It is about time to replace my old faithfull friend Gaspode; my laptop that has served me well over the last four years. Well, almost four years now. Gaspode is a Acer TravelMate 420 series with an Intel 2.5Ghz CPU and 512Mb of RAM. It was about the fastest laptop around when I bought it. Furthermore, it has a fairly good (Ati) videocard, Win-modem (yuk!) and a cd-burner inside.
Gaspode’s been everywhere with me… Australia, NewYork, dragged around the Netherlands, you name it. But now it’s about time to retire I suppose. Not that it’s getting bad in terms of Cpu/Ram… my faithfull companion is fast enough still. The battery is becoming a problem, though, and the screen isn’t as good as it used to be. Add the fact that gaspode ‘s heavy (3.4kg) and big/bulky… well, I feel retirement is deserved.
Big problem though: what machine (laptop) to buy next? This time my requirements are pretty high:
- small, preferably 12″
- light weight… preferably with an external cd/dvd player
- lots or ram, at least 1Gb
- long battery life, at least 8 hours, but preferably 10+
- Sturdy, I tend to take my laptop everywhere I go
- Not overly expensive, I’m not that wealthy
I’ve been looking around on the Web a bit to get some ideas. The IBM x-60 seems nice, but expensive. Asus has a few nice ones.. and I’ve heard good stories about them but… well.. I’m just not sure. Mac is out of the question… Any suggestions?