So does any one person need FOUR laptops? Probably not, but for a very short period of time, I had them!
From left to right (biggest to smallest):
Toshiba Satellite A15-S157 – Nice 15.4″, 6lb. machine (which to the 17″ crazy-big one, seems small), and still quite usable. I got this when I started grad school back in 2003. The screen hinge is a little messed up, but still functional. Battery life is low now, but for around the house use, it is excellent. Compared to the others in this picture, this thing looks huge!
Dell Latitude D420 – Got this 12.1″ off of ebay and have been enjoying it so far. Amazing to have 1280×800 on a screen that small, but it works. Keyboard is just right, and it’s only 3lbs. I killed Vista on it though… just no point right now.
OLPC XO Laptop– I got this One Laptop Per Child from the give-one-get-one program where I donated one, then could buy another one. It’s fun, but I really don’t need it. So I’m selling it!
ASUS eeePC 7″ – 800×480 is just too small a resolution, but at 2 lbs. this thing is the definition of ultraportable. I even threw WinXP on it. Takes awhile to get the hang of typing on it though.
So the story goes, the Toshiba is my ‘old’ one that I gave to my wife and is the ‘around the house’ laptop. I wanted a smaller one for travel and got the eeePC. After a few months, just a little too small, so I sold it to my bro-in-law and bought the Dell D420, which is the perfect size. Then just selling the OLPC because I just don’t need it. So though I had 4 laptops, it was just for a week. I really only have 2 (well 1, since I gave the one to my wife). It was fun while it lasted!
What size/model defines your perfect portable laptop?
Posted under tech gadgets
When I went through my eBay phase I started buying old Thinkpads like they were going out of style. I just loved having a laptop in every room (seems silly now but at the time it made perfect sense). So as punishment for my actions I now have five laptops laying around the house, only two of which are in heavy use: a Macbook Pro and a Hp Tablet. It’s still fun having the Thinkpads to install Linux distros on, but otherwise they see little to now use.
So is the price of being “cutting edge”…. All those laptops and not a single true tablet? I guess technically you could say the OLPC is a tablet since it has some tablet functionality, but still. So when it is all said and done the only one that really stays (at least for your use) is the dell? lol
Nemolian– I can appreciate that. I went around with a lot of desktops and towers hidden all over the house with debian on them. Crazy, that was almost 10 years ago!
Tenny– I don’t find a tablet useful. I don’t get what functionality you’d get that would be the killer app to get one? I can’t draw, and my handwriting is so terrible that for notes it would be worthless (for me). The Dell for me is the perfect balance of size, weight with still an awesome keyboard. In my head, that’s the most important feature… I don’t dig on huge ‘desktop replacement’ laptops, because I’d rather just use a desktop and put the extra money into making it uber powerful. What would you use on the tablet? Maybe I’m missing something cool….
I have to have a massive one for doing client work (15 or 17″) that can handle a 7200rpm HD and a ton of RAM. I really like it for work purposes, but I wouldn’t want it to be the “house” laptop. I’d go for one of the 12″ “portable” models for something like that. Not sure if I’d ever get one with a non-standard size keyboard. I’m just not that accurate of a typer and smaller keys would exacerbate the issue.