Laptop Update
Nov. 20th, 2003 01:59 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
lostcarparkMy continuing search for a new laptop...
While in London, I went browsing for laptops, and saw lots of nice things. There were some that nearly had me drooling (except that I don't think drool would be good for them).
I've also been noticing how the trend in laptops semms to be getting bigger, not smaller. Perhaps people want their laptops to do more, have bigger screens, faster processors, more bells and whistles, but don't they want to be able to carry them too?
As I've said before, I want one that I can fold up and throw in the bag, and have ready to work anywhere and any time. I want it to be small and light, but fairly rugged. I want a keyboard I can type on. Wireless would be nice but not essential. And I want to be able to run real PC software on it. I saw a few that really come clost to what I want.
The Panasonic Toughbook R1 is small (footprint less than A4), slim and light (under 1kg), and claims to last 5 hours on battery. I found the keyboard reasonable to use. It has an external DVD/CDRW. At about £1000 it's reasonably priced. The slight downsides are that it doesn't have wireless built-in, it needs an external power supply for the DVD, and it lacks TV out (not esential, but nice to have).
It's brother the Toughbook W2 has almost identical external dimensions, but it has DVD/CDRW built-in. The left side of the keyboard cleverly flips up to reveal the drive underneath. I'm not sure that these are enough to justify the £1900 price tag, though.
On the other hand there's the JVC Mini Note PC has an A5 footprint, making it very small indeed. I'm not sure exactly which model I was looking at, but it had built-in wireless and a 900MHz processor. The keyboard didn't seem bad, but would need a little getting used to, as the keys were quite close together, but you won't get much smaller. It also only has a nipple pointing device, which I'm not totally sold on.
People have also been singing Apple's praises. I'm thinking about it, but they don't have a really small model, and I'm not overly crazy about the "modern" white styling.
Not rushing, so plenty more laptops to look at out there...
While in London, I went browsing for laptops, and saw lots of nice things. There were some that nearly had me drooling (except that I don't think drool would be good for them).
I've also been noticing how the trend in laptops semms to be getting bigger, not smaller. Perhaps people want their laptops to do more, have bigger screens, faster processors, more bells and whistles, but don't they want to be able to carry them too?
As I've said before, I want one that I can fold up and throw in the bag, and have ready to work anywhere and any time. I want it to be small and light, but fairly rugged. I want a keyboard I can type on. Wireless would be nice but not essential. And I want to be able to run real PC software on it. I saw a few that really come clost to what I want.
The Panasonic Toughbook R1 is small (footprint less than A4), slim and light (under 1kg), and claims to last 5 hours on battery. I found the keyboard reasonable to use. It has an external DVD/CDRW. At about £1000 it's reasonably priced. The slight downsides are that it doesn't have wireless built-in, it needs an external power supply for the DVD, and it lacks TV out (not esential, but nice to have).
It's brother the Toughbook W2 has almost identical external dimensions, but it has DVD/CDRW built-in. The left side of the keyboard cleverly flips up to reveal the drive underneath. I'm not sure that these are enough to justify the £1900 price tag, though.
On the other hand there's the JVC Mini Note PC has an A5 footprint, making it very small indeed. I'm not sure exactly which model I was looking at, but it had built-in wireless and a 900MHz processor. The keyboard didn't seem bad, but would need a little getting used to, as the keys were quite close together, but you won't get much smaller. It also only has a nipple pointing device, which I'm not totally sold on.
People have also been singing Apple's praises. I'm thinking about it, but they don't have a really small model, and I'm not overly crazy about the "modern" white styling.
Not rushing, so plenty more laptops to look at out there...
