Hi Dov, Bit late getting back with this, but how do you like the glossy screen for reading, writing, etc? And can the 8710w drive your 30- inch Dell display?
When I've used laptops in an office for any length of time, I've always plugged in a USB keyboard, so the keyboard is not a real deal breaker for me. I plug in a mouse as well. I also find laptop screens too low when used on a desk, leading to neck, shoulder aches. In one office where I work sometimes, I put my laptop on top of its original box, which brings the screen up to eye level, and use a USB keyboard and mouse on the desk. Obviously, it's not practical to carry a box around, but if you're planning on using your laptop on a desk for more than a day, it's worth thinking about raising the screen height, or connecting an external display. Paul > (3) Last Autumn, I had a nearly four year old IBM ThinkPad R50p > (yup, it was > still IBM at that point) blow out that could no longer be repaired. > Lenovo no longer > carried a 15" 1600x1200 dpi notebook so I had to look elsewhere. I > did consider using > a MacBook Pro configured with both MacOS and Windows, but there > were two major > problems - (a) I was used to IBM style keyboards and as much as I > tried, I could not > get comfortable with the MacBook Pro's keyboard and (b) I would > have needed a much > larger internal drive (7200 rpm of course) than was available at > the time or even now > to support two distinct operating systems. I ended up evaluating > and then buying an > HP Compaq 8710w notebook system. It is similarly configured to the > high-end MacBook > Pro (17" screen, high speed / high capacity 7200 rpm drive) and 3 > GB of memory as > well as sporting a BlueRay/DVD/CD player/burner (an exceptionally > useful feature if > you have a 1920 x 1200 17" wide screen and want to watch hi-def > movies on the road). > It also has a full numeric keypad which I always missed > tremendously on my notebooks. > The system came with choice of XP or Vista. I took Vista (decided > to live dangerously > as see what type of problems Adobe's users might encounter). Once I > configured the > system to my liking (especially fixing the menus and Explorer to > work more like > Windows 2000 than Vista although keeping the "Aero" theme as well > as turning off the > UAC feature - the thing that keeps prompting you to approve certain > allegedly dangerous > operations), I've been quite happy with that system. Very stable > and high productivity > and those of you who may know something about me, I am > exceptionally fussy about such > stuff. (Sarah, sorry to hear of your Vista problems. My experience > in helping others > with Vista problems has been that their systems were > underconfigured in terms of > hardware for proper Vista operation, software/OS misconfigured by > the computer > vendor, and/or plagued by shovelware. Except for underconfigured > hardware, I've > always been able to clean up such systems so that they run at least > as well as > they would run under XP!) _______________________________________________ You are currently subscribed to Framers as [EMAIL PROTECTED] Send list messages to [EMAIL PROTECTED] To unsubscribe send a blank email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] or visit http://lists.frameusers.com/mailman/options/framers/archive%40mail-archive.com Send administrative questions to [EMAIL PROTECTED] Visit http://www.frameusers.com/ for more resources and info.