I have broken down and bought a new laptop.
I like to do a lot of my dev work on a laptop as I like to be able to sit anywhere I want when I type code. Sometimes I sit at the kitchen table, sometimes I sit against a tree, sometimes I sit a tree, sometimes I sit on the porch, sometimes sit in bed and watch TV and tap away. It is tough to drag a full tower desktop machine and twin 21″ LCD screens around to do that so I like to do a lot of my dev work on a laptop.
So for the last I would say 6 or so years, I have exclusively bought Dell laptops. The company I used to contract for got me pretty good discounts on Dell because they bought tens of thousands of machines a year from them including at least hundreds if not thousands of servers.
The last one I got was the fully loaded Inspiron 8500. This was a couple of years ago so it was a pretty hot machine at the time. Unfortunately, it had the worst keyboard I have ever used. I don’t touch type, I sort of slap the keyboard about, my old Dell laptop which was an Inspiron 8100 was great. Very solid keyboard. The 8500 feels like mush, the whole keyboard bounced when I typed. I talked to the Dell guys that we had onsite and they got a replacement keyboard which was better, but it was like typing on keys sitting on cardboard instead of on paper. I slowly got used to it but never liked it. Oh plus that thing can be used to fry eggs after it has been on for like 20 minutes. It isn’t a laptop in the idea that you can actually set it on your laptop. At least I wouldn’t, I don’t want it to fry my jelly beans if you know what I mean.
Anyway, I started looking for a new laptop so I can test 64 bit stuff on it and have settled on an HP DV8000z with the Turion ML-37. I didn’t hop up the RAM because the HP RAM was on the expensive side compared to what I can get from newegg so I simply upgraded to the single stick 512 from 2×256. I did get the best wireless/bluetooth option it had. Hard drive is 80GB 5400rpm so not great but not bad.
I have an HP nc6000 for work which is an amazingly great laptop (probably my favorite laptop I have had) except for the screen resolution. This gives me hope that the DV8000z will be good with its 17″ screen and decent resolution. I will report back here with my thoughts. It will be a “play around” laptop so I intend to throw one or more of the BSDs on it and Vista and Lornhorn Server and everything else I can think of. I will probably load up some 64 bit compilers on there as well and see how the tools compile. But unless I find something that screams much faster compiled as 64 bit I don’t expect to be recompiling everything and releasing it.
Oh I did get the extended accident protection warranty too, I carry laptops around too much not to have something to cover them when I spill something or get the dropsies and I will, I have in the past. My Inspiron 8100 had been knocked off the table multiple times by my cat, she likes to head butt the laptops for some reason. She likes to headbutt lots of things, plants, legs, faucets, you name it. The cat is appropriately named, she is a black cat named Trouble. She has come close multiple times to learning that “Curiosity killed the cat” isn’t just a fancy saying. Another laptop at one point got a nice Pinot Grigio in the keys. It died immediately, I ripped out the battery, let it dry for a week with the keyboard off and the back plates off in front of an air vent. I fired it up and it started working so thought I had hit the lotto and then it went all green and then it went all black and it never booted again.
joe
you don’t touch type?? How on earth are you managing to pump out reams of emails every day on top of your day job then?? Do you ever sleep?!!
BTW – what on earth was that first comment from e-Bitz (Susan)??
🙂
Yes I do not touch type. When I had a desk in an office I used to have people come and watch me type occasionally.
First off I prefer the old IBM and Dell Clackity Clack loud keyboards so my typing is loud.
Second off it is actually pretty fast so people want to see if I am typing or just banging on the keys for fun.
Third off, I mostly type with my right hand (thumb, pointer and middle finger mostly) and with my left hand only filling in with the pointer finger or maybe a couple of others occasionally. I admit it is quite funny and when I stop and think about how I type like right now it kind of annoys me that I type that way but it works fine unless I hurt my right hand. I have tried to learn how to touch type a few times but it just slows me down too much so I end up going back to the old way.
Also something that is a benefit, I seem to be more resistent to Carpal Tunnel issues due to how I type. My wrists aren’t in a pinched position and they get lots of movement.
Susan’s comment is actually a trackback/ping.