Re: Laptop choice -- advice needed
I'm planning to enter the mid-1990's and replace my Computation Books with a laptop. In rough order of importance, the requirements are:
1. Not too heavy
2. Not too large
3. Keyboard not too tight, which is probably a contradiction of 2.
4. Long battery life
I'd use it mostly to write (pretty low CPU usage); internet connectivity is of little to no importance.
I'd appreciate any first hand impressions of laptops you've liked... or hated. Thank you in advance.
You should get an iPad with one of those ridiculous keyboard dock thingies.
In all seriousness, the main thing to remember is you get what you pay for - that $500 laptop looks like a great deal until it falls apart 8 months later. Also, if at all possible, go to a store and try out the keyboard before you buy it. This is especially important if you're using this thing for writing. Note with just about any modern laptop you can get an extra 30-60 minutes of battery life if you turn off the wifi. Since you don't care about the Internet, that might be handy to remember.
How much are you willing to spend, and how frequently do you plan to carry this thing around? If it'll sit on a desk for 99% of its lifespan, then durability and weight are much less important and a cheap Dell or something should be just fine. If you're going to be carrying it around everywhere then you should pay up for a lighter, more durable machine and get a decent carrying case for it (I like backpacks, personally, but that means I need a second carrying case for situations where a more professional appearance is required).
I've heard good things about Asus, but never tried one. Toshiba makes nice machines at a low price but they tend not to last more than 18 months - less if you carry them around a lot. Dell's quality typically tracks price - below ~$1000 it's hit or miss. If you pony up for their high end machines they tend to be ok (and sometimes they'll give you a free or heavily discounted service plan as well, which is a nice thing to have for a laptop that's constantly being shuttled around even if it's not likely to pay off for you).
Macs are nice because they all have roughly full-size keyboards, they're all reasonably compact and light, they're all full-featured, and they all have a lot of useful utilities pre-installed. For the most part they're pretty durable, although you obviously can't be an idiot about it. On the down side, the battery life is not the best and they start at about $950.
Given your use case you might be the only person on earth who would be fully satisfied with a MacBook Air as a primary use laptop, but I wouldn't necessarily recommend it since you can get a perfectly serviceable machine for half the money. I still don't understand the target market for that thing, but it is ridiculously light for a full-size machine. Gotta give it that.
I don't know what the standard consumer-grade Lenovo's are like. The top-end Thinkpad and MacBook Pro are basically the two best power laptops on the market for business users, so on reputation i'd suggest taking a look at Lenovo's offerings in your price range. If the consumer-grade Thinkpads are to the top-end model as the MacBooks are to the MacBook Pro then that's a pretty solid choice. If not, well, you may be paying a premium for something no better than a cheap Dell.
