Display: 18.5″, 20″, 22″, 23″, 24″, 27″
Pixel Format: 21.5″ and larger 1920×1080
Contrast Ratio: 50,000:1 (dynamic)
Response Time: 2ms
Connectivity: HDMI
Other: Auto Brightness, Proximity Sensor
Availability: April 2009
LG: LG just announced its W53 SMART Monitor Series displays. The three cool features about these displays are: Auto Brightness, Cinema Mode, and a Proximity Sensor. Auto Brightness automatically adjusts the brightness of the monitor. Cinema Mode blacks out everything but the video you’re watching. And the Proximity Sensor lights up the control buttons when your finger gets close.
Thanks to an ambient light sensor the W53 SMART Monitor Series displays the brightness is automatically optimized based on the ambient lighting in the room. It also depends on the content your viewing. I’m not exactly sure how that works but probably has something to do with backlight brightness modulation that will also improve contrast ratio to some extent. This feature was developed in response to many users complaining that the display was either too bright or too dark. I guess these users don’t know that there are buttons to adjust the brightness on almost any monitor. But it does get cumbersome when you work during the day and the night and have to adjust the brightness every time.
Another benefit of this feature is that power consumption is reduced especially at night when the backlight is dimmed.
When the W53 SMART Monitor Series is put into Cinema Mode and you’re watching online videos, everything else is blacked out. All you see is the video. I think this is kind of nifty. But, there are many users that watch video and work at the same time. I do that from time to time. For people like me just don’t turn on the Cinema Mode. For others, this feature should enhance your video viewing pleasure without having to resort to full screen mode (and the ugly pixelation).
Why would you need something like this? The W53 SMART Monitor Series has a proximity sensor on the bezel. When your finger approaches the bezel the buttons light up. Very cool. Pull your finger away and the buttons disappear. Physical buttons might be less cool and sexy but they consume zero power. I have mixed feelings here: these proximity sensor buttons are cool but they will always be additional sipping power while your monitor is on. How often do you adjust your monitor settings anyway?
LG will bring out sizes that range from 18.5-inch to 27-inch with 21.5-inch and larger ones sporting 1920×1080 pixel formats. Dynamic contrast ratio (which doesn’t mean a whole lot) is rated at up to 50,000:1. The response time is really quick at just 2ms.
B&O: Bang & Olufsen (B&O) has got gold fever. The company has just launched its “golden colour” versions of its products and billed them as, “The perfect complement for the most luxurious surroundings.” I’m not sure that the timing is right. Nor am I sure about the color gold.
TheStreet.com: What is the #1 bookseller in the US? Amazon? Guess again. It’s Barnes & Noble. And the company is rumored to be working with a device integrator and Sprint to manufacture a Kindle-like ebook reader. Amazon also uses EV-DO data connectivity from Sprint for its Kindle ebook reader. Of course, Sprint is not a done deal. There is also AT&T. Talks with Verizon Wireless ended according to a wireless industry insider.
Why is Barnes & Noble jumping into the ebook reader market? One word: profits. Amazon is expected generate a gross profit of US63 million on revenues of US$285 million in 2009 via the Kindle according to analyst Sandeep Aggarwal at Collins Stewart. That’s a good bit of profits!
Let’s come back to the original question of who is the largest bookseller in the US. My guess is that Amazon sells a whole bunch more books online than Barnes & Noble. Amazon is probably the largest online bookstore in the world. And that might be the difference between big success and lukewarm success/failure for an ebook device like a Kindle.
Amazon customers are used to purchasing books online. Barnes & Noble customers probably not as much. The leap from purchasing books online to purchasing ebooks online is much smaller than the leap that Barnes & Noble customers will have to make: purchase books at brick & mortar stores to purchase ebooks online.
The Kindle isn’t pefect. It isn’t very easy (is it possible?) to get documents, newspaper clips, magazines, books, etc. that you created or own transfered to the Kindle. The Kindle doesn’t have touch capability: you still have to push buttons to flip through pages. If Barnes & Nobles can build a sexy and competent ebook reader with a persistent connection to its online bookstore, add features that allow for easy transfer of your own content, and add touch, it might have a fighting chance to become a big success.
Yahoo! Finance: ViewSonic just announced the VT2230. The VT2230 is a 22″ LCD monitor that sports a 16:9 aspect ratio just like LCD TVs. And it is a LCD TV, a 1080p LCD TV at that. The 16:9 trend will most likely accelerate since some major LCD manufacturers can churn out 16:9 LCD panels more efficiently than they can 16:10. The 22-incher from ViewSonic features a very good 1000:1 contrast ratio, a fairly quick response time of 5ms and a brightness of 300 cd/m2 that will require toning down. It’s got TV tuners too so you can use it as a LCD TV.
The price? $349. Some might say it’s a good price and some others might say it’s a bit too much. As a comparison you can get a 32″ LCD TV for $499. But that 32-incher will be limited to 1366×768 pixels. You can get a 26″ LCD TV for $399. That too will be 1366 x 768. But most of us watch TV on our desks, so if you heart 1920 x 1080 and don’t mind the 22″ size when watching TV the $349 price seems to be right on.
Vista Sucks Microsoft Windows Vista really does suck. My Dell Precision M4400 came with the Business 32-bit version and it was slow. Really slow. I don’t know why Dell pre-installs a 32-bit OS on a machine that has 4GB of RAM. I promptly upgraded the OS to Vista Ultimate 64-bit but it only increased the speed by just a bit. A notebook with an Intel Core 2 Duo running at 2.8GHz should make any OS run fast. Just not Vista. Contrast this new M4400 to my trusty and old Inspiron 9300 that I got about 3 years ago. The 9300 is still a capable machine: 1.7GHz Pentium M (Dothan, 533MHz FSB), 2GB RAM (1GB x2, DDR2 553MHz), 100GB 7200RPM HDD, NVIDIA GeForce Go 6800 256MB, 17″ TN TFT LCD with 1920 x 1200 pixel format (glossy), etc. The 9300 runs quite well with XP Pro SP3 installed. I made the mistake of installing Vista on my Inspiron 9300 right before I attended CES 2009. What a mistake that was! It was too darn slow, frustratingly slow to get any work done. All I was able to do was update my blog with a couple of posts and that was it. I uninstalled Vista and reinstalled XP and now it is running like a charm. I thought I needed a faster notebook but I’m wondering if I even need the M4400.
Because of that frustrating experience at CES, I decided that it was time to get a more powerful notebook PC. I had a budget of about $1500 and wanted a fairly powerful notebook. I had one requirement: a LCD with a 1920 x 1200 pixel format. That limited me to only a few models and to make a very long story short, I went to Dell’s outlet and purchased my M4400 for a very good price.
Shoddy Work The M4400 that I purchased was a refurbished unit and had three areas that needed attention. One: there is a hairline crack on the upper right corner of the LCD bezel. Two: the plastic cover that sits above the blue LEDs for the hard disk, WiFi, Bluetooth, etc. wasn’t secured at one end. Third: there were sticky goo in several places. The hairline crack on the upper right corner of the LCD bezel is bound to happen due to the positions of the rubber supports–there just isn’t one close enough to the corners of the LCD. The unsecured plastic cover I simply chock it up to shoddy work by the refurbishing department at Dell or a 3rd party company. The sticky goo goes in that same category: shoddy work. Other than those three things, the build quality of the M4400 is quite good and the overall chassis is quite durable-feeling and heavy.
Update 2009.04.08 4:13PM PDT: I called up Dell support yesterday in the hopes that I could get the hairline fractured bezel replaced. The folks over at workstation support scheduled me in for the very next day (that would be today)! A technician came at the time that he said he would (between 1:30PM and 2:30PM), took off the old plastic bezel, put on a new one and made me a happy customer. The M4400 is now looking pretty good. Thanks Dell!
Good & Bad Design The keyboard is really good and is backlit but the three buttons underneath the trackpad doesn’t work very well. It would have been better if the left and middle buttons were combined to make a single left button. I really like how the power button feels when you push it: very solid and feels high-end. The LCD bezel is very thick on the top and bottom: it would have been better if Dell made the thickness the same as the left and right. The little pins that you push to eject the PC Card, SD card and ExpressCard are very difficult to use: you have to really shove it in there to make the cards come out and the lever to stick.
Great LCD The LCD itself is excellent. The 15.4″ LCD is matte so there isn’t a lot of glare. Reflections are present but text and graphics are still much easier to see than in glare LCDs. The 1920 x 1200 pixel format is wonderful as I can open up two windows side-by-side to get work done with a lot more productivity. There is an ambient light sensor on the bottom LCD bezel that can control the brightness of the LCD as well as the backlight underneath the keyboard. The LCD has two CCFLs that make it very bright.
Bottomline I like the M4400 for its sturdy feel and competent performance under XP 64-bit. The performance was not very good with Vista 64-bit with the fan running at full blast more often than not. The fan would also spin up and spin down repeatedly to the point where I got annoyed. I really do like the LCD and would have purchased the 1920 x 1200 version with a RGB LED backlight if I had the chance. If I had to pay full price for the M4400, which can easily reach above $2000, I would not consider it a good buy. I understand that there are certain risks to getting a refurbished unit but I thought the quality of the unit was sub-par even for a unit that was just a hair above US$1200. Would I recommend the M4400? Not at full price.
I have uploaded several photographs of the M4400 up on Flickr with text describing external features of the M4400. I also did a quick test to see how quickly the M4400 will boot and it seems with a few starting applications like AVG, Spybot – Search & Destroy, and NVIDIA’s Taskbar Utility. The M4400 booted in about 1 minute with all the starting applications loaded and quite a bit less than that to the login prompt. You can watch the video right here:
Update 2009.04.11 3:43PM PDT: Just in case you are in the market for a very fast 15.4″ notebook PC with a lot of pixel real estate with quite a bit of graphics power, the machine that was reviewed here is on eBay. Sold!
