Thats my number one criterion, in choosing. I'm tired of my old crappy Dell 1200x860 TFT monitor, so the replacement has to have the best monitor I can get.
So, once again, the consensus, when I ask about laptops, is Macbook pro.
OK, I hear you, and appreciate the opinions. Looks like I'm going to be biting the bullet and going Mac then, rather than Dell / Alienware / Asus, etc.
The only problem with running additional screens off a laptop, is if the graphics card isn't powerful enough, then you wont get the best output on the screen.
One thing about Dell is that on their assembly line they throw in all sorts of parts, from many manufacturers. I knew a guy that was managing a roll-out of laptops for a private school in sydney, and he looked at the serial numbers of his Dell laptops, and noticed that even though all the serials were sequential, some had Toshiba, Seagate, Maxtor hard drives... No guarantee on what you get... Some of them even had different processors!!
The Dell Latitude D820 with a core 2 duo proc and NVIDIA 256MB video card is nice. They have 3 optoins for screens. WSXGA+ is there top quality screen and it is very sharp. I'm running a 19 inch flat as a secondary monitor. You can get a docking station with a card slot if you require a video card with more horsepower to run the second monitor. This will also allow you to run 3 monitors.
So, once again, the consensus, when I ask about laptops, is Macbook pro.
OK, I hear you, and appreciate the opinions. Looks like I'm going to be biting the bullet and going Mac then, rather than Dell / Alienware / Asus, etc.
I can say what ever you do don't purchase an Alienware product. This last year work bought me a new laptop and I got an Alienwar. I had it for 6 month and the laptop was back in for service for about 4 of the six months I owned it. Every time it would go in for service they would break something and send back to me untested with a new problem. After three round trips the case started to crack in many places. Total garbage. I finally toled them I wanted my money back and the charged us 15% re stock fee for broken junk.
luckily we where able to put a claim threw the credit card company and get the re stocking fee back.
I nwe have an IBM/Lenovo T61P and I like it but the screen is not as nice as a power book pro.
The screen is the best of the dozens of LCDs I've seen around where I work. Very bright, and really black blacks.
Plus, unlike my old laptop, this one actually has enough power to run Photoshop well - no trouble crunching 8 raw files into one HDR image for this last challenge. It has a good graphics card as well.
Looking at the page I see they have a new 1920x1200 screen available, which they didn't have when I ordered mine two weeks ago. I got the 1680x1050 screen, so I can only vouch for the color/contrast of that particular one.
Of course the power comes at a price - battery will last maybe 2 hours.
