It's surprising that none of the major laptop manufacturers have thought to offer a model for developers. All I can think is that we're just too small a minority for it to be profitable.

As it stands, there are almost no laptops out there that are suitable for development. Widescreen knocks out 90% of the choices, and that overlaps with the 90% who break up the ins/home/pgup/del/end/pgdn block that programmers need to be sitting up there intact under our right pinky.

Dell Latitude and Lenovo's T series were keeping me alive for several years there, but both of them are now getting skinnier and wider to the point where I dread having to buy a new dev machine.

Worse, netbooks have pushed small notebooks completely out of the market. There is simply no modern equivilent to the ThinkPad X51, with its tons of power, intact keyboard, 4:3 aspect ratio, bombproof steel case and 12" size.

Here's hoping things will change...