Not everyone is a frontend web developer, or any sort of frontent developer. I develop software to manage network attached storage, making my resolution pretty much irrelevant for testing my software. In fact, for the small amount of UI work that I do, I run it in a VM at 1024x768; the tiny resolution on this thing means that that would take up pretty much my whole display.

Furthermore, I like to be able to see my code and and the final product at the same time. In fact, I prefer to be able to have several columns of code, a terminal, a web browser, and my VM that I'm deploying my work to all visible at once. The more I can see, the better. I usually work with 3 1920x1080 monitors plus my laptop display, but sometimes need to use my laptop when I'm not at my desk. Being able to fit multiple columns of code and/or terminals on my screen at once is important to me.

Heck, these days, phones are coming with greater resolutions than that; you can't even fit your phone emulator on that display without scaling, if you develop mobile software. The Nexus 10 has 2560x1600 display on a 10 inch screen; why does a $400 tablet have such a better screen (its smaller dimension has more pixels than the XPS 13's larger!) than a $1500 laptop?

Aside from the poor resolution I also don't understand the price. I purchased a gaming laptop (ASUS G75VW) w/ 16GB of RAM, a 256GB SSD, 750GB HDD, GTX 660m & 3610QM, which runs 1920x1080 for under $1400. This dell laptop has the specifications of my $400 Chromebook. It seems like it has been massively overpriced because it's one of the few machines that runs linux out of the box.

Tell me more about this $400 Chromebook with a 3GHz i7 CPU, 8GB of RAM, and 256GB SSD.

If you only look at screen resolution, then his argument held (some) water.

I've got to admit, 768 vertical is a bit poor for developing.

I work on backend Linux systems, as do a huge percentage of Linux devs. Other people's screen resolution is irrelevant to me.

What does the resolution of an end user have to do with the desired resolution of a developer's machine? Each is accomplishing different tasks. Should you also program in an uncomfortable chair because many of your users will not be able to afford a quality one?

Its easy to make your browser resolution smaller. You can't make it bigger though.

There's a difference between developer and user. The developer is likely a multi-tasker looking at the design and code and images.

Part of my concern about a "720p" screen is remembering how some unresizable windows wouldn't even fit on the screen of my netbook and I would have to alt + drag them to get to the OK/Cancel buttons.

In 2012 most UIs are html driven and not native apps anymore that have been designed to fit some mostly used resolutions.

Most UI's or most web-based UIs?