What Kind of Laptop Should I Get?

Having lived 7 years on the road, I put laptop users into 2 categories; the mobile user and the portable user. A portable user is someone who will carry their laptop from office to office.

My friend Julie falls into that category. She performs due dilligence for investor-bulk purchases of mortgage-loan pools. (Or at least she used to). She would simply take her laptop and plugin at her assignment’s office. At the end of the day, she would unplug her laptop and pack it up.

Me, I fell into the category of what I call the mobile user. Unlike my friend Julie, I wasn’t simply moving from one building to work in another. I was truly mobile. In other words, I used my laptop’s battery. Anywhere. Anytime. I was Ghengis Khan roaming the Steppes in search of power; raiding encampments for their electricity. When I came across an outlet, I would conquer it immediately. It was constant battle.

The mobile user is a road warrior. The fuel, the precious fuel… there is never enough.

If you are a portable user, get the laptop with the biggest screen and best looking screen. Don’t order it online until you’ve personally handled your computer. Touch it, feel it, love it. Run your greasy hands all over it. It should take all of 10 secs. to know which is the right one for you.

For me, the right portable laptop is easily identified by the alien head stamped on the back of the screen. The large black-almond shaped eyes looking straight back at me, flirting.

Ah, I can feel the oxytocin and vasopressin surging through my brain at the mere thought of slipping into bed and whipping out my black 19″ Aurora mALX….

On the other hand, if you are a mobile user; it’s all about the battery baby and length does matter. Will your laptop be a two-pump chump or will it last all night long? Only your battery management settings know for sure.

For the mobile user, deciding is easy, what is the estimated battery life? Before someone cries out, “Carry a spare!” I know from experience that less is more. The mobile user is a scout. There’s no heavy equipment. It’s the portable user who is carrying the 40 lb. shoulder bag with the extra clips of ammo. The mobile user travels light to escape and evade.

This need means a smaller screen to power up, a smaller form factor, and less energy consuming features. When you are mobile, you don’t want to deal with the distractions of the battery-warning message box. Perhaps something with a 1.08″ thin frame and a 13″ screen? Perhaps something like the Intel-based MacBook… plus if you are a student–the true mobile user–Apple is offering a free iPod nano with purchase. (Kinda makes me want to go back to school and drop out of college all over again!).

So to re-cap:
If you are a portable user; big screen. Big everything.
If you are a mobile user; less is more. Get the longest battery-life possible. Carry less. Go with a lighter form-factor.

Whether you are a portable user or a mobile user, max out your laptop with RAM right from the start. RAM is inexpensive and having plenty is one of the best ways to guarantee enjoying your new purchase. Also, pickup a gig or two of flash RAM. Microcenter has generic 2 GB USB flash drives for $18. 1 GB for only $10. Super-low low.

md

“Carry a spare (battery)!” is excellent advice. We know how Chris L-O-V-E-S lugging around spares and replacing batteries. Me? I always H-A-T-E-D dragging around all that dead weight that is a spare battery.

“Carry a spare (battery)!” is excellent advice. We know how Chris L-O-V-E-S lugging around spares and replacing batteries. Me? I always H-A-T-E-D dragging around all that dead weight that is a spare battery.

My one question before i go for an apple (especially for a new laptop) does it slow down over time like my (4+ yo) gateway. Don’t get me wrong, its still a great computer for my uses but it and my desktop HP are slowing down from when i first got them.

In response to DarkAlly’s comment about the slowing down of his/her Gateway and HP machines…

I have had my Gateway Convertible notebook for a year and a half. As long as I run my anti-spyware, virus, and garbage cleaning programs appropriately to keep my hard drive from getting eaten up with ****, it runs just like the day I got it.

Our desktop is self-built. We maintain it with the same cleaning programs and have no slow-down problems with it either. It is now three years old.

Hope this helps you - and good luck.

In a day I work on 3-5 different places, and I carry my notebook in my backpack literally wherever I go.

First I was looking very small notebooks, (ala x60) but the small screen, keyboard, and price turned me away. Then I was looking at some ruggedized models with hardened case, but in the end figured out that I am not that bad towards my machine, and there is no reason to spend more money on hard case.

Finally I got factory refubrished machine with 15,4 wide screen with dual core processor, and win XP professional license. Since it came cheap, I could beef it with extra money up with 2Gigs of memory, extra battery, and docking station. Two gigs come handy since I often need to run several VMWare virtual machines at once to test software, and battery gives me 5-6 hours autonomy, and even nicely lifts the notebook and gives it a more natural angle to type!

DarkAlly, you asked, “My one question before i go for an apple (especially for a new laptop) does it slow down over time like my (4+ yo) gateway.”

Yes, it does slow down over time. They all do. I see two primary reasons: (1) because the newer programs require more memory and faster processors, and (2) because we carry increasing loads on them — more data to sift through, more installed software, lots of stuff that stays on there despite the fact that we aren’t using it any more.

Do a complete reinstall, just as if you were starting up a new machine, and you might be surprised how fast it gets. Do some speed tests. Then add in all the software and utilities you’ve added over 4+ years — including all that stuff in startup that’s running in the background — and I’d bet another round of test will show it got draggy again.

It’s the same concept as a car: the more junk you put in the trunk, the slower your acceleration, and the lower your fuel economy.

A clean startup file will help tremendously in keeping your machine up to speed. Startup cleaning is required anytime you do updates to programs like Quicktime, Adobe Reader, and the many others, because they reinstall themselves in startup automatically when they update, and you need to take them back out so your machine runs fast and clean.

That Mac-book looks awesome! Fusion would be on my shopping list, but I’m loving all of the cool stuff it does.