I found the perfect laptop for me. It’s cheap ($700, plus whatever it’d cost me to add wireless and 512MB of memory to it — has 256 at the minute), compact (12.1″), and insanely lightweight (3.53 pounds, which Google reliably informs me is 1.6KG).
But it’s an IBM, so it’s not an option. I didn’t realise this until after I’d got all excited over the specs and it was a shattering moment!
IBM have always epitomised appalling laptop design for me, mostly because of their insistance on a joystick as a mouse (what the HELL is with that?!) but also because of the inanity of their decision to arbitrarily change the layout of the keyboard… particularly omitting a Start key. I don’t care if I use Linux… I’ve mapped my start key in Ubuntu so that it works the same way! It’s a brilliant innovation (unless, of course, you’re a gamer with chunky fingers and dislike being dumped out of games… though that ceased to be a problem post-3dfx/dedicated 3D-accelleration-only cards!), and IBM have to go and ruin it for everyone. Angry angry angry.
It was such a nice laptop…
I disagree. IBM make exactly what their name suggests: business machines — they include everything a laptop should; portability (weight, battery life), tough build (can withstand much abuse), and reliability (in-built back-up/restore that maintains personal files, etc).
The use of a joystick is only compulsary if you buy the 12″ models — all their larger models have both a joystick and a thumbpad — but it does a great job of saving space and preventing accidental mouse movements on smaller laptops (plus allowing more room for the keyboard). Plus, anyone with a laptop carries a mouse anyway. No chance you wouldn’t. Agreed RE the start button, but they’re not the only brand.
On the down side, IBM laptops are often picky about their VGA outputs; sometimes it works fine, others it takes a bit of fiddling.
I wouldn’t, however, buy a laptop in this day and age without in-built wireless. It’s seriously UNCOOL having to insert a PCMCIA card (or USB dongle) to use wireless internet; something else to carry, sucks more power, requires third-party software (untested with laptop specs), prone to causing damage if you tilt the lappy on its side and snap the card in half (easier than it sounds), plus the idea of wireless is that it’s convenient — a PCMCIA card is most often LESS convenient than a wired connection (due to crappy third-party configuration, insert/remove procedures, etc).
Side note: Harvey Norman is selling an HP tablet PC (12″) for $1800-ish at the moment (EOL) at their clearance centre in Auburn — no optical drive, but it’s reduced from $3,000 — good value.
I definitely won’t be carrying a mouse most of the time. I’m not interested in a 12″ laptop so I can carry more crap.
As for wireless, yeah, that’s not great… but for $40 or whatever a USB-key-style wireless adapter is nowdays, I don’t particularly mind (plus wireless isn’t something I’d be wanting to use 100% of the time… it’s going to be mostly for uni, and USyd’s wireless is horrendously expensive… so I won’t be using it there!)
Like the sidenote, should look into that, thanks!
Oh and it’d be running XP, from what I’ve seen USB wireless NICs work about as well as wired ones (that is to say, pretty much out of the box). In the cases I’ve seen where that wasn’t so, it was just a matter of installing a driver… no crappy tray apps.
In fact, I think Acer laptops (mightn’t be Acer… I was using one this morning but can’t remember the brand) ship with proprietary software for network autodiscovery (you know, the thing XP does pretty much flawlessly itself) that has to be run separately. And that’s for ‘inbuilt’ wireless… pathetic, huh?
You’ll totally carry a mouse :P
And you’ll so regret not having wireless built in too :P
Mind you, I’ve decided to hold off (if i can stand the wait) as the new Intel Duo CPU laptops are starting to sell (Samsung released one in Australia last week or so) — from what I can see, they boast much better battery life — a standard spec of around 6 hours compared to the 4 hour standard of most Centrino notebooks (for the normal version, but there’s also two single core ultra-low voltage CPU models). Plus they’re faster etc…
Considering the latest Sony 12″ notebook with a 14.5 hour extended battery on a Centrino chip, I can’t wait to see 24+ hours, which is no doubt less than 12 months away. Then again, if I don’t get a new laptop within a few months I’ll be unhappy.
Though it’s only a small concession, if you don’t like the continuous WHIRL WHIRL of your soon-to-be infuriatingly diabolical laptop, you could always try this approach: http://www.tomshardware.com/2006/01/09/strip_out_the_fans/
I don’t really want a laptop for the noise… more for portability (which is why I’m barely even considering anything bigger than 13″)/use anywhere (which is why I’m not interested in anything with less than 4hrs battery life) reasons. The soak-PC-in-oil-for-heat-reasons solution is cool, but waaaay too high maintenance for me :P