA screen I NEED somthing with a tight resolution, the I8600 had a beautiful screen on it but sucked because of the illumination problem at the bottom when the screen was dark. I personally wont buy another laptop that dosent offer a good resolution. I work a lot with Maya and Photoshop so I need those extra pixels.

out of curiousity, it only says it is a 6 bit screen...couldnt that cause banding on multiple color palettes?

well the way i look at this is that most people dont buy sagers just because of their LCDs mainly because they are gamers or they like what sager offers
IMO HP only makes good printers, scaners, etc. not computers
but thats the grand thing about opions not every one agrees with it.



-Chris

p.s SAGERS ROCK!

That's an error...262,144 is 2^18 or 18bit

The ZD7000 is HP's best selling laptop at the moment. I am using the 3.2 Ghz HT version and its a real nice laptop. The only complaints I have is that the touchpad sucks. I am not really a gamer so have not done any benchmarks but since i am in the 30 day return period. I am sending this one back for the new one with better resolution and better nvidia 5700 go card.

Their ZD7000 is build by Compal, another taiwainese company just like Clevo. I wonder which is better. I owned a ZD7000, and it had very generic felt to it, unlike Toshiba, or even Sager.

Thanks flashram, hook us up with a review =). The specs in the link look good.

i've seen these new WVA LCD's in store. they looked amazing to say the least. they almost resemble a flat CRT over and LCD.

6 bit (per subpixel) probably makes more sense from an LCD manufacturers point of view, but you're right for us consumers 18 bit is the better recognised format.

I think it was a thread of vanfanel's a while ago that tought us that 18bit is the laptop norm. There is a little banding, but then there is on a CRT too, such is the way of digital electronics. 24 bit can't be long off now.

The specifics look to be almost identical to the WXGA+ so I cant see why Sager/Clevo wouldnt adopt it. Certainly a marked improvent in my eyes, although we're still not all the way there (roll on WUXGA, and can we have a standard res this time around?).

Not really vanfanel. When they say 6 bit that is 6 bits for each colour (RGB) so you have 6 + 6 + 6 = 18 bits.

It is a pity that it is only 6 bit colour. I suspect the same thing happened with some of the SXGA screens in the 8890's. I was so disappointed when they stopped shipping the top end SXGA screens. So many people missed out on what I regard as *the* best screen I have ever seen in a laptop (with the exception now of the newer Fujitsu N5010).

If you go to 8 bit colour depth you get 16.7M colours. I posted an analysis of how Windows maps colours into the colour space of an LCD. You have to remember that Windows uses either 16 bit colour (5:6:5 RGB) or 32 bit colour (8:8:8:8 RGB + Alpha (transparency)). If you have a 6 bit (or 18bit depending upon your definition) LCD then Windows has to interpolate the colours is has into the colour space of the LCD. This is where banding can show up quite badly.

All this is futher compounded by the fact that the Bliss wallpaper is a very poorly compressed JPEG with huge artifacts in it, which makes people with super high spec LCD's that there is something wrong with their LCD.

I would be interested to see the new WSXGA+/-/#/? specs because it gives you more vertical pixels.

Funny you should say that Fungo. It was one reason I turned away from HP and Dell laptops. imho they just feel tacky somehow. I have owned quite a few laptops and used many others. I must say the Toshiba and Sagers are the most solid feeling laptops I have ever used.