I keep hearing that soon all notebooks will have widescreen displays. Why? Because customers want them (they’re great for watching movies) and soon widescreen displays will be made in such numbers that they’ll be cheaper than the current displays.
What does this mean for Tablets?
Will Tablets–particularly slates–stick with the paper-sized display model or will widescreen displays take over? I’d hate to see the relative price of Tablets get bumped up just because they are using the older display size ration, but this very well may happen. Normally older technology is cheaper, but there are a small number of display manufacturers and they tweak their equipment to manufacture what’s in the greatest demand with the minimum amount of wastage–thereby reducing its cost.
Now, maybe a widescreen slate Tablet makes sense. Watching movies would be ideal, for instance. But the larger size will mean greater weight and power consumption I assume because of the larger area to illuminate.
The transition to widescreen displays in notebooks is supposed to occur over the next year or so as manufacturers change their equipment. I hope this doesn’t adversely affect Tablet prices, availability, and adoption.
There are small widescreens as well, I bought my wife a Dell 700M and it has a 12″ widescreen and would make a perfect tablet.
Yeah, add a hinge and a digitizer and you’ve got a Tablet PC. From the Dell website it looks like the widescreen wouldn’t be an issue. I see that the notebook weighs in at 4 lbs. Not bad. And the price starts at $999. Would that mean an Inspiron Tablet PC 700m would be $1100 or less? Could be interesting.