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  • Flunk - Tuesday, April 3, 2018 - link

    It would be easier for us if you'd list the Clevo model that this is based on in the specs chart. It's easier to compare resellers when you know which model you're looking at.
  • Jon Tseng - Tuesday, April 3, 2018 - link

    Is it just me or does this + the Mi Gaming notebook + Gigabyte Aero 15 show a trend for gaming notebooks to look a bit less 1337 (in a good way!)
  • PeachNCream - Tuesday, April 3, 2018 - link

    I didn't even think about it until you pointed it out, but yes, all three of these gaming laptops are very much backed off from the edge of recent gaming hardware fashion. It does strike me as a good change too.
  • peevee - Tuesday, April 3, 2018 - link

    Huge borders. Fail'14.
  • jordanclock - Tuesday, April 3, 2018 - link

    What would you rather they do? Shrink the whole chassis to match the screen size?
  • boeush - Tuesday, April 3, 2018 - link

    Or alternatively, put in a larger screen to fit into the large chassis without leaving huge bezels on all sides - thereby actually maximizing usability without sacrificing anything? (I know, that would be just craaaaaazy...)
  • PeachNCream - Tuesday, April 3, 2018 - link

    I guess screen bezels are the way we judge products now that it's not the in thing to worry about the laptop's overall thickness. Eventually though, there'll be something else people find wrong with a product that becomes the same old song and dance in the comments section of an article. Heh.
  • boeush - Tuesday, April 3, 2018 - link

    Don't know about you, but this has been my personal pet peeve with DTR laptops (the only kind I buy, to this day) since forever. You pay premium for a powerful 17" 'workstation'-grade machine, and you get an undersized 16:9 screen and a cramped 15.6"-optimized keyboard with shallow key travel and weirdly rearranged keys, with oodles of wasted bezel-space around both. A triumph of cheapskate part reuse over high-quality product design to take maximum advantage of the underlying form-factor... which might be forgivable on a cheap/commodity appliance, but not at the high-premium prices typically charged for high-performance hardware!
  • BurntMyBacon - Wednesday, April 4, 2018 - link

    There are some quasi-good reasons for a large bezel around the display including: Antenna placement, web cam placement (if you use those on your DTR), Structural integrity, and easy of display replacement. Certainly this doesn't justify unnecessarily oversized bezels. I've got nothing good to say about using an undersized keyboard in a decidedly not undersized chassis. This started when massive touchpads became popular. While the large touchpad is a good thing in and of itself, it is a trade-off if it means forcing a smaller keyboard. It is more difficult to put a keyboard in a laptop bag than a mouse. Many people using DTRs use a mouse anyways.

    As far as cost, yes you are paying a premium for a 17" workstation grade machine. This includes the workstation class components and cooling solution. The focus is very much on function over form. High-end smartphones are now going for over $1000. They have no keyboard, very little in the way of IO, ineffective thermal solutions, small batteries, and (consequently) processors that struggle to compete with the lowest end Intel processors. When you spend up on chassis design and unique from fitting parts, you invariably have to sacrifice performance if you want to keep the price down. Now if there were a market for unique, form fitted displays, keyboards, etc. that could handle the premium, then you may see less "cheapskate part reuse". I suspect, however, that the price premium you'd pay for getting rid of economies of scale would push prospective buyers back to the cheaper less effective form factors, with equally functionally. Now, if you could convince Intel/nVidia to lower the margins on this class of hardware, we may just see some of that money get reallocated to design a better form factor. Alternately, convince display manufacturers to start mass producing a more suitable display size for the DTR market, despite how small it is relative to the standard and ultra compact market.

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