On Saturday, November 2, 2002, at 01:55 PM, Susan Chapman wrote: > I need to buy something portable. I have a G3 beige desktop which > works > great but I'd like to have something portable and am thinking about > actually > getting something in the PC realm so I can view my websites on it. I > hate > it when I'm doing a website for others and I can't see what they see > on a > PC. I'll most likely still be doing most of my work on this G3 but > want > something that I can take home easily to CA as well as something I can > use > for presentations to companies. Soooo if I have to go to the dark > side, any > tips? I'd like to stay in the inexpensive realm (under $1300 maybe). > Also > if I stay on the Mac platform, what's the best way to go?
I just went through a similar search. My choice was whether I wanted to go with an Intel or AMD Wintel machine on which I could run Linux or a Mac to run OS X. I wasn't so much interested in Web browsing; my must-have applications were Mathematica, TeX and decent programming tools. On the Wintel side, there are dozens of choices, and the lineup is constantly changing. The biggest problem I had with most of them is that the batteries only last two or three hours because the P4 processors really suck down the power. To get around this, they put in bigger batteries, making the ones with long battery life a lot heavier. For example, I looked seriously at the Toshiba Satellite S-301. It has a four hour battery life, but weighs nine or ten pounds. Another one I looked at was the IBM ThinkPad R32. It weighs about six pounds and has a battery life at about three hours, but it uses that stupid little nipple in the middle of the keyboard instead of a trackpad, and I don't like those. To get the battery life up past four hours and the weight down under seven pounds, you need to look at the machines with the P3 or AMD processors, such as the Sony Vaio. I've had several friends who had Vaios and were unhappy because they broke mechanically--hinges, keyboard, etc. But, the screens are gorgeous! At any rate, PCWorld (www.pcworld.com) has a pretty good rolling review of all the Wintel laptops, and you can pop over to Yahoo to see current prices, which are always a couple of hundred under the PCWorld estimate. I ended up with an iBook 700/14.1 because it weighs under six pounds and has a battery life of around six hours. (It really does; I've tried it.) I chose the iBook over the TiBook because it didn't seem as though I was getting that much more for at least another $500. I'm very happy with my choice--so far. In your situation, If you're worried about Wintel browsers, it's certainly reasonable to get a Wintel machine. But, the problem with this strategy that is all too common is that Web page authors end up aiming their pages at IE. The reason they end up doing this is because Windows isn't exactly friendly to the idea of running several different browsers. To test out all the standard ones, you need to have at least IE, AOL, Navigator and Mozilla running on your system. Opera is also a common choice. You also can't assume users have the most recent versions, so you may need several older versions of each. Of course, now that Microsoft has been given to go-ahead for world domination, it will become simpler because IE will be the only one working under Windows in a couple of years. The next meeting of the Louisville Computer Society will be November 26 For more information, see <http://www.aye.net/~lcs>. A calendar of activities is at <http://www.calsnet.net/macusers>.
