I don't disagree with you but your argument seems to promote the idea that 4:3 would be even more ideal for the same screen size because it has more vertical screen real-estate. I don't think you answered the question at all.
Lenovo's blog post at the time:
http://web.archive.org/web/20111030050311/http://www.lenovob...
> PC vendors have almost zero say in this change. We simply have to adapt. As much as I would like it to be so, 4:3 is not coming back.
Apple has since gone on to sell hundreds of millions of 4:3 iPads, so this argument doesn't hold much water. Where there's a will, there's a way. Further dilution of the ThinkPad from a pure "business" machine.
I always assumed that the move to 16:9 for computers was driven mostly by either manufacturing economies of scale or the coolness factor of HDTV's.
http://web.archive.org/web/20111030050311/http://www.lenovob...