So long laptops

[vernard]

So I finally returned the last laptop that I had been assigned by AIU. I haven't taught there in almost 2 years and with my current schedule its unlike that I will be teaching there again in the next 6 months. I didn't really use the laptop since it was pretty much tied to their domain and didn't have a hard drive big enough for me to put LInux on it and keep windows either.

I turned in my laptop issues by Clayton State at the end of the frist week in August. That laptop was really nice but friggin heavy. And they had just bought us upgrades as well but I didn't bother. I Was turning mine in anyway after all.

The thing I liked about my laptop was that I could have a single place to act as my virtual desktop with regards to email, documents that I was writing (I do a lot of writing even though I don't post any of it for public consumption) and having to keep everything synced up across multiple platforms and locations is just a pain. And network bandwidtch, connectivity and security are so different at home, work and at various wi-fi spots that I can't count on that either.

So I'm beginning to ponder the purhcase of a laptop. Right now I'm still describing the functionality that I want in it. Once I settle on that, I'll worry about what particular make and model.

Currently the things the features I'm interested in are:

• Widescreen display. At least 1280x800 resolution. The actual physical size can vary.
  
  
• Max. RAM capacity of at least 1GB.
  
  
• 800Mhz cpu of some sort (AMD/Intel/PowerPC)
  
  
• normal sized QWERTY part of the keyboad. Dont' care about the rest.
  
  
• Minimum built in wireless 802.11b. 80211.G preferred.
  
  
• USB 2.0
  
  
• Lithium Ion batteries
  
  

I don't care if its new or used. So if you know of a place other than eBay to look for used equipment, give me a heads up. And if you know of any particularly good deals on new stuff then a heads up there would be appreciated as well.

Comments

[wiggyfish.livejournal.com]

I finally got fed up and bought a machine a couple of weeks ago - not an Apple, because they are priced out of proportion to their age - and have been reasonably happy with my this. Only gripe is that it "shares" memory for VRAM. So I need to spend $100ish to replace one of the DIMMs with one not made by Fisher-Price.