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Hardware: Factors in Buying a Laptop
Mon, 05 Dec 2005

We're considering obtaining a laptop over the holidays. Its all about making my wife's life a little easier .. catch a DVD while the TV is busy or do some writing / organizing / development without hiding away in a cramped office. Why come home from work, to work? Whats interesting about the experience are her requirements for the prospective machine and how they differ from mine. She's a developer as well and knows her gear, but also knows I'll worry about it and cuts in from a whole other plane.

You see, when I look into buying a machine, I'm usually looking for upgrades - what sort of bits and pieces can I swap in or out of something we already have, or what can I get second hand or cheaply; once in awhile I'll aim for something hot and new, and then its all about quality and life expectance, expandability and maintainability, flexibilty and utility. Our last laptop had a new motherboard from a similar model, replaced CD tray with a DVD burner, upgraded screen and RAM.. everything I could get from ebay for a 5-6 year old machine :) I like to pay a little more if I must, to get something that will live longer and work better .. for something that has a good experience attached to it. I'll seek out a deal when I can (since I like to be conservative), but I'm not one of those who's compelled to always buy cheap. (You know those people who insist on always shopping at discount malls but not realizing they buy three times as often and for junk.) When I look at a laptop, I'm seeing the warranty, the processor and guessing its effective lifetime (in terms of useful performance for expected applications), the expandability (bigger disks, expansion slots and docks for adding new hardware later), reputation of the manufacturer, robustness (useful for both business, gaming and utility) -- all the technical stuff.

My wife laid down the law (since this is to be her Christmas present) - she wants it to be silver.

Now, don't get me wrong -- my wife is no idiot; shes a developer with a honours math degree (dualled with another degree as well) from a highly respected university. But she knows I'll worry about the technical details, and she'll worry about price and more tactile features. It has to be shiny. That caught me off guard and she knew it, but _damn_ :)

She came up with some other requirements, and they make good hard sense.. and never occurred to me at all.

So while I worry about crispness of display and durability, she cuts to the human factor .. its going to be sitting on a table in plain view so should look halfway decent and not break your lap when you use it. Funny that.

Never would've occurred to me in a million years.

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