Will there ever be a 18" or 17" 4K LCD laptop to replace Lenovo P17gen2 (i11) and Dell XPS 9370 (i13)?

General Topics
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Howdy, I came here because I’ve been using thinkpads since 1995, and on top of being addicted to the trackpoint which honestly beats any trackpad by miles (OMG, trackpads, even if tweaked on linux, totally suck for 3 button Xwindow work, and hold button 2 or 3 during drag, or simple cursor moving that is done sooo easily with the index finger on thinkpads).
Problem is that most manufacturers, including lenovo, have stopped making 17" laptop (actually I think P70, P71, P72, P73, and P17, P17gen2 were 17.3", which I absolutely love)
Lenovo P17gen is 2 years old and literally no better/faster than P73 and battery life is slightly worse (while removing hardware features :-/ )
I found the Dell XPS 9730, which seems to literally be the only laptop that does 17" and 4K with a recent CPU (well 13th gen, for 14th gen, I haven’t found one yet)

I really don’t like that I now have 2 laptops when I did everything on one before, syncing data sucks but the battery life of the lenovo is poor, its refusal to use most sources of power, is ridiculous, and let’s not talk about the weight.
The XPS 9730 would be my dream computer if it had proper keyboard with all the keys and a trackpoint.

Eventually I will need to replace them, and I would really really like for framework to have a 17" or hell even an 18" 4K laptop (4K is important, those gamer 18" laptops without 4K are useless to me, and I couldn’t care less about 3D or some battery draining nvidia chip I will turn off right away to use intel integrated graphics for battery life).

I believe there is literally not a single intel 14th gen 17/18" 4K laptop on the market today. there may not be a lot of buyers like me, but there will be some, and with 0 competition, that should make buyer’s choices easy since there will only be this new framework laptop to choose from :slight_smile:

Please don’t forget the trackpoint, that’s super important

Oh yeah, this is lenovo P17gen2 vs XPS 9730: Marc's Blog: computers - Thinkpad P73 vs P17 gen2 vs Dell XPS 9730 With Linux

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I recently replaced my Thinkpad p52 (15") with a framework 16. the screen feels much bigger than the 15" Thinkpad because of the different ratio. probably not quite enough to replace a true 17" though.

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I really, really miss the screen size of my Toshiba P500.
18.4" 16:9 ratio.
It is big and heavy, but it’s only used as a Desktop replacement and rarely moves.
Better keyboard layout than the FW, more useful buttons, and THERE IS A NUM LOCK INDICATOR LIGHT.
It has its annoyances and shortcomings tho’!

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yeah “feels better” is not good enough. I use every pixel at 4K, and if they are too small, I have really good eyes but eventually I can’t see them anymore, need to scale up all the fonts and lose workspace.
The only thing wrong with my 17.3" is that it’s not 18" :slight_smile: not going to 15" in any aspect ratio. FYI my dell is 17" in 16:10 and I can already tell it’s missing 0.3"

you can compare the 2 sizes here: Marc's Blog: computers - Linux on Dell XPS 9730

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ok, sure but your P500 is what, 15 years old? and doesn’t even output 1080p when 4K is an absolute requirement for me :slight_smile:

I mean sure, in that case I can pull these:

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I still have the PCMCIA cards and non winmodem to go with them, even PCMCIA SCSI card!

Of if you want thinkpad, I have them back to 1999:

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Bottom picture, far right ltop, full keyboard and number pad.
If that style were made by FW, 19" or so, current tech, I’d have bought that in a heartbeat.

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Moving this under General topics since it’s not related to Framework Laptop 16.

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Market size matters… Even if you have 100% of that market…but of size 5 customers…then that won’t cut it.


I wonder if the lack of 17/18 inch 4k laptops is not on the part of the laptop manufactures…but a chicken&egg relationship between market needs and display panel manufectures. (e.g. no demand, no panel, no laptop…all interconnected)

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So you don’t fancy an 18" 14th Gen ?

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Does it take 4 DIMMS? (seems like it only takes 2)

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Yes, your point about “only 5 customers” is valid, but while I’m not a product manager, I do think there are enough people who want a workstation laptop with big screen. At least I’m asking for it now, and framework can do a survey to verify if they wish, or some other market research

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I checked alienware, their laptops do not have 4K panels, probably because they assume users want to do muchos FPS 3D gaming and the GPU can’t keep up the FPS at 4K.
Never mind that there may be a good amount of customers who actually would buy those big powerful laptop for work, if only they had put a better LCD on them.

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