07.19.08 - 09:31am
I just sold off my Lenovo X61 Tablet, and I’m in the market for a new notebook for home and school. The problem is that I’m torn. My inner gamer, having used only portable computers with crummy integrated graphics, is clamoring for something that could handle TF2 on the go. On the other hand, this thing is going to be moving all over the place, so I’d prefer something that didn’t have a 17 inch screen and weighed as much as a small elephant. I have something hovering around a $2000 budget, so I’m fairly flexible in what I could go with.
That being said, I basically have three options that I’ve narrowed myself down to.
The lightest (and also the most expensive) would be a new Sony Vaio Z-Series. It’s powerful, portable, and has discrete graphics that don’t completely stink. Not so sure about the very MacBook-like keyboard, but the quality certainly seems to be there.
The middle-of-the-road model (and likely the most inexpensive) would be a Lenovo IdeaPad U330. It’s not a slim or light as the Sony, but the keyboard is the rock-solid ThinkPad one (I love ThinkPad keyboards) and it’s pretty powerful. The only issue (apparently) is that the “mirror-like” screen can cause headaches.
And finally, the heaviest option (at 7 pounds) is a Clevo M860tu (aka Sager NP8660). The bang for the buck ratio here is simply incredible (this thing is basically better than my desktop, crammed into a laptop shell). The quality appears to be top-notch as well. Again, the only issue at the end of the day is the weight (really heavy).
In a perfect world, LG would sell their P300 in the United States, but (despite what they’ve said), that doesn’t look like it’s going to happen anytime soon.
Thoughts?
Category: Gaming, Hardware, Mobile Devices | Tags: | 2 Comments »
07.13.08 - 09:18pm
Katt and I went on a trip (with her family) to the Roger Williams Park Zoo in Providence, RI today! While I didn’t remember having much fun at the zoo when I was a kid, it was actually really entertaining today. I brought my camera, and the better shots from my trip are up on Flickr. Take a look and let me know what you think!
Category: Life, Trips | Tags: | 1 Comment »
07.03.08 - 05:45pm
I was looking for an alternative to Microsoft’s OneNote (basically a souped-up, ink-enabled journal application) because the OneNote Printer driver that allows me to import Office documents and PDFs into my notebooks keeps mysteriously vanishing. A complete reinstall of Office 2007 is the only thing that fixes the issue. So, in my search for another clipping/notetaking/journaling application, I discovered a gem: Evernote. With mobile, web, and desktop clients, Evernote is a lot like “OneNote Online.” You can add, modify, and retrieve your notes from just about any device with internet access and a screen, and Evernote will locally index all of your notes for faster searching. To make things even better, you can share your notebooks so that they’re publically viewable.
The software supports importing just about anything. Audio, video, pictures, ink, and written text are all supported, and the UI is pretty intuitive. The caveat is that “free” accounts have small monthly upload caps (50MB). For $5/month or $45/year, your upload cap gets bumped up to 500MB, you’ll have priority online indexing, and ads get removed from public notebooks. Time will tell if I’ll need to actually go for a pro account…
Category: Mobile Devices, Software | Tags: | Be the First to Comment »
07.03.08 - 05:33pm
While it’s been around for awhile, Mozilla’s Weave has just become easy enough to use that you might consider downloading it. It’s basically a better version of Google’s now-defunct Browser Sync; it copies your cookies, browser bookmarks, tabs, and saved passwords into a ‘computing cloud’. From there, you can pull up all of your personal settings on any copy of Firefox! I just put it on my machine at work and at home, and I can say that it works well. Give it a try!
Category: Software, Web Services | Tags: | 1 Comment »