I say NeTbook and you say NotEbook! Why so many choices? (Part 2)

Welcome back — if you made it to part 2 that means you really like whats being suggested here. I wish to make it easier on everyone to make quick decisions in these purchases. Like many of family baring folk out there i understand that there is the kids, work and other obligations. There is very little room for making and investigating your next laptop of family computer. Just relax and watch this for a few moments

Enough rambling and reminiscing — lets go out (or online and get us a PC!)

For The Masses

email, internet surfing, word precessing, light spreadsheets, home finances, light multimedia (playing NO High Definition content / music is fine) Any of the following should be good enough :

• ASUS Eee PC Seashell 1005HA-PU17-BK 10.1-Inch Black Netbook – 10.5 Hours of Battery Life (Windows 7 Starter)
• Acer AOD250-1584 10.1-Inch Blue Netbook – Up to 9 Hours of Battery Life (Windows 7 Starter)
• Toshiba Mini NB205-N230 10.1-Inch Black Onyx Netbook – 9 Hours of Battery Life (Windows 7 Starter)

For the Semi Masses

email, internet surfing, word precessing, corporate spreadsheets, home finances, multimedia ( High Definition content / music / watching movies / some light games) Any of the following should be good enough :

• Sony VAIO VGN-FW510F/B 16.4-Inch Black Laptop (Windows 7 Home Premium)
• HP Pavilion DV6-1354US 15.6-Inch Black Laptop – Up to 4 Hours of Battery Life (Windows 7 Home Premium)
• ASUS UL50Ag-A3B Thin and Light 15.6-Inch Black Laptop (Windows 7 Professional)

Advanced Gaming and Desktop Replacement Warrior!

This is all the way and becomes the complete home PC which works off road and in the home/home business+ high end gaming or designing!

• ASUS G51J-A1 15.6-Inch Blue Gaming Laptop (Windows 7 Home Premium)
• Apple MacBook Pro MC226LL/A 17-Inch Laptop

The Family PC (the myth that finally lives)

Now there really is no such thing as a family shared notebook, there are alternatives i do like.

Most recently i had a chance to play with the Dell Inspiron Zino HD Piano Black Desktop PC (Windows 7 Home Premium)

I really like this little tomato! its fast! its easy to use! and has an HDMI out (to connect to your existing HDTV) and 2 e-SATA ports (for super fast backup to your entire family) . Works very nicely with any standard LCD or Plasma.

For the family i highly suggest the following rig:

• Dell Inspiron Zino HD Piano Black Desktop PC (Windows 7 Home Premium)
• LG W2486L 24-Inch LED Backlit Monitor (Gloss Black)
• Western Digital My Book Studio II – 2 TB (2 x 1 TB) USB 2.0/FireWire 400/FireWire 800/eSATA Desktop External Hard Drive WDH2Q20000N

and finally a keyboard/mouse combo that actually would work in your living room

• IOGear Multimedia Keyboard with Laser Trackball and Scroll Wheel, 2.4GHz Wireless GKM561R (Black)

Your well under 1000USD (3750 SAR) with this setup and i think with the new Windows 7 all those 3 or 6 family members would be relatively happy. Oh and you will need some backup software to backup all the Windows user accounts on this machine. I would suggest reading my Backup article

Now for all you die hard Mac folk out there, i am a bit reserved on the whole new Apple iMac MB950LL/A 21.5-Inch Desktop
line from Apple. I would prefer a nicely loaded Apple Mac mini MC239LL/A Desktop + an  LG W2486L 24-Inch LED Backlit Monitor (Gloss Black) and a   PTC Mini-DVI to HDMI Adapter with 6ft HDMI Cable for Macintosh

Conclusions

So there you have it! a simple list of brands and names and of course my rants! if you have further questions, please drop me an email for more Q&A’s. These technology investments should not be complicated — i try to make it simple but even i get caught up in the mix of trends and glamour!

I say NeTbook and you say NotEbook! Why so many choices? (Part 1)

This one goes out to OB1 who asked me a question regarding ultra thin notebooks. Ironically the Mac Air he had purchased a while got nicked and thus now leaving him with am emptier wallet and the new ownership pain of finding another net vs note “book.”

Folks i don’t wana start on a rant here but i have a few observations before i actually round this up. I would like to summon the car industry tiering metaphor if i may.  Do you all recall something called a Corolla? (which costs a pretty penny now)  its from that mammoth Japanese company that sells cars.  Well over the years if you notice they have been upping the ante on that series and introducing other sub- Corolla models like the Yaris and the Yaris hatchback.  Of course the rest of the industry follows this approach as well.

The reason i make this analogy because in the Computing industry (laptops even more so) one sees the same tiering structure taking hold more and more. I recall back in the 90′s Dell’s cheapest computer would be no less than 800 USD. But the parts and specifications were not mediocre but average.  Thanks to the might of Intel and AMD they have led a charge of lower priced (and lower performance in some cases) Central Processing Units (or CPU’s or the brains of the computer– sorry about all the industry jargon folks) Thus we have a whole new category of laptops and low end home PC’s running well mostly Windows 7 Home Premium.  So to sum it up we now have:

Netbook:

usually does not have any extras (not even a DVD Drive)  ranging anywhere from 299-500USD like the Toshiba Satellite T135-S1300RD TruBrite 13.3-Inch Ultrathin Black/Red Laptop – 9 Hours 22 Minutes of Battery Life (Windows 7 Home Premium)Or an ASUS Eee PC 1005HA-EU1X-BK 10.1-Inch Black Netbook – 4 Hour Battery Life

Ultra thin notebook:

close cousin of the Netbook and sometimes the mid ground between supper high and price and super performance. I would include the Apple MacBook Pro MC118LL/A 15.4-Inch Laptop, the Apple MacBook Air MC234LL/A 13.3-Inch Laptop and even the Lenovo Thinkpad X301 13.3-Inch Black Laptop – Up to 5.5 Hours of Battery Life (Windows XP Pro) (this one packs more features for the money)

Notebook:

which is your full scale notebook which starts as low as 599 all the way to 2700USD I would include the Toshiba Satellite T135-S1300RD TruBrite 13.3-Inch Ultrathin Black/Red Laptop – 9 Hours 22 Minutes of Battery Life (Windows 7 Home Premium) or the Apple MacBook Pro MC118LL/A 15.4-Inch Laptop

The Desktop Replacement

And the of course there is the desktop replacement workhorse! like the DELL GAMING LATTOP – Intel® CoreTM2 Duo P8600 2.4GHz (3MB Cache, 1066MHz FSB) , Genuine Windows® 7 Home Premium 64bit, 17-inch WideXGA+ 1440×900 (900p) , Slot-Load Dual Layer DVD Burner (DVD+-RW, CD-RW) , 4GB Dual DDR3, 250GB SATA HD, Single NVIDIA® GeForce® GTX 260M 1GB, Internal 300Mbps Dual-Band a/g/n Wireless with MIMO Technology (wow that was a mouth full)

And then there is the Apple iMac MC413LL/A 21.5-Inch Desktop These workhorses are “supposedly” the desktop class killers.I am not a big fan though.

Had enough! You don’t wana read anymore with all this jargon! Look no further! To make life easier across the board, i will give you a quick decision making options for a Laptop or desktop so you can quickly make up your mind and just start using instead reading reviews and rants like this one! Thats in Part 2