XPS M1550 LEd or HD 1920 x 1200

1920 be my choice

HD 1920 x 1200

i would go LED because i'd be able to game further into the future on native res. but that's just my thing.

I would have went for the LED over the 1920x1200. Unless you do intense graphics/video editing and plan on watching lots of movies (blu-ray at that) then the 1920x1200 will just be plain overkill, especially on a 15" screen. And why spend more money to get the highest resolution, only to then turn the resolution down when you get it?

The LED is a 1440x900 resolution which is the native of a 15" wide screen, so it will look perfect for pretty much all day-to-day activities.

I picked the LED for my 1530 based on the experience of seeing 1920x1200 on a 15" notebook. Actually, make that not seeing on a 1920x1200. I just checked the status of my order and it's supposed to be shipped tomorrow.

I completely disagree with the majority sentiment. 1920x1200 is an absolute necessity for any 15.4" notebook! I don't watch a lot of movies or do a lot of gaming. I'm a law student. I have a lot of documents open at the same time. 1920x1200 makes it possible to keep 2 documents open side-by-side at the same time at 100% zoom. And it looks SO sharp. I can't stand the way my display looks at the next lowest resolution. Here's one hint though: configure Windows for large font display. That gives you the best of both worlds: readable text and razor-sharp crispness. I was willing to wait an extra 3 weeks for my new laptop to ship in order to get the 1920x1200 display. It is critical.

The only time I ever crank my resolution down is if I'm watching streaming video in a non-resizable window in my web browser. Some of those videos are postage-stampish at 1920x1200 (although they look crisp and sharp as hell). When I'm reading a long document and I want to lean back, I'll just use Word's web view and crank the zoom up to 125-140%. I do the same thing in Firefox if the text on a web page is unreasonably small at 1920x1200 - just hold down the CTRL button and use the scroll button on your mouse to adjust the zoom factor in real time! It's very convenient and well worth the sharpness of 1920x1200.

Well to each their own, the TS shouldn't let others persuade them because its all opinion.

Mine for example:

The thing I don't get about the 1920x1200 resolution on a 15.4" screen (other than the fact that it is the native resolution of a 24" wide screen, a full 9 inches bigger) is that the activities that you are doing to require it, seem like they should be done on a desktop/desktop replacement laptop(meaning 17+ inches). Not on a smaller screen that is compensated for by having a superfluous amount of pixels jammed into it. A 15.4" is not really meant to be a desktop replacement, it is meant to be a balance between portability and power.

1. 1920x1200 pixels aren't "more than supposed to be" on a 15.4" screen. They're exactly the right amount, IMO. Anything less looks blurry and grainy to me, and you can't fit 2 documents side-by-side at the same time. 1920x1200 lets you do just that.

2. Power v. portability is exactly the point. EVERY laptop is meant to blend these 2 things in compromise, not just 15.4" models. I seriously debated moving up to a 17" model on my latest purchase, but the extra screen size wasn't worth the loss in portability to me, especially given that every 17" screen I've seen goes no higher than the 1920x1200 I'm going to be getting on my 15.4" model (so it wouldn't give me anymore screen real estate - it would just make things bigger).

You want to know what I find odd? You asked a question asking for people's input when you had already made up your mind and then you write off any input you get that doesn't agree with your own. Why ask if you won't listen?

Anyway, you claiming that my point was that you should buy the weakest components possible on a 15.4" was completely off the mark. Or maybe I just couldn't follow what you were saying because of the questionable grammar and ridiculously run on sentences all put together through a series of ellipses in a vain attempt to connect your thoughts.

Now, I understand you must have limited technical knowledge due to your claims that *mobile* processors and dedicated *mobile* video cards belong in desktops, but try to bare with me here.

Screens *generally* have nothing to do with performance. I know, I know, this is a shocker. Sit back, take a deep breath, and continue reading when you are ready. I raise this point because you keep talking about how you need a portable powerhouse when the issue is about screen resolution, I don't see the connection here. Now there are some cases when screen resolution can impact performance. For example: watching a movie on a 1920x1200 resolution can cause quality degradation if your video card can't handle scaling the video up to such high resolutions. A very similar thing happens when playing games at that res., your FPS will drop big time.

So again, I don't really know how to end this post because I have no clue what point you were trying to make as most of what you said was pretty incoherent. But all I can say is that I hope that business work you do doesn't involve writing reports.

1. The native res. of a 15.4" is 1440x900, so there is no chance that it could look blurry when that is the standard. You must have been looking at a really bad quality screen, because that resolution would have nothing to do with it. So maybe you were looking at a 1280x800 screen, or maybe your vision is screwed because you have been using super high resolutions on tiny screen sizes.

2. I am aware that laptops try to blend those two things in comparison to the competitors of the same size. My point was that 15.4" blends those when compared to *other sizes*. For example:
13" - Small, very portable, but not a lot of horsepower
17" - Tons of horsepower, but a big bulky thing to carry around
So what could we do to get the best of both of these worlds? Take the middle ground - a 15" laptop. This would combine better portability than a 17", but with better performance than a 13". That's what I meant by balance.

You quoted the wrong post, you called it a m1550, you claim there is a 1900x1280 resolution, you haven't made any intelligent post by a technical stand point, excuse me for not be intimidated by your apparent computer savvy job title. And I don't care about some grammar issues, but when I can't even understand what you are saying or why you are saying it, I will call you on it.

As for your "good luck with that attitude in this world" comment, I think a close attention to detail will actually get me pretty far "in this world". Also I didn't start getting confrontational until you showed a blatant disregard for my opinion after all I did was try to have civilized discourse with you and offer a different view then what had previously been shown in this thread.

When you said "Thanks everybody else for your input" that is only in reference to those who agreed with you right?

The native resolution of a display is determined by manufacturer and model, not by screen size. My 15.4" screen's native resolution is 1920x1200, which is part of the reason why scaling down to lower res looks so bad to me. But even on a 15.4" screen with a lower native resolution, you give up a lot in terms of sharpness. You have fewer pixels spread out further apart in the same area. Regardless of display quality or eyesight, a lower resolution display will look less sharp than a higher resolution display.

Believe me buddy, I am by no means saying 1920x1200 is bad. I understand more pixels means more detail is less area, resulting in a sharper picture. However I still really don't think 1440x900 is at all "blurry". Less detailed - yes, but blurry - definitely not.

Again, this is all a matter of personal preference that is based mainly on what tasks you wish to accomplish with your laptop. I merely wanted to offer an objective standpoint.

So tech, with 1920x1200 things will be very small, and scaling down res. will look a little strange because, as burgh mentioned, it is meant to be at that high resolution if that is the screen you bought. On the other hand, 1440x900 will not allow for a bunch of windows to be visible on the screen at once.
So you need to think what tasks will have priority on this laptop. Standard, day to day computer activities, or lots of research writing/reading that will need you to look at multiple windows simultaneously.

Since you have already ordered the 1920x1200 resolution, you can always wait for it to arrive, and see for yourself. Try reading a standard browser window, maybe watch a video, do some writing, the whole 9. Try scaling down the resolution to see what it looks like lower. If you are satisfied - then success, you made the right call. If not, you can return it within 21 days of the invoice and get a new one with a swapped screen.

Oh, and congrats on the new purchase.

Edit: On second thought, that 21 day return thing may only be for actually defects in the system but I'm not certain, so you may want to investigate before putting too much faith into it. Can anyone else confirm?