Laptop bleg
Let me preface by saying that I've been paying no attention to computer hardware trends for a couple to several years now, so there are certain fundamental respects in which I've become completely clueless.
Anyways, my current primary laptop--a 5-year-old Dell Inspiron 6000 running XP--is not so much dying as too small for my current needs, because its 33 GB hard drive is too tiny by modern standards. It's primarily used for data analysis for work, and I've cleaned off pretty much every bit of extraneous data on it in order to fit data on as I keep generating it, but I'm at the point where after putting a December's worth of data on it I've got 400 MB left on the hard drive and I'm not likely to make it to the end of January. I admit that I *could* come up with a more creative solution, but I think all in all it's time for a new laptop. So, my basic question is: what to get? Opinions, internets?
I'd originally been thinking of going the Thinkpad route, but it occurred to me that it may be too expensive for my needs, which are probably met by most things on the market:
* Bigger hard drive--at least 100 GB to be sure (shouldn't be a problem, since pretty much everything I've looked at starts at 300)
* Can play good resolution flash video without lagging or skipping, along with an HD output of some sort (I have NBA league pass and currently hook my desktop up to my 780P TV in order to watch games, I would like to switch to running it off a new laptop).
* Pretty good processor--I'm often trying to juggle 4-5 15-20 MB excel files at the same time while also doing image editing in the GIMP and running a labview-designed data analysis interface. (This gets pretty sluggish on my current laptop, but I imagine it wouldn't be much of an issue with a newer computer).
* Nothing tiny: I have big hands and can't handle netbook-sized keyboards. Also, my current max resolution is 1280 * 800 on a 15" widescreen display; the real size could get smaller than that, but the resolution is already too small.
* Weight: the current 17 lbs. is already too much for my back. Lighter would be good.
* My biggest concern: I don't want to get a cheap piece of crap that will die on me right as I'm preparing to graduate, which could be as far off as three years from now. So no Asus/Toshiba/whatever unless they've gotten really good and I didn't hear about it.
* Thing I don't really care about: gaming. This will probably never be used for gaming anything newer than the original Starcraft. I'd vaguely like to have something capable of running the new one, but it's really not a priority, and I know that can be a huge source of price/computing power creep.
What do you think? Base price is in the $500-600 range, but I'm willing to creep for quality.
Anyways, my current primary laptop--a 5-year-old Dell Inspiron 6000 running XP--is not so much dying as too small for my current needs, because its 33 GB hard drive is too tiny by modern standards. It's primarily used for data analysis for work, and I've cleaned off pretty much every bit of extraneous data on it in order to fit data on as I keep generating it, but I'm at the point where after putting a December's worth of data on it I've got 400 MB left on the hard drive and I'm not likely to make it to the end of January. I admit that I *could* come up with a more creative solution, but I think all in all it's time for a new laptop. So, my basic question is: what to get? Opinions, internets?
I'd originally been thinking of going the Thinkpad route, but it occurred to me that it may be too expensive for my needs, which are probably met by most things on the market:
* Bigger hard drive--at least 100 GB to be sure (shouldn't be a problem, since pretty much everything I've looked at starts at 300)
* Can play good resolution flash video without lagging or skipping, along with an HD output of some sort (I have NBA league pass and currently hook my desktop up to my 780P TV in order to watch games, I would like to switch to running it off a new laptop).
* Pretty good processor--I'm often trying to juggle 4-5 15-20 MB excel files at the same time while also doing image editing in the GIMP and running a labview-designed data analysis interface. (This gets pretty sluggish on my current laptop, but I imagine it wouldn't be much of an issue with a newer computer).
* Nothing tiny: I have big hands and can't handle netbook-sized keyboards. Also, my current max resolution is 1280 * 800 on a 15" widescreen display; the real size could get smaller than that, but the resolution is already too small.
* Weight: the current 17 lbs. is already too much for my back. Lighter would be good.
* My biggest concern: I don't want to get a cheap piece of crap that will die on me right as I'm preparing to graduate, which could be as far off as three years from now. So no Asus/Toshiba/whatever unless they've gotten really good and I didn't hear about it.
* Thing I don't really care about: gaming. This will probably never be used for gaming anything newer than the original Starcraft. I'd vaguely like to have something capable of running the new one, but it's really not a priority, and I know that can be a huge source of price/computing power creep.
What do you think? Base price is in the $500-600 range, but I'm willing to creep for quality.