tech.mchiu.com

Notebook recommendations

The Sand Hill Slave's notebook is on its last legs, and it is time for her to change. She is asking people for their recommendations for her next notebook. Here are her requirements for this next purchase:

So now I seek your advice. I'm in the market. I'm looking for a sleek hard body to run my well manicured fingers on. I'm very shallow, so good looking is important to me. Being able to get turned on quickly, giving me exactly what I want when I push the right buttons and lasting for hours is important too....

The responses so far are overwhemingly for Apple, which makes sense because she wants something that looks cool. This past week, over at the GDC, I noticed that a lot of people were using Macs, but that also makes sense, being that there was a high percentage of creative people out there. Some people had suggested Alienware, but from the models I have seen, Alienware does have a cool look to it, but having a sleek body is not the first thing that comes to mind when I think of their PCs. I was surprised that no one has suggested any of the Sony VAIOs yet.

I really don't have a definite suggestion since I think that buying a computer or notebook is a very personal thing and it has to suit your tastes. For me, I need a combination of portability and usability. This means that I want something that doesn't weigh more than 10 lbs when you factor in the weight of the battery, the AC adapter, and my bag of other accessories (small mouse, portable drives, and misc. cables). Built-in WiFi these days is pretty standard, so I just quickly check to make sure that the note has it installed, and then the only other major requirement for me is that the screen resolution be at least 1280, which is difficult to come by when you are looking for a portable system. Luckily, the notebook PC I am currently using, the Fujitsu Lifebook P7010, covers just about all of my requirements, which was pretty amazing to me. It doesn't look quite as sexy as a Sony VAIO, but it gets the job done, and my experiences with Sony notes in the past have not been very positive, but I haven't disliked any of the Fujitsu notes that I have used in the past.

In any case, to me, buying a notebook PC is basically something that can be used for about a year to a year and a half, before I need to start looking for another one and still be able to get a good price on ebaying the current one. This P7010 has been holding up very nicely, so I think that when the time comes, it will be difficult to part ways with it, but it's just the natural cycle of how I use my electronics I guess.