My 15-years-old IBM laptop is near it's end of its life. The screen will freeze when I have more than 2 applications open, surfing the web is extremely slow, hard drive is small, and can't play videos etc with numerous other small issues which bug me on a daily basis.
I am on a search for another laptop, something portable since I have a desktop for my use in the university. The criteria for the laptop would be :
- light-weight
- fast speed
- large storage space (hard drive)
- not be obsolete in 2 years!
I did a quick analysis of what I use my present laptop for and it comes up to these various purposes:
- surfing the internet
- writing papers/ reports
- reading
- I am able to access my desktop using the university VPN. Thus, programs would not be a problem.
Recently, I got very interested in the idea of owning a Google Chromebook. It operates almost entirely on the cloud with different types of apps. Typically, it is a ipad compressed in a laptop. The only drawback which deters me from getting it straight away is the lack of good referencing apps for writing my papers. Any suggestions or advise?
Just a heads up, getting a Chromebook would be a very bad idea. You will be required to log in online at all time to use the machine. Chrome OS still has a long way to go. Unless you are connected to at least 1Mbps, living in a cloud will make your life harder. Imagine one day your internet connection isn't at its best, suddenly you have some data sync issue. Next thing you know, your data is half corrupt half overlap with the old one.
ReplyDeleteAnyhow, you already got a good start by figuring out what you would like to use the computer for, the next step is how much you would like to invest on the machine.
A laptop with non-gaming GPU is much cheaper than the gaming one (e.g., Alienware, some Dell XPS). For the RAM size, look around for minimum of 4 GB. If you could get at least Intel core i5 (i3 is probably ok), the machine should last for a few years before it becomes a slowpoke.
For the hard drive, look for something no more than 500 GB or you will be facing issue with slow reading time. If you could go baller, look for the one with solid state drive (around 80GB - 240GB). If you really need a ton of spaces (for storing multimedia), then consider using external drive instead.
Hope that helps....
P.S. I'm surprised Hannah didn't champion Macbook Air. ;)
Thanks Patt... it is the greatest sound advise I got so far
ReplyDeleteJohn Majoris wrote :
ReplyDelete"Hey Sonny,
I've heard good things about "Mendeley", "Bookends", and "Sente", not sure of their capabilities but it would be worth checking out. We should catch up soon. I want to hear all your new GUE diving stories!
John"