sophinisba: Katie Jackson as wide-eyed hobbit girl in FotR (wee hobbit lass)
Sophinisba Solis ([personal profile] sophinisba) wrote2009-06-30 04:45 pm

seeking computer advice

This morning I accidentally dropped my backpack that had my beloved laptop Kimiko in it in the street. It's still working fine but one corner of the casing is a little dinged up and some of the paint is chipping off. I just backed up the files on my external hard drive.

I've only had this computer (a Toshiba Satellite) for a year and a half and it's been great for what I need it for but I'm a little worried about how banged up it's gotten. Also its battery only lasts about 25 minutes these days, so it's getting less and less practical for taking places. Of course I could get it a new battery, but I've been thinking about whether I should try getting a new computer instead rather than lugging this one around all the time and worrying it might actually crack up one of these days.

I've been thinking about Macbooks and how pretty they are and how Mac people are so cultish snobbish enthusiastic about them. I've heard they're sturdier, and that would certainly be a good thing. But then I look at the prices and I think, okay, technically I could maybe afford to spend that much money, but how do I justify it when I could get a PC laptop for half of that? Mac people, can you help me?

So then on the other hand I think about these new mini-laptops, netbooks, which are around 3 pounds and $300 and cute. I guess they're mostly supposed to be for the Internet but I could install a word processor on it too, and that would pretty much take care of the stuff that I do when I take my laptop to campus or a coffee shop (reading and writing). Then I could keep Kimiko at home for reading and writing but also watching movies and TV shows, and it wouldn't get so banged up. Anything PC would also probably be more compatible with school/work computers than a Mac. Maybe the small keyboard would make typing on a netbook uncomfortable though, I don't know.

What do you think?

ETA: My eyesight is not awesome. I mean, it's not bad, I wear glasses and they're okay but I still really hate small type and lack of contrast. Does that make a difference? Do netbooks make type any smaller or do they keep it the same size so you just have to scroll more? What's with Apple's website and all the gray-on-white text? Are the computers like that too, when you're doing...operating system type stuff?

ETA2: If you've got all your files on a PC (Mostly Office documents but also PDFs pictures and some videos and other things), how easy is it to transfer them to a Mac?

[identity profile] maculategiraffe.livejournal.com 2009-06-30 11:38 pm (UTC)(link)
I have an Acer Aspire One netbook that is my sole computer and I love it. It's tiny (I named it Hermia) and my dad can't stand typing on it because it's so small (8.9 inch screen), but I have small hands so I don't mind. (My dad has a netbook with I think a 10.1 inch screen which he finds much more manageable). One nice thing about PC netbooks is also that they tend to come with Windows XP rather than Vista, because they're used so much for business, and XP is a great operating system. I've never had any problems with bugginess or crashes, and mine actually runs very fast (well, not that I use it for much beyond internet and word processing and listening to music, but it works great for all those things).

My sister has a Mac and says it's very user-friendly but she does run into the compatibility problem.
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[identity profile] sayhello.livejournal.com 2009-07-01 12:43 am (UTC)(link)
Be not afraid of Vista. On a new PC with enough RAM, it works just fine... the big issue with Vista is retro-fitting it to old PC's, or to a PC with less than 2G of RAM

Hewene
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[identity profile] sayhello.livejournal.com 2009-07-01 04:44 am (UTC)(link)
Oh, and part of the compatibility issue is documents. I know people who create documents on Macs, and then their profs' PC can't read them. You'd want to check that out... because if that ended up being the case, you'd need to install Windows & Word on your Mac in order to have your docs be read by others.

Hewene
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[identity profile] sayhello.livejournal.com 2009-07-01 11:19 pm (UTC)(link)
That I don't know. I suggest asking someone with a Mac, or the Apple store...

Sorry!
Hewene