PC Market Finally Catches Up To Apple's Titanium PowerBook

by , 3:30 PM EDT, October 23rd, 2002

It's only taken a little over a year, but the PC world finally has a portable with a screen as nice as Apple's Titanium PowerBook G4 (TiBook). PC Magazine announced a new portable being sold in Best Buy locations that was designed for Best Buy by Porsche Design. The unit has a 15.2" screen, just like the TiBook, is thin, just like the TiBook, and comes with features and looks similar to the TiBook's (see the image below). Other 15" portables have been on the market, notably from Dell, for some time, but they didn't provide the same aspect ratio as Apple's TiBook, or the same thinness in terms of design. From PC Magazine:

Best Buy this week begins selling the first Windows notebook with a DVD-appropriate wide screen. The Vpr Matrix 200A5 also sports high-quality sound and a design by Porsche Design.

The Vpr Matrix 200A5 comes with a 2-GHz Pentium 4-M processor, 512MB of DDR-SDRAM, and a 40GB hard drive. To keep you connected, it has both an Ethernet port and integrated 802.11b (Wi-Fi) wireless capability. As befits a multimedia machine, it's equipped with an NVidia GeForce4 420 Go graphics processor and a DVD-ROM/CD-RW drive. It carries an estimated retail price of $2399.

The notebook is available only in Best Buy stores and on the store's Web site, and in Porsche Design boutiques.

Screen Battle
Apple already offers a wide-screen PowerBook, but the Vpr Matrix 200A5 is a debut product for Windows users. Other Vpr Matrix notebooks, the 170B4 and the 180B5, do not offer the same wide screen.

The screen is a 15.2-inch LCD with a 1280-by-854 native resolution. Do the math and you'll find it has an aspect ratio of 3x2 (also referred to as 1.50:1). That's wider than a standard monitor or TV's ratio of 4x3 (1.33:1), but narrower than a wide-screen TV's 16x9 (1.76:1).

Why can't a wide-screen PC be as wide as a wide-screen TV? Examining a conventional portrait page layout in 16x9 is "kind of awkward," according to Steven Lee, Best Buy's vice president for strategic development. The slightly narrower shape also allows the 200A5 to use the full width of the screen for a wide-screen DVD and still have room below the picture for on-screen controls.

You can find more information in the full PC Magazine article. Thanks to CodeJC for the heads up on this.

The Mac Observer Spin:

The point of our mentioning this was not to disparage the Vpr Matrix laptop. Indeed, it's a nice looking portable as it looks very similar to the TiBook. Our point was that we are surprised it took so long for someone in the PC world to do this. Apple's TiBook has garnered enormous attention from PC and Mac mavens alike for its gorgeous screen, and one wouldn't have thought it would take so long for it to be copied.

PC Magazine Article