10-06-2009, 12:58 PM
(10-03-2009, 09:22 PM)Omniscient Wrote: Fully functional laptops are still expensive, weight too much, and are still under-powered. It's my view that getting a full sized desktop accompanied with a netbook is the better value and it's usually about the same price. Why grab a laptop with even a 16" screen when you can have a desktop with a 19" at least.
Because I'm an accountant and often go to clients' offices where I have to input data. USB numeric keypads are crap, so to me, laptops with built-in numeric keypads are the greatest invention since sliced bread!
And that's the first reason I much prefer full-size laptops over either desktops or netbooks. In fact, I no longer even OWN a desktop.
As far as desktops with 19" screens go, well, I have laptop made by HP called "The Dragon" which has a 20" screen! Totally impractical though. 20 minute battery life and far too heavy to lug around, much less perch on your lap.
My little pink Acer Aspire One is absolutely adorable! But for the most part, as impractical as "The Dragon." I'll list the reasons:
1. Tiny little keyboard. I'm a very small woman with miniature hands and skinny little fingers, and I find it very difficult to type on, and can't build up any decent typing speed. I can't even imagine how a full-grown man with meaty hands and fingers could possibly manage.
2. The mousepads on full-size laptops have improved to the point of where I don't even use a separate mouse, but on my netbook, it just plain sucks!
3. The screen size is too small to view many applications decently, or comfortably for any period of time. Can hardly read a Quickbook report on it, and don't even THINK about using it to analyze a complex excel spreadsheet.
4. Underpowered. Can't run multiple applications at the same time or open more than 1 or 2 windows without lagging. Also lags if you try to run any resource intensive programs (such as Office 2007) and pretty much impossible to view a number of HD youtube videos. Lower quality (resolution) youtube videos run just fine, however, for example, the official "Lady Gaga" videos on "youtube" stop to "buffer" every few seconds. Very annoying.
5. Maybe netbooks with SSDs (solid state drives) run better, but they also have very small hard drives, like 16GB--not even large enough to hold my itunes collection! Mine however has a 160GB HDD, and it boots up fast enough, sure, I surf the net and read my emails, but forget about downloading anything of any decent size.
In conclusion, I still use my cute little netbook for overnight trips where I don't plan on using it for anything other than checking my emails and looking a few things up on the internet, but for just about everything else, I much prefer a full-size laptop.
If I didn't need the built-in numeric keypad, I'd switch to a Macbook Air!