The Hunt for the One Laptop
So this morning, I was trying to transfer a captured video from my brother’s computer to good old Ginger1, but because of Ginger’s old age, it was obviously slow. And because Ginger was running iTunes, Adobe Premiere Pro 1.5 all at the same time on Intel Pentium 4 2.66GHz and 256MB DDR, I knew that Ginger would give up on this. And true enough, I had to wait a minute or so before I could finally close down Premiere and iTunes.
I’ve mentioned before that I am starting to look for a new laptop, but to be honest, I’m kind of clueless. I know what I want, but I don’t know which should I get so I can get what I want. Simply speaking, I have a set of specs that I want for my next laptop, but I don’t know which to get that has the same specs. So…I need your help. You, yes, you, the readers (Hello, is there anyone out there? :D).
I have no laptop in mind just yet, but I do have the following specs updated from my last wishlist (must be at least these specifications):
- Intel Core 2 Duo processor (I don’t really care about the CPU speeds, as long as it is Core 2 Duo. But 2.0 GHz would be nice :) )
- At least 1GB RAM, expandable
- At least 120GB HDD (I used to want 80GB only, but let’s be realistic — I’m really going to need more than that :p)
- Graphics card do not really matter to me as much as it does to my brother, but I’d like it if it’s at least 64MB. I don’t care if it’s shared, especially if my memory is 1GB already.
- Bluetooth and/or Infrared (But I like Bluetooth better)
- WiFi and Ethernet LAN (which laptop doesn’t have this?)
- DVD+RW (what speeds are available?)
- At least 2 hours battery life (Because Ginger has two hours…and I’d need that for loooong writing moments)
- At least 12″ screen size. That’s already small, I know.
- Firewire port — just to make my life easier when it comes to getting videos in case of a shoot.
- Finally it must be light enough to bring around. Trust me, having a 3.6kg laptop is not fun.
- EDIT: How could I forget this? OS must be anything BUT Vista.
That’s about it. Now I know people would say it depends on how I would use the laptop. So here’s how I usually use my laptop:
- Web design and development - PHP, MySQL (this is a must!), JavaScript, CSS, XHTML, some Perl
- Flash animation/programming (Action Script)
- Photo editing
- Video editing (this is mainly for my brother if he wants to borrow the laptop)
- Writing (as in long hours of writing, that’s why I want long battery life *imagines myself writing away in a coffee shop. Yes, it’s so elitistang burgis :p*)
- Internet, obviously
- And the usual movies, music and some games.
Programs I make use of a lot:
- Firefox
- Yahoo! Messenger
- iTunes
- Photoshop
- Flash
- MS Word, Excel
- XAMPP (PHP, Apache, MySQL)
- And if I get enough funds to pursue this photography thing, then I’d use that laptop forthat too.
I think…that’s it? Yeah, basically that’s it. Now this is where I need your help. Suggestions on brands, models and better specs? Are my specs list impossible to achieve? Haha. Oh yeah, my budget for this is up to PHP 70K, including the necessary (original) software I would need (yes, let’s really say no to piracy once and for all :p). I can’t spend more than that because I’d be bankrupt then. :P Sorta.
Sooo…what do you say? To those who just bought a new laptop, why’d you buy yours? And to those who know more about laptops than I do, what would you recommend?
- My 3 1/2 year old Toshiba Satellite A20-S330 laptop [«]
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I had to say goodbye to my Toshiba Sattelite, too. Celeron yun, mabagal na. haha. pero mahal ko yun, ang laki ng naitulong nun saken. :)
I’d recommend Vaio or HP/Compaq. With a 70K budget you can already get the very best kind. That is, if you’re a Windows person. Sa Amazon ako bumili, maraming choices dun at di nmn masyadong mahal. Pero kung dito lang sa Manila, okay sa Octagon o di kaya sa Gilmore.