OTish; Laptops

[Ronnie]

It's simple to add a cheap dongle if they didn't have Wi-Fi.

[The Natural Philosopher]

yes, but it costs more.

These days a wifi chipset is pence only, - its like GPS on mobile devices. Why not simply add it?

[News]

In message , The Medway Handyman writes

What a lot of answers so far! :-)

Dave, the only real answer is suck it and see. Keep the desktop, though.

My experience. Tablets are fine for browsing etc., but I really don't like the onscreen keyboard.

Laptops are heavier than you may think. Wifey has a Tosh which she loves, but keeps a table to support the laptop as it is too heavy for her lap, for extended periods.

I use a Toshiba netbook (NB200), and I love it. Smaller than a proper laptop, but I can happily keep it balanced on my knee for hours. My only concession to practicality is a plug in USB laser mouse, because I don't like touchpads. I use the mouse on the arm of the chair. Being fairly small, I can, and do, pick it up and take anywhere, even the shed. Battery is old, but still good for several hours. Can carry it easily (with mouse plugged in) with one hand. Wifey uses both hands to carry her laptop.

Years ago, I had a Dell laptop too, with docking station at home and office, and that really was plug and go. Slide it in, and all connections were made - network, power, keyboard, monitor, mouse etc. Fairly heavy to lug around, though.

I still have my desktop, and, at first, used that in tandem with the netbook, but now rarely bother booting the desktop. The netbook is slower, yes, but convenience wins. I have a mini USB 64GB stick permanently plugged in, next to the mouse, and use that for nightly data backups.

[Davey]

I agree about touchpads. Useful when on site, but I always use a mouse when at a desk.

I once had a company Dell, that died while I was working just outside Buenos Aires. Although the service agreement was only for US coverage, I met a local service tech. at my hotel, and he replaced the motherboard right there in the lobby bar. Now that was impressive. It was also some years ago, so might have changed.

Since my laptop is usually on my desk, I have a Passport permanently connected, for the same reason, and I also back up changed documents to my CCTV desktop on my network.

[Dave Plowman (News)]

Have you actually thought this through?

I have a decent laptop and a desktop. The laptop is (obviously) useful where I need a portable device, but I far prefer the desktop for general use.

Reasons? Bigger and better screen, full sized keyboard and proper mouse. Of course you could add all those to a laptop - but then it is no longer portable. Other thing is a desktop is easy to repair/extend etc, a laptop usually not.

[Theo Markettos]

I'd guess he means that the touchpad is aligned with the spacebar. But the spacebar and the QWERTY bit isn't centred on the laptop because of the keypad, so both QWERTY and touchpad are off-centre on the left, like this:

which means that you end up looking at the screen off-centredly as well. It shifts the whole view of the laptop from 'centred' to 'have-to-turn-to-look-at-the-right'.

Given that most laptops can emulate a keypad with FN+jkl or similar, unless you're a serious spreadsheet fiend I'd say the keypad isn't worth messing up the ergonomics for.

Theo

[Davey]

Hmmm. My Samsung has the touchpad much more centred than that, not that it would worry me anyway, since I rarely use it. And the off-centre effect of the spacebar doesn't worry me either, I don't always have my document in the middle of the screen, and I have a decent length thumb. In fact, I have two. Since it all fits nicely with the 15.6" screen, I'm happy.

[Martin Brown]

A rough and ready way to compare them is the CPU benchmark score - it is artificial and can be gamed a bit by chip makers but it allows you some idea of bang per buck (albeit with US prices).

Checking this page will avoid buying an overpriced lemon.

BM = 856

BM = 2462

BM = 2966

Generally more ram and more HD is good. 4 real cores is good too, but you will only get optimum performance with programmes that are designed to use all four cores efficiently (and not many are). If you do HD video editing then it matters that you get decent fast CPU and memory but for basic word and spreadsheets almost anything will do.

- Regards, Martin Brown

[Capitol]

Slightly OT, but has anyone managed to put Linux onto a chromebook?

[The Natural Philosopher]

good video - especially flash - is a CPU chewer, too.

[Bill]

In message , Davey writes

Theo above got exactly what I meant. I have used several laptops with keypads and every one felt a bit different from the rest because of the touchpad positioning, and most annoyed me. Touchpads can be quite complicated and may need a bit of setting up

I do use the touchpad (and/or the trackpoint now that I'm mainly on Lenovo/IBM's) because I want to just have one thing to throw into the car, not external things with cables as well

[Bod]

[whisky-dave]

You could still use your desktop keyboard and monitor on almost any laptop you buy.

[tony sayer]

Yep quite agree. I needed a laptop for carting around with me didn't want to risk a new one got one from here looked almost new, a year or so out of date but with WIN 7 and 64 bit and that for a hundred sheets:)

Well happy...

[John Rumm]

Yes is the short answer (I am sure a pendent somewhere might be able to find something specialist that does not)

[Clive George]

I converted to laptops for work a few years ago (maybe 7 or 8? I'm on the second one now).

The keyboard, mouse and monitor are all there at my desk, and if I want to work or use the computer somewhere else (which I do about half the time) I unplug and just use the laptop. This works well.

Extending things is no longer something I need to worry about - I have upgraded the memory on the laptop, but that's easy, and it came with all the ports I need. Repair - so far one keyboard (not liquid damage!), which was fairly easy.

For me, desktops no longer have any point.

[Bill]

In message , News writes

I have a Toshiba NB100 and hate it. It's OK in the Disco hooked up to the webcam that looks at the tow hitch to ease coupling up, and it is small and light, but the keyboard and touchpad are hopeless for my fingers. I still keep it simply because these Ubuntu ones go for pennies, if at all, on ebay. Oh, and a mouse is hopeless in the driving seat of a car. The only surface is a leg. There's no comparison with my Acer Aspire 2920 (heavier but has a built in DVD) or Lenovo X201 (almost as light). Both these are full laptops with good screens, pads and keyboards.

I do realise that this is nothing like what Dave actually thought he wanted.

[bert]

For that price you would be looking around the Intel i5 processor range,

8gb ram and anything up to 1Tb hard drive. Most now have wifi (ac) and bluetooth. MSOffice Student and Home will cost you about £100

[Davey]

Pendent? Pedant, maybe. Close.

[John Rumm]

Yup, my reasons for much preferring a desktop (plus the fact I run a pair of big screens, and also like playing games from time to time).

One option that works for some is a "small form factor" desktop. Setup with wireless mouse and KB, they take up not much more space than a laptop, but without some of the down sides. You can even get ones dinky enough to mount on the back of a monitor.