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The tiny ones all have USB ports you can attach a keyboard of your choice to. The one thing that would worry me about those is spending a lot of time with that tiny screen. You can plug in a full size screen at home. But if you will be doing a lot of composing on the road, I'd worry about serious lost productivity.
Yeah, for me plugging in a screen and keyboard (and having the desk set up to do so) pretty much negates the value as a laptop.
If it's not your primary home computer, I think the tiny screen on the little ones would be workable for lunch/transit work times, and the portability factor would be huge. If it is primary, I'd definitely go a bit bigger.
Well, the MacBook and the X300 are both WAY over what I'd budgeted for this, even with my UW employee discount for the Mac.
I'd say one unit is more important than portability. If it comes down to it, I can write on my lunch hours in a Google Doc and paste it into the Official WIP in the evening. I can deal with the weight for road trips. I guess there just isn't a laptop that's both light and a good size for constant use under $1500 yet, and that's kinda the ceiling on what I want to pay. I'd actually hoped to go a good bit lower, given that I'm not planning to use it for gaming or anything like that.
I should probably go to an actual physical store and try out a few options to see how they look and feel.
The MacBook is $999 at academic pricing -- not to be confused with the MB Air (or the MB Pro). I think ND was just getting into "Mmmm... Donuts" mode with his Air lust.
DH is suggesting a Dell Inspiron 1525. Not great everyday portability, but fine for going to conferences and vacations, and it's more the price I had in mind, especially given that Dell also gives a UW employee discount.
My lust for the MacBook air is massive. Like mass of Jupiter massive.
Yeah, right there with you. I was *just* looking at the MacBook Air on the Apple site. Good lord, that's a pretty machine.
The MacBook is $999 at academic pricing -- not to be confused with the MB Air
Yeah, it was the Air I was looking at and going, "OMG, not paying $2000+ for my web-and-Word machine!"
Susan, the regular Macbook starts at $1099 brand new, and there's a refurb on the site for $949 right now.
I'm more than a little biased myself, granted, but I just don't think you can beat Mac for reliability and ease of use. It weighs about 5 lbs., so no MacBook Air, but it's pretty great.
Hmm...is there much of a learning curve for someone who hasn't used a Mac since 1995?
I've had miserable luck with Dells and Gateways. Good luck Toshiba and Apple, moderate luck with eMachines.
A very quick one. When I switched back from PC to Mac three years ago, it took me about a week to get used to the new OS. I haven't looked back since.
