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The Best Traveling Laptop?
Subaiku asks: "Next semester my girlfriend will be traveling to Japan to continue with her studies. As a going away gift I plan on buying her a laptop of some sort. I've been thinking about going with a PowerBook, or maybe a Dell, but I really need advice as to which brand/configuration/platform would be best in terms of ease of use/connectivity in foreign places (namely Japan). Any suggestions?"
It depends on what she'll use it for.
:-)?
:-)
AS a deskop replacement, portable workstation, or just another mobile email station
I love the Powerbook (and I'm not huge into macs, tho OS X is nice). I personally have an IBM T20 that's slim, light, and rugged. I love it, and I've taken it all over the world, including Japan.
Mostly, it'll depend on her expertise (if she has to do on-the-fly configuration), and just personal preferences. I dunno. Ask her.
[este]
Small, yet usable.
Great battery life.
Last years models are pretty cheap!
Asian font support is second to none.
Cloud City Digital: DVD Production at its cheapest/finest
She will probably be able to buy something better at the same price, or roughly equivalent at a cheaper price, once she is there.
Get a nice iBook, or 15" powerbook if you can afford it. Stay away from the 12" powerbook (its basically an ibook) and gets VERY hot.
:)
MacOS X has excellent multilingual features, and can be completely in Japanese, or English with Japanese language support and Japanese text input.
Just my opinion, anyway.
Actually, the only problem with getting her the powerbook is you won't want to let her take it... you will so badly want to play with it yourself
D.
You can tell how powerful someone is by the magnitude of the crime they can commit and be able to get away with.
You won't need a new power brick - 99% of laptops these days have universal power supplies. In any case, Japan is 100 volts, so most US gear works OK here anyway (although there are exceptions - I have a US-made external modem that refuses to connect without a 100V to 110V transformer attached).
Japanese power points are two vertical bars - IIRC, this matches the US standard, right?
1) What does she use now? If she is comfortable with a Mac, go that way. If she uses a PC, then get her a PC laptop. I'm a very long-term Mac user and still have trouble figuring out the idiosyncrasies of OS X.
2) Find out what the other students in her program use. She might need to share files often with these people, or use their computer/let others use hers. Make life simple for her.
3) (OK I lied - 3 points) Figure out if she will need to use Japanese (Kanji?) or English, or both on her laptop. Input or just display?
All of this said, wait until she gets to Japan to buy the laptop.
The first has already been brought up. Basically, whatever crappy laptop you buy her in the U.S. is going to be completely too large and too heavy compared to the laptops she can find in Japan. Take the Panasonic Let's Note Light or the Sharp Mebius Muramasa as examples of laptops that are at the pinnacle of portable, not to mention that they already support Japanese out of the box.
The second thing to consider is that this is *your girlfriend*. It's not your wife, it's not your sister or your mom. It's someone with whom you do not have a determined future with. Are you prepared to give away $1,500 bucks and have it disappear forever if she decides that she likes Fuji Nakamichi more than you? Some advice (that's why you're posting here, right?) - give her a big kiss and some flowers.
I have been pwned because my
I'd get either the 15" pBook from Apple or an IBM T30 (particularly with the 1400x1050 display) from IBM. You might even be able to get it cheap from ThinkPad Depot. They frequently have good deals.
The one piece of advice that I would have for anyone getting a laptop is to MAKE SURE YOU GET 3 YEARS OF COVERAGE!!!
Laptops take a beating, and parts go bad. You can't easily (and cheaply) pop old parts out and new parts in, so get the extra warranty!
Sonny, listen to me. We geeks have a tendency to either be incredibly cheap or get so overly excited about finally having a girlfriend that we go overboard on gifts.
Giving her an expensive gift will not improve your image in her eyes. To the contrary, it will send the message "I'm so desperate I'm willing to shell $3K to impresss you". Knowing she has you wrapped around her finger will encourage her to search for another potential boyfriend, as she knows there is a fail-safe option at home.
Don't get me wrong. Be nice to your GF but don't over do it, and occasionally you might want to hold back a little on purpose so she yearns for you.
Save the $3k and promise to visit her in a few months. If she really loves you, the thought of having you in Japan (for a _visit_, you dirty minded folks) would be gift enough for her.
A lot of the smaller laptops aren't as small and portable as they seem. Most of them achieve small size by making their peripherals external. If you want those peripherals when you travel, if anything they're worse than a larger integrated all-in-one unit. (Size of original peripherals plus external enclosure plus cables.)
Whether you get her a Dell or an Apple depends on what she's used to. If she's a PC person, get her a Dell. I have an Inspiron 8200 and love it. It's big and a bit heavy, but it has EVERYTHING, including a screen that blows away all of the Apple screens except maybe the 17" one. (Bad screens are one of the biggest problems the Apples have... The 17 inch PB only has a resolution of 1440x900, the Dell 8x00 series has *two* different 15" 1600x1200 screens - If you go with Dell, *get the UltraSharp version of the UXGA screen* - The difference between the USharp screens and the original one in contrast and viewing angle is like night and day. (My dad has the original one on his 8000, although he prefers the lowered viewing angle for business confidentiality reasons, less chance of someone seeing his work on an airplane.)
I love my 8200. A number of friends had 8000s in college and loved them, my dad likes his 8000, and my research lab in school had an 8000 that all of the researchers coveted.
retrorocket.o not found, launch anyway?