I swapped laptops with a friend because my old Dell was dying, and she was more of a Mac person. The new hardware works fine…but not for me. It’s heavy as hell (7.5 pounds), eats up battery life like nobody’s business, and runs megahot because it’s a P4. I mean, it can handle WoW wonderfully because it’s really a P4. But I don’t want the temptation of playing WoW on the road, really, and the pains in my back from the road trip tell me that this won’t work for me long-term. And it’s got a problem that I’m guessing is not unique: I keep hitting the trackpad with my thumb while I type, which makes the cursor jump around and my resulting document become almost unintelligible. I cannot for the life of me find a way to turn that off, and it’s ruining my entire experience with this thing.
I spotted the HP tx1110us at CompUSA and I really liked it. It’s 12.1″, it’s got a twisty screen, but most crucially, it’s got a recessed trackpad that can be turned off with a little toggle switch right above it. Ergonomically, it’s exactly what I want. However, it comes preloaded with Vista and apparently the battery life isn’t too good. (I am spoiled by my old Dell CPx, which had two battery slots and would regularly run for around 5 hours without complaint.)
I don’t want a gaming laptop. I want a work laptop, something I can fly with, get the story with, and come back with. I want to run Word or OpenOffice and a web browser, and for fun I’ll gladly install Infocom games and MAME and be more than happy. I need to run some command-line apps to get screenshots of Xbox 360 games on my own. I do not want a mini home theater or a portable gaming rig. Basically I want something hyper-efficient — a reporter’s notebook in the form of a notebook computer.
Suggestions, internet? My priorities are:
- lightweight – I want to carry it everywhere, every day
- small – no bigger than a 14″ screen, for quick & easy access and storage
- battery life to the max – two hours is nothing to brag about
- XP preferred over Vista – in fact I might just reinstall my XP Pro
What are you using? How do you like it? As always, your advice is worth more than the salesman’s.