Tip of the Iceberg

Category lazyweb
Timmy needs a new laptop. Three years ago, we splurged and bought a matching set of Dell Inspiron 710m's - one for me, one for Laura. We were quite pleased with them until we found out that they suck (apparently Dell agrees - they don't even make that model anymore). Laura's has survived longer than mine primarily because she's gentler on a system than I am (no Designer, no VMWare, etc.). Mine, on the other hand... the sound card died about 15 minutes after the warranty expired, which was disappointing but not tragic - I could still sync my iPod, of course, so I would just listen to it instead of running iTunes while coding. But the hard drive went not long after. So I dropped in a new, slightly larger one, which has been fairly reliable ever since, but since the laptop runs hot, I'm sure its days are numbered.

The real trouble has been power: although the battery in Laura's still holds about a 90 minute charge, I'm lucky to get 30 out of mine, and neither of us could manage to keep a power adapter alive for more than a few months. And, naturally, none of the 9 that now sit lifeless in a cardboard box in the server room (read: a small nook branching off of the living room wherein Ophelia sits, humming quietly to herself, serving up this blog and sundry skunkish Domino apps I play with when I can't sleep, SFTP, SVN, and anything else I feel like asking her to do) were on any of the many recall lists, and Dell was predictably unresponsive to requests to replace any of them with an equivalent device that wasn't crap. Or for less than about $80 per unit. Lifehacker to the rescue once again: I caught wind of a Belkin "univeral" adapter (it ships with 12 interchangeable tips, each compatible with several different laptop models, and supposedly if the one you need isn't included, they'll ship it to you for free, but the one I needed was in the box) for $19. So I bought two. I've only had them about a month, so who knows how long they'll last, but what was noticeable immediately is that they don't run hot, which seems to have been the primary problem with the Dell adapters.

In any case, my Inspiron now sleeps with the proverbial fishes. The Asus EEE I bought for Lotusphere last year has been a handy little toy for watching movies and such, though it's way too small for any actual work (though it does have Notes installed, and for a short while after 8.5 was released, was running Domino... and did quite well), so I got Laura a 1000HE. It's large enough for what she needs but still fairly small and light. So she bequeathed me her Inspiron and, following a quick organ transplant (hard drive and RAM, to be precise), it's limped along decently. I have sound again, which is nice. The 1280x800 is preferable to my work Thinkpad's 1024x768 when coding an XPage without access to an external monitor. But it no longer hibernates, and having to completely shut down and boot back up is a big pet peeve of mine. The hard drive runs hot, so I back up my data to 3 separate locations in preparation for its eventual death. And, again, who knows how long these Belkin adapters will continue to surprise me.

So this is the part where you tell me what I should buy as a replacement. I've perused NewEgg and PriceGrabber, scoping out various models (Acer seems to have a couple promising rigs, and I'm intrigued by the largest of the Lenovo IdeaPads) and reading customer reviews, but I'd rather have advice from those who use laptops for similar purposes ("Dammit, Jim, I'm a coder, not a gamer"). I'm tempted to take the plunge and buy a MacBook, but despite all the valid reasons I can think of for doing so, I can't shake the feeling that I'd just be buying one because I want a Mac. And there's no denying that, spec for spec, I can get more power for less money from another vendor. Nonetheless, Apple fans, feel free to convince me otherwise.

Here are my requirements, approximately in descending order of importance (knowing full well that some may be contradictory):

1. Lots and lots of RAM. Ideally, it should ship with 4GB, but be expandable to 8GB. Virtual machines, before you ask. That and, on average, 4 concurrent applications that either run atop Eclipse or are Eclipse. So, yeah. RAM is a must.
2. Wide screen resolution: 1280 or higher. The vertical isn't as important (as long as it's > 600); Designer 8.5 is all about the width (no girth vs. length jokes, please, this is a family-friendly site). OTOH, I don't need 1920 (as long as the card supports it on an external monitor).
   
3. Hard drive doesn't need to be enormous, but > 300 GB would be nice. I travel frequently, sometimes for several weeks at a time, and would like to not have to choose which movies I want to take with me before each trip, or have to hook up an external drive each time I want to watch one. OTOH, I could give a rat's about SSD. No moving parts sounds neat, but I'd rather spend my cash on something else (Goto 1).
   
4. Battery life should be ~3 hours. Laura's 1000HE lasts an amazing 9 hours. Impressive, but more than I need. If I can power up when the plane hits 10K feet leaving ATL and have the 3% warning display as we start our descent into SFO (~4 hours), I'll be a happy camper... but I'd be content with 3.
5. Reasonably sized. Having grown accustomed to a 12.1", 17" seems huge to me now (watch it... remember what we discussed earlier). But I'm okay with something in between (Goto 2). Same rules apply to the weight: I don't need it to be as light as a MacBook Air, but if my primary care physician would consider the act of carrying it from one room to another to be "strenuous exercise", I'll pass in favor of something that won't make my legs go numb if I decide to do something silly like resting my laptop on my lap (Goto 3).

So, now that you know what I'm looking for, pair me up with a good match. Heck, if you feel so inclined, you could even buy me one... though I'm quite sure I haven't earned it.

UPDATE: on advice of imaginary legal counsel, I'm obligated to state that the prevalence of references to the programming construct known as "Goto" in this blog post are in no way an endorsement of its use in any code intended for production use, with the sole exception of error handling routines in LotusScript. Any such use is forcefully advised against by the author, and included in said blog post for entertainment purposes only.