I recall reading an interview with someone from Samsung and
this very issue came up. It came down to an issue of there not being
enough demand, not technical issues. Most people like big blocky icons.

itai at replic d0t net

On Fri, 20 Jun 2003, George Michaelson wrote:

> On Thu, 19 Jun 2003 07:45:23 -0700 (PDT) "Gerald C. Simmons"
> <simmons@darykon.cet.com> wrote:
>
> >
> > My 15" Apple PowerBook G4 supports 1280x854 resolution.
>
> Your 15" Apple Powerbook is therefore not able to give me a 12" form-factor.
> The 12" diagonal formfactor allows a machine which is around 10.5" by 9". The
> 14" and 15" screens require significantly larger, heavier machines.
>
> Dell, in their infinite stupididy, have replaced the L400 by the D400, which is
> 10-15% bigger in each linear dimension, DOES NOT HAVE BETTER SCREEN RESOLUTION
> and does have 'hooks' to make me want it, like batteries in the disk slot, USB2
> etc. Why, oh why, do they fail to see the need for the finer grained screen
> pixel? 1024 to 1280 is a *massive* change in the quality of fonts, number of non
> overlapping windows, 'effective real estate' etc. (sigh)
>
> >
> > Great machine, BTW. It runs Windows 2000 better than most of my PC H/W!
>
> I would love to have one, or even the smaller 12.x" model. (which btw, is also
> not 1280x1024 screen).
>
> So what is it about the 12" diagonal, they don't do the finer-grained pixels
> which the 1400x1200 14" suggest is within their grasp?
>
> -george
>