I needed a new computer and almost bought another desktop — until I took a good hard look at just how far laptops have come. I don’t think I’ll buy another desktop again except to use as a fileserver.
I’ve owned several laptops. In fact the first non-Apple machine I owned was a huge laptop/portable machine that sported not one, but two 3 1/2″ floppy drives. I also bought a couple of Toshiba Satellites over the years but was never satisfied with either machine. They were really toys compared to the desktops I owned.
A major drawback to laptops from my perspective has always been hard drive size. I have 9 gigabytes of personal files (and growing) and I want to take all of it with me, along with the necessary applications of course. The laptop I settled on has a 40 gig hard drive. Anything smaller and I probably would have opted for a desktop.
Of course the processor speed and memory has improved dramatically — I opted for a 1.5 ghz Pentium and 512 mb of memory which so far handles everything I can throw at it impressively. Even some games. Okay, Neverwinter Nights wouldn’t run, but I get impressive frame rates from Freedom Force. Next time around, I’ll get a machine with better 3D performance, but that wasn’t as much of an issue as speed and HD storage.
But it was the price that really got me — all of this plus a DVD/CD-RW, built-in WiFi, and a 15″ high res. LCD all for under $2,000. I was frothing like a Pavlovian dog ready to sell my soul for such a machine, and here all they wanted was a couple grand.