Comment 10 for bug 288807

I've updated the description with my analysis of the problem. Basically, some of the old Sony Vaio laptops have braindead display panels, so X is picking default h/v sync rates which unfortunately are too limited, so the laptop ends up with reduced available resolutions.

There isn't a simple way to fix this, since it's really hardware brokenness here. I can see a couple not-so-simple ways to fix it. Unfortunately, in a cursory scan through launchpad, I'm not spotting much hardware beyond the Sony Vaio that have this particular problem, so am not sure it's going to be worth the effort. But I'll keep an eye out, who knows. Meanwhile, Sony Vaio owners with this bug will need to edit their xorg.conf and put in the workaround listed in the description.