Or you buy the docking station.

(Well, at least *my* docking station came with a line-in port. And an extra power supply, too. So it was a nice thing that I had work get me the docking station.)

I have the docking station, well the D/Port Advanced Port Replicator. I'm guessing it is the same thing. The only connections on it are the AC Adapter, Modem, Ethernet, S-Video Out, DVI, VGA, Parallel Port, Serial, S/P DIF, 5 USB ports and headphones. I looked high and low for the Line In.

Aw, that's too bad they didn't include a line-in on the dock. I guess they figured S/PDIF was the New Hotness.

Looking at the wikipedia entry for Laptops, I came across http://www.notebookreview.com/
in the External Links section.

Does that help?
There are a couple other links that might be worth checking into as well.

I saw that Engadget post too, but that was a pretty weird deal. Actually, when the Mini 9 deal was first announced, it wasn't like that scam that it ended up being. You could add the $99 Mini to the $649 Studio 15. You just needed the right link, which actually still worked until two days after the deal officially ended Unfortunately I wasn't able to find anyone to go in on it with

I'll be very interested in your impressions of it. My current laptop has just died (I believe it's beyond repair), and I'm really interested in the Mini.

Ooo. I like that one.

I'd found that one already. The search options are near worthless:

No resolution search.

A search for graphics chip manufacturer? Who gives a crap?

A search for manufacturer? If I knew that, I'd just go to their web site.

Processor type but no speed?

Weight and screen size are reasonable, other than the common problem of only being able to select one option at a time. (Looking for a screen under fifteen inches? That's six different searches.)

(Note that I'm not complaining that manufacturer and graphics chip searches are available, only that they should have been much lower priority than some other, more basic specs.)

Do they keep track of how many stickers come on each of the laptops?

Yeah. They need search options for a laptop with built-in air ionizer or anti-bacterial keyboards.

The ability to search by graphics chipset manufacturer is important if you want a gaming laptop. If your brand new laptop comes with an Intel XtremeCrap graphics chipset then you're not going to be doing much gaming...

It's also handy to know if your graphics chip is defective.

Well, simply selecting Lenovo yields 398 items, so I guess that's one reason. And Lenovo's own site is horrible.

I guess it'd help as well for when you're getting a laptop from places like Dell that give you different options depending on what part of the site you use.

Sound like what you need to do is reorder the wiring and have the laptop line out plugged into the empeg and tie the line outs of the empeg to your pc's external speaker system.

Well, time to take it easier on that site, Bitt. After about 1 minute and 5 clicks with that search engine, I ended up with a strong possibility.

Have you taken a look at the Lenovo T400? It has a 1440x900 14.1" display (if you choose the WXGA+ when building).

Does that look like it could pass muster?

Throwing it back off topic...

I use my titanic-sized Inspiron laptop at work as a desktop replacement. Given that it spends 90% of it's time tethered to the wall. What's the best way to ensure the battery doesn't fade or get cooked?

Take it out of the laptop with 40% charge or so and just top it up every so often.

Resolution's too low....

And about the search: how far did you have to go to find a resolution? Dig down into the review? What about ones that don't have reviews? Go to the manufacturer's site? Given that there are over 600 laptops that have 14-15" screens, that's a lot of digging.

As an aside, the only current laptop I can find that meets the specs I set out above is the Panasonic Toughbook Y7. The drawbacks are that there isn't a docking station for it, and, oh, that it costs about three times as much as it should, ignoring the "tough" part of it.

????

I'm confused...you said to find you something with a similar resolution (1440x900 in your post) with smaller than 15.4" screen. Just saying, that's what I did

And I narrowed it down by picking a random manufacturer (Lenovo), a small screen size (14-14.9"), and then worked up from the lightest weight until I got some results. That left me with about six models and the first one I clicked on was a 14.1" with 1440x900 resolution.

Given that you probably don't want to consider every brand on the market (there are some crappy ones after all), you might try this method, going from brand to brand. It narrows it down somewhat...

Fair enough. I did. But I actually need it to be at least as ... resolute(?) ... as the four year old laptops we're currently using. And as I pointed out in that same post, 1440x900 has a significantly lower DPI and a significantly lower number of pixels.

1440 in a 14" display is something above 100dpi. I generally consider that pretty good resolution for an LCD.

I think you're basically looking for a WSXGA+ screen in something less than 15". In that case I believe your earlier assessment might be correct: they don't make them. I don't think the market for them is great enough. Too many average consumers would see it in the big box store and think the text on the screen was too small.

It's also possible that they simply don't make WSXGA+ panels that small. You're really starting to cram a lot of pixels tightly together.

I think Newegg is a good place to see what's available. They appear to list a good number of laptops (232), and let you narrow your search by screen resolution. The resolution you want is only available on 15.4" notebooks.

Yeah, NewEgg's search is excellent, but it (for obvious reasons) doesn't list any laptops other than ones available via retail channels. So that pretty much means no (at least higher-end) Dells, Lenovos, etc.

Honestly, what I'd really like is "SXGA+" in a screen less than 15". But, virtually no one makes non-widescreen laptops any more.