Tomorrow I head out to buy a new laptop. The one I have is a few years old and has been misbehaving. It has to go to the shop. So, tomorrow I will visit every store I know and give a few of my favorites a test spin. By the end of the day I’ll have a new laptop, one that hopefully won’t reboot or do memory dumps every five minutes.
IBM ThinkPad R50
Toshiba Satellite A45-S250
eMachines M6807
Dell Latitude D505
Sony VAIO TR1A (PCG-TR1A)
Toshiba Portégé M205-S809 Tablet PC
These are just a few of my favorite picks of the moment. By the end of the day I will make a decision. I’m looking for a good all around ultraportable laptop. Its first job is to sit in my lap and let me write anywhere. It needs to be light and durable. The durable is important because I have a two year old son. When I take it with my on trips I like to watch movies so the screen needs to be excellent in quality. Connecting to the Internet through my wireless network should be simple and hassle free.
Laptops are one of the most difficult tech purchases to make. Their compact design makes upgrading very difficult and costly. Simpler to buy a new one most of the time than to try and have it upgraded. Also because of these factors laptops are very pricey. Especially the cooler ones. While prices have continued to fall, it is still a large investment. Speeds on laptops in the same price ranges as their desktop counterparts are much lower. It’s difficult to come up with a reasonable idea of what type of processor you’ll need a year from now. The day it is bought it is already slower than most of the desktops on the market, so a year for a laptop is like 10 years to a TV.
Technovations will release a buying guide for laptops in its first monthly issue. Too bad. I could use it right now.
