My 600m is dying, i have to massage the power button for about 5 minutes to get the darn thing to boot, the USB stopped working a while ago, the wireless doesn’t work under Windows (works great under Ubuntu though! Welcome to bizarro world) the wired ethernet doesn’t work under Windows or Linux. So now I’m contemplating another laptop purchase (Rob keeps telling me that I made a lot of money this summer). This puts me in an interesting position because I’m asked rather frequently to make suggestions about laptops to purchase and I think I tell most people to get a MacBook, but now that I’m actually in the market I’m unsure. Part of this is given the sheer amount of time i spend on my computer, my tolerance for things not being exactly how I want them is pretty low.
Requirements (in rough priority order)
- Screen
- High Resolution (must be > 1280 x 1024, > 100 DPI)
- Non-Glossy (I like computers too much, I like mirrors too much, having an object that is both is ill-advised)
- Full Sized Keyboard
- Size: <= 15 inches diagonal
- Price: < $1500
- OS: Anything other than preloaded Windows, Certainly not Vista
- Processor - Not a Celeron
- RAM - At least 1GB
- Graphics - Onboard is fine
- Hard Drive >= 80Gb
- Optical Drive
- Required: CD burner, DVD reader
- Optional: DVD burner
- Bluetooth
I plan on doing Windows through a virtualization solution - Parallels or VMWare, which puts Apple laptops in the mix. Of course requirement 1 is incapable of being met in the MacBook line. Steve Jobs declared 2005 the year of HD, which is why 2 years later their consumer notebook line has 800 lines of vertical resolution. Grrrr… Anyway, Dell sells laptops with Ubuntu preinstalled, I don’t share the hatred of Dell that permeates many, and heck, they’re a part of the Austin economy, even if they do add to the bloat that is North Austin.