What is on Your Mind?

It is time for me to buy a new laptop computer and i was searching the net for the last few days looking for one. The results haven't really been satisfying and i thought you might have information i lack - if so, i'd be grateful for sharing it with me and the probably interested audience.

What i want:
My laptop is strictly only for home use. For every purpose mobile i have a 10" netbook. For home (-office) i want a system which is not bound to a specific place like a desktop, but can be moved around to the couch or another room. That's as mobile as it ever will get, therefore battery operating time or weight are non-issues, as long as the battery allows me to get from one power outlet to the next.

I want the display to be big (17" or up) and i want the best possible. I learned the painful way with my last system that what is good for watching videos is not necessarily good for working: glaring displays are ... *yuck*.

I plan on running several virtual machines for all sorts of test purposes so i need a lot of RAM. I want to have 8GB minimum, 16 GB would be great. On the other hand i never experienced shortage on processing power with the system i had (HP Pavilion dv7, AMD Turion), so i suppose every processor sold today will do.

I plan - needless to say - to run Linux on it, so i need a system compatible with Linux on one hand and i would really appreciate avoiding the "Microsoft Tax": many laptops are not only sold only with Windows but also all sorts of "useful" software packages like MS-Office, Norton-Anti-Virus and what have you. Call me greedy but i don't want to pay a company i despise for a product i won't ever use.

For the same reason (Linux) i don't want a Blueray-drive to be installed but a DVD drive instead. AACS forbids the development of drivers and that in turn forbids the usage of Blueray for me.

I would like to have an SSD installed instead of a HDD. Not because i really need it but because it is new, fast and cool (yes, I'm childish sometimes). It doesn't have to be all that big: right now i use ~25GB of my harddisk and that includes 15GB for disk images of virtual machines. 128GB will be more than i probably ever will use.

Price is not really an issue - i even considered (briefly) buying a MacBook Pro, which would come at ~3.5k$ in the configuration i would like. On the other hand I'd like to use the machine for a longer time so quality of the finish and general workmanship is indeed to be considered.

Finally a detail: the HP Pavilion dv7 i use right now has its (big) power cable attached on the right side (where it goes straight out). This is utter foolish, because it will get in the way of the mouse for all right-handed people (including me), which are the overwhelming majority.

Any input is welcome.

bakunin

What about lenovo ThinkPad.

I love that laptop because the website says it is build for performance and not for fancy look.

And it is sleek and elegant for those who love performance. But I don't think it is available without Windows.

I have considered them and tried to configure a system for me at their website. Unfortunately they have no 17" models, 15.6" is the maximum they offer. They also do not offer SSDs, not a single system with 16GB RAM and you're forced to buy Windows and M$ Office along with the hardware. That was a little too much compromise for my liking.

bakunin

Even I have a plan to buy one for. What is your suggestion, I don't want any flashy and fancy laptop.
I am looking for a laptop which best suits for playing around.

I also wan the keyboard joy stick. I am so used to it. What do you suggest for me.

I recently bought a MacBook Air, 15 inch 13 inch, and I think it is an amazing machine, so light and boots so fast. Highly recommended.

To be honest a MacBook is shortlisted already. A friend has one and i could do a closer inspection. What i like is the workmanship and the finish, both of which are outstanding. I also like the idea of having a native real Unix to work with.

On the other hand the GUI is outright creepy (i don't like a-friendly-little-thingy-here-and-there-style GUIs, i like them to be like a vi session: terse and unforgiving. I use an X-server with mwm (Motif Window Manager) on top, no GNOME, no KDE, no nothing. Usually my desktop consists of a few Firefox-windows and a some xterms. I don't know if i will be able to deinstall/disable all the graphic mumbo-jumbo and all the well-meaning assistants which make my life miserable by interpreting instead of doing what i say.

Another concern is with the Mac is virtualization: under Linux i have kvm, OpenVZ, VirtualBox, VMWare and what have you. Is there at least one or two virtualization packages available under the FreeBSD(NetBSD?), which is the basis for MacOS?

All this doesn't rule out the Mac, i simply haven't researched enough to come to a conclusion about it.

bakunin

Hahaha... you don't have to use the GUI on a MacBook Air if you don't want to. There is an underlying UNIX operating system and a command line if you wish to use it, all the time.

Or, you could just wipe the entire MacUNIX OS and install any Linux/UNIX that runs on Intel architecture; but I would not do it personally, as I think it is great to have a very nice GUI and a command line window.

If you want virtualization on your MBA, just wipe it and install Linux, or dual boot. You are not a "prisoner" on Intel architecture....

After owning a MBA for over a month now, I think it is the finest laptop on the planet.