This is part one of a probable three part post. It's mainly a rant on hardware issues I've had the last couple of months. 
The Lappy:
I won't mention the manufacturer other than to say it's not a Dell or an Apple laptop. From what I've read on forums and review sites, this laptop is overall in the 85-90 out of 100 group for cost/performance, yadda yadda.
My mobile beast of burden, and the first one I've ever owned. I prefer to build my own desktops, but building a laptop isn't quite accessible yet (they're working on it). Since I decided to buy a laptop, and they have a tendency to have a multitude of horrible things happen to them, I also bought the extended to three year warranty.
The recurring problem I've had was graphical distortion on the LCD screen. I would take a screenshot, and everything would look fine when viewed on different computer. I would plug my 20" widescreen into the VGA, DVI, and S-video ports on the Lappy, and things would look fine. So, the dedicated video card is working fine. I send in the machine to get fixed; motherboard gets replaced.
It's done the round trip from Madison, WI to Texas five times in a year and a half. But, the last couple times were the best.
After putting off sending the Lappy away to get poked and prodded without me there to hold its hand once again, I finally gave up and shipped it off. I had to. The screen would only show bright white with an occasional splash of hot pink or neon green.
In record time, two weeks including the FedEx Ground shipping, I get my little buddy back. It's working great; screen is back to it's gorgeous 1680x1050 greatness; but, there is a lot of garbage on my laptop I don't really care about. Like "flash cards" from my art history classes and really bad papers comparing Scandinavian folklore to contemporary urban legends. The kind of stuff you don't really need to keep. I did back up all the good stuff though. Turns out I backed up some of it up to 4 times because I kept forgeting where I saved the first couple backups (I'm not as organized as Aharon claims to be 
).
As I'm double-checking for a sliver of a diamond amongst enough junk to rival the ash from Mount Vesuvius, the Lappy locks up. Not a little either. I can't move the mouse or type anything, so the three finger salute is out of the question.
Oh well. Fresh install of Windows time. But, it hangs as Windows is initially booting. Hmmm. Could it be my slipstreamed disc I was using? I tried to use the system restore discs from the manufacturer, but it locked up in about the same spot as before. Next course of action was to do a thorough hard drive scan to check for bad bytes. I found some at the 88% point of the drive. Formatted the drive to 83% capacity; tried to reinstall Windows; still failed.
Out of desparation, I went to Best Buy and left with a drive a) I couldn't afford at the time, b) that was smaller than the one the Lappy came with, and c) for the same price I could've purchased a 100GB 7200 rpm drive from Newegg. Before I actually purchased the new drive, I did confirm with the store management that I could return the drive within either 14 or 30 days (I forget which).
Guess what? Same lock ups occured as before. The Lappy got placed in it's cardboard box waiting for FedEx to come. The inferior 80GB drive from BB got placed in its cardboard box and returned to it's orphanage of components.
When I finally got the Lappy back and saw it was working, I reinstalled Windows with my slipstreamed disc (I don't like manufacturer default bloatware) without a single problem. What was funny was the list of components that were replace: the mainboard, graphics module (aka video card), CPU, battery charging cable, battery charging board (x2; I think they broke the battery charging cable on the board after replacing it and had to replace the board and cable), top half lower case, and bottom half lower case with speakers.
What didn't they replace? The memory, DVD burner, battery, and LCD panel. I guess they really don't want to replace the LCD panel for cost reasons. But the CPU, which they did replace, still costs around $275.
WTF?! Why do we care?
I have almost too much free time at work and have self-diagnosed myself with ADDWNMT (attention deficit disorder when not multitasking). So, with no Lappy to try new ideas that pop into my head while at work, I put myself into a crazy, sad funk. Also, my main desktop at home is constantly tempting me to save and quit whatever I'm doing and play World of Warcraft. WoW on a touchpad is not too fun.
But things are better now. I've had the Lappy back for almost 3 weeks now and am only 2 months behind schedule.
Digg it
About that 1680x1050
Off topic, but not not exactly sure what the topic is anyway...
I have a 1680x1050 Viewsonic and I saw that Premiere Pro has something (maybe 1450)x 1250 as supported monitors listed on their tech page.
Will this be an issue? Is the screen res related to rendering, display updates/refreshing (speed) or any other function besides just viewing? I hope it will work well. It's a beaut.
Back to work here too...
Screen resolution is not a problem
From what I can tell, higher screen resolution, aka real estate, just allows more to be seen at one time. I haven't experienced any slow downs due to having access to more tools at one time, which is a major benefit to having a higher res display. It's also nice when viewing widescreen material.
There is no stretching in the menues (sp?) or preview panes. In fact, when using After Effects with a comp set for 1280x720, using the default workspace, and the comp window set at Fit Up To 100%, the preview is at around 73.4%. I can easily adjust the window size to accomodate 100% and restrict myself to panel sizes that are used when working at a 1024x768 resolution.
The only problems I've experienced with the higher resolution of my display is the desire to make higher resolution projects. That's where the slow downs will occur. But, 1280x720 is almost three times larger than 720x480 (921600 pixels vs. 345600 pixels), so that's almost three times as much data that needs to get processed.
I've been using the 1680x1050 resolution for 2 1/2 years. The only problems I've ever experienced is playing old games, like Starcraft, that are limited to a specific resolution like 800x600. I have not noticed any problems with any applications though.
Just an FYI: I'm using the Production Studio Premium. All of the Adobe apps in the suite adapt perfectly to the 1680x1050 resolution. I think it's because of the modular design to the interface. I can't say yay or nay in regards to earlier versions of the software.