This is my brain on Post-it notes
Oct. 14th, 2008 12:07 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
grammarwomanWell, there's nothing like getting the stick after the carrot. I glumly decided that I couldn't justify the Burbank trip, what with the economy tanking and making muddy the solid financial ground I thought we'd found. Then the husband's car broke AGAIN, and yeah, it looks like we're going to have another case of happy bonus money being eaten by mundane costs.
This is on top of entering week five of cold symptoms, and having the PA diagnose it as a combination of cold and allergies. (I staunchly maintain that this doesn't feel like any case of allergies I've had before, since I don't want to scratch my face off, but the chest congestion is driving me batty.) Plus the husband is on antibiotics for his own sinus infection, and the Emperor's birthday is in two weeks and 75% of the prospective guest list have already canceled, and I'm evidently insane because I'm actually pondering hosting Christmas this year, and...the brain, it just doesn't stop.
However, I am bound and determined to find some silver lining here, so I am by gum going to get myself a new laptop.
Of course, now this opens up a huge Vista* of dithering. I'm pretty sure I'm going to go PC rather than Mac, as much as I still feel brand loyalty to the latter company. I'm poking around the Dell site, especially the outlet deals, but there are so many choices for my limited brain power! My needs list is: supports basically unlimited online surfing, including as many YouTube offerings in a row as I want; runs Microsoft Office; supports whatever software I need to start vidding; wireless is a given; as big a hard drive and as much RAM as I can get; DVD RW drive; decent battery life.
I am useless when it comes to hardware, I know, and it's a willful blind spot. That's one of the reasons I count on my husband so much.
So, anybody feel like offering an opinion on computers, especially when it comes to specs and software to enable vidding?
* Vista = DO NOT WANT. Do they actually sell computers loaded with Windows XP anymore?
This is on top of entering week five of cold symptoms, and having the PA diagnose it as a combination of cold and allergies. (I staunchly maintain that this doesn't feel like any case of allergies I've had before, since I don't want to scratch my face off, but the chest congestion is driving me batty.) Plus the husband is on antibiotics for his own sinus infection, and the Emperor's birthday is in two weeks and 75% of the prospective guest list have already canceled, and I'm evidently insane because I'm actually pondering hosting Christmas this year, and...the brain, it just doesn't stop.
However, I am bound and determined to find some silver lining here, so I am by gum going to get myself a new laptop.
Of course, now this opens up a huge Vista* of dithering. I'm pretty sure I'm going to go PC rather than Mac, as much as I still feel brand loyalty to the latter company. I'm poking around the Dell site, especially the outlet deals, but there are so many choices for my limited brain power! My needs list is: supports basically unlimited online surfing, including as many YouTube offerings in a row as I want; runs Microsoft Office; supports whatever software I need to start vidding; wireless is a given; as big a hard drive and as much RAM as I can get; DVD RW drive; decent battery life.
I am useless when it comes to hardware, I know, and it's a willful blind spot. That's one of the reasons I count on my husband so much.
So, anybody feel like offering an opinion on computers, especially when it comes to specs and software to enable vidding?
* Vista = DO NOT WANT. Do they actually sell computers loaded with Windows XP anymore?
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Date: 2008-10-14 07:22 pm (UTC)And agreeing with kazbaby...dell laptops aren't made for living a hard well used life...neither are gateways...IBM/Lenovo builds the best tank-of-a-laptop I've ever come across...but you pay dearly, just as you would for a mac...and the mac can run windows or OS X and is rather elegant, and the trackpads on them track the best with cold/wet fingers I've ever found (though I'm a big fan of the IBMs with both trackpad and trackpoint devices).
Not sure how legal you like to be with your software, but I'm sure we could hook you up mac or pc...and like you said, screw vista, man. They moved everything and made it more useless and unsupported. Worst case, find a company that'll sell you a box with linux on it and load your own copy of XP on it and not pay the microsoft tax. Lenovo will let you buy a linux laptop. And Mac delivers and OS that is very stable, and iLife has all the fun iMovie stuff you'd want for vidding. And for those windows progs you just can't live without, you can either dualboot with Boot Camp to get native support (for gaming/vid speeds) or run the same OS under VMware Fusion.
I personally couldn't live w/out my mac now that I've had it...it's too much easier to do everything with than windows, once you get a hang of it. Just be sure to get the applecare 3 year plan with it, because their hardware's been known to have issues on new release hardware.
Again, hold out for a couple weeks to know what the apple side of the market may have available in your range.
As for vidding....you want 2GB ram minimum, and a Core 2 Duo or Core 2 Quad chip...beyond that, everything else is pretty standard on laptops....of course, the more HD space the better, but if you have network storage at home, 80-120GB would likely do you for several projects just sitting on your harddrive. I use my mac for audio recording and do well with the 120 GB drive, partitioned as 20 GB for windows and 100 GB for Mac OS X and data.