Matt Kohut from Lenovo blames LCD makers. He says they make much more profit selling panels for TVs than for laptops, so they standardized on HDTV aspect ratio

Matt Kohut from Lenovo blames LCD makers. He says they make much more profit selling panels for TVs than for laptops, so they standardized on HDTV aspect ratios and won't supply affordable 4:3 panels: http://lenovoblogs.com/insidethebox/?p=220 http://lenovoblogs.com/insidethebox/?p=220 (I have no idea how accurate this is, but other computer makers have given similar explanations.)