Eurocom D500P - out spec'd the 5680?

After going thru the 8890 vs 5680 debate in my head, the 5680 had a slight edge on overall balance until....

Why, oh why, did I go and look at the Eurocom web page and find the D500P.

Am I imagining what I am reading - max memory seems to be 4Gb (rather than 2Gb for the 5680) and the really baaaad thing is this QXGA (2048 x 1532) screen . Oh no, not again. I thought I had it all sorted out.

Tell me I am wrong. Tell me these things don't exist. Sager? Adam? Anyone?

Before everybody thinks 2048 x 1532 would be impossible to read it scales down perfectly to 1024 x 768 for web browsing. So no crappy text (I think). For high res graphics apps scale it back up to maxxxx. Has anyone seen these LCDs? I can see a 9600 pro is going to be too slooooow.

I sort of figured 4Gb was kinda out there right now and 2Gb mem sticks are still expensive vaporware (at least for this week ) but in spec'ing my new laptop I was looking for maximum expansion headroom. I will email them to get them to confirm their specs. Thanks for putting one genie back in the bottle Adam (at least for now).

Do you know if the QXGA is for real? I nearly wet myself after I read it.

I did some more research into this QXGA screen. They do exist. I even have full engineering specs (236Kb PDF) on the thing .

Apparently NEC released a laptop called the Versa Pro 700 with the screen in it last year.

I figure you could run that sort of screen in 1024 x 768 mode (exact multiple of native resolution so no funny looking artifacts) for most of your work (browsing etc) then if you needed to, switch it to QXGA mode for those times you need to have four pages on your screen (for example I often have to compare two web pages with a third with an editor running. Not something I want to do for very long but somedays you just gotta do it).

I would love to see what it looks like in real life. Short of flying half way around the world I am going to have to get a friend of mine in Canada to check it out. Anyone else in Canada willing to check it out?

I had a look at the Toshiba UXGA screen and I could read it no problemo - I just would not want to read it all the time thou. Troube is you can only drop it to 800 x 600 and keep the sharpness going. You are probably right about a 15" QXGA but before I decide on a SXGA I just have to know if it is at least possible to read.

Better order some more carrots for my eyes

Now if only they could make 22" fold up into a laptop like this and give it the specs of the 8890, only make it weigh 3kg and cost less than $3000 I would be in heaven .

But of course reality strikes back .

Thanks for the heads up Emyrs. I did notice Eurocom was a bit rich on the memory and disks. What I thought of doing (short of Sager bringing out a QXGA) is to order it with small mem and only a 60 Gb 4200 drive (which I need anyway to do my backups once it goes into a USB enclosure). Given the price drop of 512 sticks and the 7200 RPM drives will happen within a couple of months I can wait for that. The funny thing about the pricing though is because I can by from these guys in $CAD rather than $US I actually get a better rate converting from $A. Some sort of weird cross currency thing.

I am still trying to work out if normal text (ie web page) is readable with a 15" QXGA. I know it is going to be small (read tiny) but I do have a real need for such a resolution on occassion. The main advantage is the ability to drop back to 1024 x 768 and still have a "native" resolution (well I think this works).

Has anyone with a UXGA screen (1600 x 1200) tried running it at 800 x 600 resolution? Does the text stay sharp as it is a direct 1:2 resolution change? I know 1600 x 1200 -> 1024 x 768 will look terrible but does the exact 1:2 change work?

2048 x 1536, it works!

Well I finally figured out a way to simulate QXGA (2048 x 1538) on my 14" XGA (1024 x 768) screen. Well within reason anyway.

What I did was to open an Excel spreadsheet which I have optimised for screen use on XGA. It used a 90% zoom factor. By dropping this to 45%, voila! The effective screen size becomes 2048 x 1538.

Obviously it is really hard to read because I am simulating it on a XGA screen so the QXGA screen will have more pixels to render the text properly. But it was not impossible even at XGA resolutions to read some text, select areas and generally use it as I would in real life.

My typical layout at that QXGA resolution is to have two browsers, one on top of the other down the left hand side with an editor running down the right hand side. And when I am trading options to have my trading spreadsheet, main options and order processing web pages open with smaller data feeds running as well. Then with virtual desktop software I can have email at XGA resolution, another window with Linux running under vmware for when my clients call me out of the blue (using vmware saves having to do a time consuming reboot) and then another with basilisk (mac emulator) handling my drawings and then, and, also, with, along side, .... BANG! what was that - oh dear I think my head exploded.

People wonder why I want a 3.2GHz processor and 2 GBytes of RAM. Trouble is I am used to running on large mainframes - damn those 8890 and 5680s.

If only I could talk Sager into supplying the QXGA... Adam????