Weng’s old laptop is about to die. It’s an old VAIO with a pre-dual core chip. It’s gone through a warranty power-unit change. The mic is deaf. The video keeps switching over to the low-speed USB hub driver. There’s a crackle on the speakers if you turn up the volume for more than half the bar. It’s got more spyware and trackers on it than poo of a street dog has flies. And most of all, Caeden (our 2 year old) had a go at finding what’s under each key. I never got them all back in.
We went over to Dick Smiths to browse over new ones. I kinda liked the Macbooks so we went and inspected it. We previously owned one but if the thing was a car, you’d rather take a walk. These new ones are pretty cool. But I kept thinking that I’m going to raze it and put Windows on. So if we bought it, we were pretty much paying top dollar because we thought it was shiny.
There were netbooks there. Weng’s first impression was “Look - a computer for Caeden”. But I shook it and thought… No, Leapfrog build their baby-computers a little bit sturdier. I thought it was perfect for what Weng wanted to use it for. She mainly uses it for word processing and surfing. It might struggle with the 20,000 photos we have in our library, but we have another unit for that anyway.
Five years ago I drooled of the thought of netbooks. But now that they’re here, I couldn’t be bothered. It really was only appealing in my head five years ago because, in my world, I was the only one who had it.
Moore’s law is still an amazing thing. I could probably run an early SAP version on a netbook with a 2GB and a 60GB harddisk. Enterprise computing in your palmtop. :)
Anyway… I consider a laptop like any useless household gadget. It’s primary purpose is to make the user feel good. Oh yeah, occasionally you make a toast or make a smoothie. But most of the time, you’re just sitting there grumbling about how you’d wish you got the better one with that feature for a few bucks extra.
To date, we are still undecided. This is largely due to availability of other computers at home. The low-end option is the Dell Inspiron laptop which ticks all the boxes under a 1000$. But something tugs at me. The Macbook is sweet even at more than twice the price. If we end up there, I'll just say that iLife does not have an equivalent in PC.
