DarrenBarefoot.com

Form factor is important - this goes beyond weight and extends to whether you want an ultra-light or desktop replacement type. Battery life, display and drives are all influenced by this choice. Maybe consider the tablet as another possible form-factor.

With this in mind, the first question you ask yourself is “what are you going to use it for?”, then “how often are you going to carry it?” and probably a few others. In otherwords, get your own requirements sorted out first before thinking about hardware to meet those requirements.

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I am not the average business ueer. I have a desktop for “fun” stuff and everything else is on my laptop — business files, a few novels, scripts and short stories, everything for 4 weblogs I have, a TON of music, and a few dozen other oddball things. I go nowhere without the laptop (the weight issue wasn’t even a thought when I got my behemoth, a thing I wish had been an option 4 years ago).

For traveling, a good DVD player is nice, since I often spend time in boring hotel rooms with boring standard cable. Having a decent screen and DVD makes the hours easier to pass, discs being easy to pack.

MORE USB PORTS — I’ve noticed newer models have those little babies in multiple locations. I was blessed with two on mine, located so that having two items plugged in at the same time can be difficult (a key drive and a keyboard light won’t work together, for instance — the key drive, even a skinny one, is too thick)

It’s also a nice option to have plug in drives available — even in this day of key drives and CD RW, I’ve had to dig ol d info off a floppy or ZIP disc, and had to scramble to find something I could use to port data across. Luckily my laptop is old enough to still have a small floppy drive I can plug into one of the battery slots, and that has saved my bacon a time or two.

Laptop docks? I had a laptop with one of those in…95? 96? Never used it, for that matter.

By the by, just found your weblog and am bowing down to your wisdom :> enjoying it a lot.

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When I purchased my iBook, I wanted three things out of my laptop: portability, reliability, and ease of use.

And it’s light, it’s durable, it hasn’t crashed once, and it’s the perfect tool for me as a freelancer and for my work tasks as a writer.

I’d heard from more than one person that Powerbooks weren’t as reliable on the wireless side of things and I didn’t need to pay the extra cash to look slick, so I’m happy with my marshmallow-white 12″, hyper-reliable, super fast lappy.

And I was blissed out to kiss Windows goodbye (at least at home).

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If you’ll be using your laptop during presentations, or in quiet classrooms, how loud it’s fans are could be an issue.

My laptop runs it’s fans even while idling, and it’s a little annoying during class.

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Quick notes:

- Nice keyboard. You’ll be using it a lot.

- External video support. Is it VGA or DVI? What display/projector/etc. do you plan to use it with? Do you care if it natively supports monitor spanning, or only mirroring? How much oomph does it have to handle large external displays?

- Hard drive size and RAM. If it’s your primary machine, make sure you have enough RAM and storage to handle everything you’ll throw at it.

- FireWire? Everything has USB 2.0 now, but FireWire is very useful for external drives, video cameras, backups, etc. Not an issue with Apple machines, which all have it.

- Built-in camera. You’ll have to decide if that might be useful.

- Built-in memory card reader for digicam cards etc. No Macs have it, but some PCs do, and it can be very useful.

- Expansion capability. Does it have a PC Card slot or slots, and support a card for your mobile carrier, if you want that? Does it have a newfangled slot like the new MacBooks, which will support lots of cards eventually but none of them are out yet? Does it, like an iBook, have no expansion card slot at all? Is that okay with you?

- Colour. Many people don’t care, but others do. PowerBook/MacBook silver, ThinkPad or Lamborghini black, Ferrari red, or some other colour. Do you have a choice? What would it be if you did?

- Is it too big or too small? Some people like ultralights, but the screens may be too small if you need reading glasses, or not have enough real estate for all your windows. On the other hand, a 17″ laptop is tough to fit in an airplane tray and is hard to carry. What’s the ideal size for you?

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PBKs all the way, but if the mac doesn’t do, check out Acers new Ferrari series. Of course, you could go Toughbook and get more than a portable computer, you could get a bulletproof notebook

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I discovered that the frequency that you unplug and plug in your adapter can really matter. My laptop is going in for its second board replacement in only a year, because this design flaw causes it to only run off the battery after a short time.

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One key thing I enjoy about my Powerbook is the extremely fast wake up/ going to sleep time. This is a huge plus for me in practice.
One of the big downsides compared to my Pentium-M Thinkpad are heat and noise level in normal (low CPU) use.

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I found that ACER, LENOVO and SAMSUNG cheaper than DELL or SONY VAIO ( with the same configurations ). I do not have high budget to purchase one, but still wish to have the good one. I’ll use the laptop for basic purposes. I’ll be highly appreciated if I can get the right recommendation.

***I can see many articles related to my question and its helpful, however, I’m unsure if the information is up to date. I need the lastest information to make my decision.

Thanking you,
James.

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