Laptop computer questions.

[tucsoncarol]

OK, this is WAY off topic. My hubby and I are going to replace our home computer with one or (I hope) two laptops. This is to facilitate our vagabond lifestyle. They would travel with us and are going to have to last a good, long time. I would like to hear some opinions about everything including amount of memory needed as we will be carrying a lot of important info (medical records come to mind). How about the idea of a smaller on-board memory and keep our records on thumb drives? Is a core duo processor a good idea? How about a TV tuner? Does a big (17") screen make sense? I think I would like a full size keyboard, but maybe I could just plug one in to a smaller laptop? I have purchased a number of home computers, but I always felt that if it wasn't right I could add, update and remove stuff. That won't be possible here, and I'm a little freaked by the prospect.

Thanks for your valued input.

[2blueranger]

Speaking from my own experience, most all brands are probably good. I purchased a toshiba lap top in 2002. It still runs like a top. Because it didn't have wifi capabilities ,I recently bought a new toshiba lap top I plan on taking on trips. It has 4 times the memory, dual core processor, and a lot more features for half the price of my old one. Check all the ads in todays paper and you will probably find what you are looking for. Good luck.

Depends on your budget of course but I do work in the IT field and see people with underpowered computers trying to do new stuff and are disappointed.

dual core or better, minimum 1Gb memory (2 is better), dvd/cd, at least 80 gb HD, wireless nic and a modem just in case you need to fax or only have a phone line available

Since camping I would get a built in digital tv tuner if possible

As for thumb drives, they do have a limited amount of reads.writes. I would hate to see you have all your stuff on one and it go bad. Also, they are easy to misplace. I would at least make a backup of the records on the hd and I also recommend using something like truecrypt to encrypt the data.

Thumbdrives or cf/sd cards if it has a card reader. I have been using these and using the programs from portableapps.com. This way my email is portable and I can use any computer to check email (if it has internet access).

I probably have confused you but it all depends on your intended usage. If it is only for browsing the net, checking email, and simple documents, a low end laptop will be ok.

If you want to do more later, then you will have to upgrade. Of course any computer you buy is out of date as soon as you leave the store.

Mike

[Bill]

Carol -

Be sure you understand the difference between "memory" and "hard drive capacity". The whole process will get hugely confusing if you don't.

"Memory" is the stuff that the processor uses while it is turned on and doing something. Memory is fast, but everything in it goes away when the computer is truned off. These days, 512MB or 1 GB of memory are good numbers - don't settle for 256MB, for instance. And 2 GB is probably overkill, though there is nothing wrong with it if you want to pay for that much.

The "hard drive" is where the computer stores everything when the computer is off. All of your programs, and all of your data ("data" is pictures, documents, and so forth) are stored on the hard drive. I think 40 GB of hard drive space should be plenty, UNLESS you are really into pictures, videos, and other graphics. Graphics is the big hard-drive hog - texty things (like your medical records) are relatively tiny. If you think you will keep thousands of pictures (.jpg files) on your computer, then you may want to go to 80GB or more. Similarly, if you think you will be storing movies or videos on your computer, you may want more.

Since laptops get carried around, they are subject to more mechanical shocks than home desktop computers. This means that their hard drives, in particular, are more subject to failure. I would strongly suggest that you have some method of backup for the important stuff on your hard drive. A portable hard drive has been suggested, and that is a good solution. USB flash drives, also known as "thumb drives", are a good solution for backups, and are quite inexpensive. You use a flash drive purely for backups, so the limitation of a couple thousand read/write cycles is not a big one. And of course, if you have two laptops, you can keep a copy of each important file on each computer - they back up each other.

By the way, you will certainly want a CD player on your machine. For a few more bucks, you can get a CD player/recorder (also called CD-RW, for read/write). This enables you to put your backups on a CD. Once the backup has been written, you can't change it - but it will never go away, either. When it is time to back up some more files, you just slide a new CD into the machine, and back up whatever has changed since the last backup. Recordable CDs are cheap and almost indestructible.

No matter which way you choose to go, remember that the big pain about backups is that you have to remember to do it. It is not automatic. And of course you have to choose what to back up. A quick snapshot of a flower may not be important - but your medical records certainly are.

One further note. When you choose your new computer, you will have to choose an "operating system". The choice is between Windows XP and Windows Vista. XP is 3-5 years old now, well-proven, well-understood, well-behaved, and well accepted. Vista is new, and requires lots of memory (1 GB is not enough). Beyond that, Vista is glitzy, but my understanding is that it is not significantly different functionally from XP. At this point in time, I would avoid Vista. In 2 or 3 years, when the bugs have been found and ironed out - maybe Vista will be good. But not yet.

By the way, Windows XP comes in two flavors, called "XP Home" and "XP Pro". XP Home is significantly less expensive, and perfectly adequate.

Hope this helps.

Bill

[B_and_D]

We have a laptop and it is possible to plug in a full sized keyboard. In our case, we had to buy a "replicator" to plug into one of the two USB ports in order to do this. This was about 4 years ago, so I'm not sure what newer computers may now come with.

[tucsoncarol]

This is good information people, please keep it coming. My sister swears by all things Mac, but to me they seem very basic and underpowered for the money. Some of you have reminded me of things I would likely forget if I wasn't paying strict attention. I have been thinking of getting a Dell or an HP that will be configured just the way I want it only I still don't know just the way I want it. I suppose it is the Luddite in me, but I still have a hard time spending that kind of money on something that will be obsolete in a couple of years. I know that if I configure it well I can forestall that eventuality, but man oh man, I just replaced my VHS tapes with dvds and now I have to consider blu-ray. I, too, am leery of Windows Vista as an operating system. I know and can navigate XP quite well and so far no one has given me a compelling reason to "upgrade" to another Windows release. My hubby has just reconnected to his old army buddies and now e-mails all day and night. That, photos, and entertainment (TV, video, music, etc) are sure to be his most common usage. I do some of that and many low graphics games (read solitaire). I sort of like the concept of an all-in-one system that will do all those things, but I also suffer from the fear of the coffeemaker/clock radio. Sounds like a good idea until one of them breaks. Then you must decide whether to keep it for the one that does work or get rid of it for the one that doesn't.

Most of the cheaper laptops now come with DVD burners and you can put a lot more on a DVD than on a CD. Writable DVDs are almost as cheap as CDs now - especially if you have a CompUSA close by. I picked up 100 for $4.95 around Christmas time. I think you can get them most of the time for about$19.95/100. If you do much with pictures I'd get at least a 60 gig hard drive and 1 gig of RAM. That pretty much describes my laptop (HP) for which I paid $550 after rebates. I use a wireless mouse and keyboard when I'm at home and the laptop came with a wireless card and a modem so I can hook up either way. At home I use the wireless exclusively and use the modem some when we travel. Make sure you have a good anti virus and firewall if you will be getting onto wireless networks because "they" can get onto your computer very quickly if you're not protected. ("They" = viruses and other undesirables - bots, adware, hackers, etc.) If you're planning on watching TV or DVDs on your laptop, a good set of speakers with their own amplification might help. We tried to watch a DVD in Annapolis last year, but it was raining so hard the tiny little speakers on the laptop just couldn't compete. Also, bigger speakers sound a lot better even if it isn't raining!

[Bill]

Good points, Jim. DVD is better than CD in so many ways. I wasn't aware that DVD burners were available in modest laptops now.

By the way, if you have a radio installed in your TM, it may have an AUX IN jack on the front. If so, a $4 cable will bring the audio out of your laptop and into the TM audio system.

Bill

My laptop is so old it is running at a whopping 233 MHz. It is a Gateway from 1998, still working but not good for much. I run 7 different desktop computers at home. Just a hobby. At home I use a normal keyboard, mouse and 19 inch monitor on the laptop.

I would recommend a wireless laser mouse, two buttons plus a thumbwheel. Can be used on any surface and needs no wires to the laptop. I hate the small keyboard of the laptop. An OK normal keyboard is less than $20.00.

I am fond of hard drive external enclosures. This is a box that you put any desktop hard drive in and then plug it in to any computer via USB, or even Firewire if you want. So for about $40.00 I can make any of my old drives online. Nice for portability between computers.

New hard drives are about 27 cents per gigabyte. Catch a sale right now and a 500Gig Maxtor drive is $139.99. So for about $180.00 (140+40) you have a 500 gigabyte drive that can be plugged into any laptop or desktop computer, but only one at a time. You could use it for backing up both laptops. Of course you could also network your two laptops and share any and all files between them.

I would seriously consider a 19 inch LCD monitor. They are now less than $200.00.

If the laptop can handle dual channel memory, then buy your memory in matched pairs. If you want WinXP to go lightning fast get a pair of matched dual channel 1 gigabyte memory cards, for a total of 2 gig. WinXP will not outgrow that.

I always partition my hard drives into multiple drive letters. My C: drive is 10 gig and contains absolutely no user data or temp or swap files. It is just the OS and applications. So I would go with a minimum of around 80 gig for the hard drive. If you need more than that is what the low cost external drive is for, cheap high capacity but not as fast as the onboard drive. Laptop drives cost more than desktop drives or extenal drives.

[Leslie & Nick]

Originally Posted by tucsoncarol

This is good information people, please keep it coming. My sister swears by all things Mac.

OK Carol you said keep it coming - so here you go! IMHO your sister is right on the money! I don't want to start a Mac/PC flame war here of all places. I can only tell you that in my opinion, the Macintosh operating system OSX that has been in use for several years is a dream to use - as compared to Windows (or now Vista). No viruses, no spyware, no cryptic error messages, no "blue screens of death", etc. Those Mac/PC ads you see on TV, while funny, are closer to the truth than you might realize! You really can make classy movies/DVDs without much effort or skill; or manipulate your photo collection; or your MP3 files. Apple customer service always rates high among computer makers.

I could go on and on, but you can see which side of the fence I'm on If you're interested, check www.apple.com, go to the "STORE" section and look at the "SALE" items on the right hand side. Look at the laptop refurb units. The rebfurbs are great - they are less costly than buying new, have a full factory warranty like a brand new machine, and most importantly they look brand new. I bought a refurb iBook for my wife several years ago.

OK that's my $.02. In the end, the only thing that really matters is what you're happy with!! Good luck with your choice.

Nick