My 6 year old Thinkpad R51 finally died. It was a refurb then so in reality it is probably 7 years old. That reliability is why I always recommend Thinkpads. I replaced this a few weeks ago with a new T400. The new laptop looks jsut as good and seems just as sturdy but what the hell is it with new laptop displays?
My old R51 display was really nice with excellent viewing angles and really high resolution (1600×1200). The new display has ok resolution (1280×800, 1440×900 was an option but this was such a good deal that I didn’t mind) but the viewing angles suck, the brightness seems uneven. I was expecting the “LED lit” display to be something far better than what I had. But all it has is eyeball searing brightness. No matter what I do to calibrate it, it just doesnt look good and the contrast and brightness never seem to be at any setting that is good. Did I say the viewing angles suck. I mean they are really ridiculously bad.
It’s the same with the new Dell laptops at work. Where have all the good displays gone? Then I search online and all I can find is people complaining  about not having the same resolution or quality on new laptops as they had previously. Even people willing to pay a lot for good displays can’t find any. So I guess the days of good displays are gone.