Also, there's more to display quality than pixel density. It seems to be the new megapixel war in the mobile device world.
Biggest quality issue for me is matteness. No manufacturers tell any numbers on how glossy or matte their display is.
Still they are selling laptops, which are meant to be used somewhere else than where you could control the light surrounding you.
Most folks are better off with a screen that fits the content without the need to letterbox, pillarbox or scale things up or down.
Fits what content? Do you think most popular use for laptops today is watching 16:9 television footage?
Look up the IBM T221 ,3840x2400 and that was over a decade ago. It wasn't exactly cheap though. IBM never made a lot of cheap junk tho, and in IBMs traditional motto of " we hate poor people ", it was 8,700 dollars
Those were made from most expensive parts available and called "mobile CAD-stations". Dell and HP had 15" fullHD screens in their laptops for half of that price.
At the same time (2005) I had underpowered G4powerbook that had 1280 x 854 resolution. Now some uninformed here are shouting that Apple invented those HiDPI screens, when Apple adopted them only after they weren't any more expensive than good quality regular ones.
A Retina 17" would be $4000 I am willing to pay for . . . . . over time.
Me too, but only if it's MATTE.
While I agree that it is ridiculous that most computer display are lagging while tablets and phones are getting incredible displays (that few besides Apple really get software to take advantage of), there is a physical point at which most people can't discernate 2 pixels further from a certain distance...
Exemple, for a human being with a great visual acuity of one minute of arc (most of us don't) the distance at which they start being able to discern pixels is (in cm)...
Samsung Galaxy IV (best PPI at 440.58 in a phone) : 19.82cm (That's VERY close to your EYE even for a phone)
Samsung 13.3" display mentioned in the article (276.05 PPI) : 31.63cm
ChromeBook Pixel (239.15 PPI) : 36.51cm
Apples devices :
iPhone 5 (326.05 PPI) : 26.78cm
ret iPad (263.92 PPI) : 33.09cm
ret MBPro 15" (220.53 PPI) : 39.59cm
iMac 27" (108.79 PPI) : 80.27cm
If you look at all these cases you'll realise those devices tend to be further away when you use them, and that's not even talking about the fact that people tend to have crappier eyesight (sometimes due to the fact that a lot of us sit in front of a crappy computer screen all day).
You are cutting a few corners too much here. Sadly, so are so many others with these numbers.
First, 20/20 vision (
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/20/20)
(resolving power 1 arc minute) is
average (nominal), there are lots of people that can resolve 4 times more. Of course there are also blind people and everything between. So
most of us do have 20/20 vision, at least when we are young.
Secondly, we are living in analog world. If you have 20/20 vision and the pixel size is suddenly only 0.99 arc minute, that doesn't mean you cant separate the pixels any more. It also depends on contrast and color. Google MTF.
Thirdly we get to the good old Kell factor.
In cocnlusion you need double resolution from 1 arc minute per pixel to show images that have smaller details than 1 arc minute, for person with 20/20 vision, to not to notice that smallest details are not finite.
Lastly, another thing, that people usually don't think. Just like when you hand a photo to people, they like to inspect some parts of it closer and others not so close. Same thing will come to moving images and 3D images. People will like to have some excessive resolution to se something closer when they want. Same way than when you pick up some item to examine.
