There is a plethora of laptops being offered to consumers these days as well as tablets. I frankly think in Australia and NZ people are being offered really poor products in their local retailers such as Dick Smith, Harvey Norman, Noel Leeming, and others. I ended up buying a laptop in the Philippines - a Lenovo Thinkpad Edge. This was after I mistakenly bought a Sony Vaio. The mistake was neglecting a 'key' keyboard feature. Usually I will test the keys; but on this occasion I did not notice the small Shift key. Now most models will have a Shift key on both sides of the laptop. However if you are left-handed, you might not appreciate that this key is often smaller than on the right.
Another annoying attribute of many brands (Acer, Toshiba, Samsung, and others) is that they offer you an array of keys on the right side of the keyboard. These will only make it hard for you to type fast, and result in miskey strokes, as well as reducing the size of the keys. If you are anything like me, you will never use these keys. Another important feature is the size of the backspace key. You want also as big as possible if you make typing mistakes, it becomes the most important key to find.
The Acer keyboards also have this annoyingly thin key design which means if you are typing fast, you might actually lift a key off. I've had this happen before, where you get your finger stuck under a key. Avoid those designs. My AWARD for the best keyboard and all-round design is the Lenovo Thinkpad - I bought the Edge, but also take a look at their website for the T-series and X-series. I wanted to find one for my partner. But the thing to do is to look at overseas stores for close-up photos. You can see the Dell-like shopping cart in New Zealand and Australia.
You might struggle to find these computers in-store. This is not because they are poor products; its because the retailers want to offer you rubbish that they can get the highest mark-ups on, and knowing that, once you open the seal, you are stuck with it. Don't make this mistake. Test the keyboard. Write a letter as you would - listen to music as you would.
I personally love that you can get a 9-cell version, a Solid-State-Drive (160Gb) version, as well as a thinner 16mm version. They now have i-7 versions; mine is 1-3. But I paid just P28,000 (USD560) in the Philippines last year, so no problem.
These are of course not the only features to look for. I want a high-capacity drive, wifi, don't need a built-in CD-ROM, so buy an external drive to use with all future computers because its only for loading software. In fact, I'd say they will soon shift to USD sticks for loading software. You want 3+ USD ports; and notice where the fan is. Probably the only negative feature of my Lenovo is the location of the fan. It does not burn my hand, but noticeably hot. I guess the small navigation and delete keys are a little annoying. Small things really.
In fairness, the T-series from Lenovo might be better, but after wasting money on a Sony Vaio, which have failed in the consistency stakes, I was not prepared to buy an expensive one.
I'm not into tablets; I think a waste of money unless you read a lot of books. I fully expect to read books on computer or a phone. There is no room for a 'hybrid' middling device in my life. Just a waste.
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Andrew Sheldon www.sheldonthinks.com
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