PCs have been in production for 30 years now, and 99% of them have lousy keyboards. The engineering is well-known – cherry, lexmark, ibm, all implemented good tactile-feedback designs in 1981, and ibm with their thinkpads in the early 1990’s.

Why then do so many (and all netbook makers, including lenovo) focus solely on appearance, and give us slimy, untapered, n-key-rolloverless keyboards?

Having said that, I DO empathize with the original post. When I bought my current computer late last year, the major reason I went with an older ThinkPad X61 tablet rather than the current X200 tablet wasn’t cost but the fact I was able to snag an SXGA+ screen (1400 x 1050 on a 12″ 4:3 aspect ratio panel) on the X61t rather than the WXGA screen (1280 x 800 on a 12″ wide panel) of the X200 tablet. When rotated into portrait mode, 800 pixels is just too narrow, while 1050 x 1400 in portrait mode is great!

I’d suffer through 800 x 600 for an all-day battery…there are simply too many cafes open late that don’t believe in AC outlets.

And if 1024×600 sells so well (aka “isn’t broken” to the bottom liners), then why would they “fix” it?

On the screen size /resolution topic:

I would like to see dvd movies at 16:9 on a nettop (copied via external player onto the HDD).
Also I don’t want to strain my eyes on text with superfine resolutions.
Give me a 12 inch wide screen (saves power over full height) resolution matching mpeg-2 videos.
No HD quality needed, thanks.

Eventually more people will search out the higher resolution displays. It may not happen until we get the dual-core Atoms or perhaps NVIDIA’s Ion chipset, but it’s going to happen.

“In order to qualify as a netbook in Microsoft’s eyes, you need to be below a certain max resolution.”

If you could show me your research that says Microsoft restricts netbook screen resolution to a maximum of 1024×600, I’d love to take a look at it.

Everything I’ve read limits the actual screen size itself at 10.2 inches — nothing about resolution. And that’s been per Intel, not per Microsoft. Since June, Microsoft has allowed up to 14.1-inch netbook screens, according to this article:

http://www.computerworld.com/action/article.do?command=viewArticleBasic&articleId=9106318

Plus, Dell negotiated a 12.1-inch screen at 1280×800 resolution with an Atom CPU (it uses Z-series Atom chips instead of the N-series) and XP loaded onto its Dell Mini 12. And these hi-res HP 2140 units are expected to have XP, up to 2GB of RAM, and 1366×768 resolution, all running on an Atom CPU.

Basically, all that stuff can be negotiated and/or manufacturers can use the N-series chips if they want to build products with bigger screens or non-standard form factors (like Sony’s VAIO P, for instance).

And whatever Intel’s weird rules are for any of their netbook chips, they’re going to have to loosen up in the face of competition from Via’s Nano and NVidia’s Ion platforms, neither of which are subjected to arbitrary restrictions.

Microsoft’s netbook rules: http://www.itexaminer.com/microsoft-adds-to-atoms-restrictions.aspx

More about Intel’s Atom restrictions: http://www.digitimes.com/news/a20081230PD214.html

Info about VIA Nano vs. Intel Atom restrictions: http://www.infoworld.com/article/08/05/29/No-technology-limits-for-Via-Nano-chip-unlike-Intel-Atom_1.html

More about Atom vs. Nano vs. Ion: http://www.pcworld.com/article/156463/amd_via_battle_intels_atom.html/

Atom Z-Series vs N-Series: http://www.pcworld.com/article/156766/intels_atom_grows_up_moves_out_of_netbooks.html