I have a circa-2008 Dell Precision M4400 with a similar 15.4” 1920x1200 display. Still looks pretty solid by modern standards!

16:10 was pretty common in laptops until the HD marketing craze kicked in, which plagued us with those infernal 1366x768 panels that can still be found in bargain basement laptops to this day. It started in consumer laptops but eventually business/workstation laptops succumbed too, with the only big name holdout being Apple (which only ever made one 16:9 laptop, the somewhat-maligned 11” MacBook Air).

Heck it was common in desktop monitors too. For a long time Apple and Dell’s flagship monitors were 30” 2560x1600. This category unfortunately has yet to escape the 16:9 curse…

I still have a Dell Latitude D820 kicking around at home with the same display specs. I threw in a 256gb SSD, 4GB of RAM, and might have upgraded the CPU (can't remember exactly). According to what I can find online, it retailed for $2290 USD ($3500 today adjusting for inflation). I'm assuming you are talking about the non-business line Dell had back then (Inspiron?) if it was inexpensive.

I'm always surprised by how circular technology can seem, even hardware. Obviously display technology has gotten a lot better over the years (IPS/OLED, lower power consumption, higher max brightness) but the fact that I'd be perfectly happy with a laptop with a 16:10 1920x1200 display today (almost 20 years later) is funny to me.