Looking at Laptops
I'm shopping for a laptop. I spend a lot of time codin' with
my current [graciously-lent] laptop in my lap. Opinions and
advocacy are welcome.
Genre of OS: x86 laptops are, as always, solidly
under the foot of
MS.
But Apple is
going in a Unix
direction; I'm starting to find this attractive.
jcv has pointed out that it'd be valuable
to have a commercially-supported Unix for which
widely-distributed applications are available. (Heckle him
for such a non-open-source-advocate statement.) But if
the good stuff is available for OS X -- gcc+binutils,
NFS support, under-the-hood OS access -- then it really does
sound viable.
Worst-Case OS: If I got an x86 laptop, I'd
immediately jump to the worst case: Install Linux, and
derive almost no value from the installed OS. If I got
an Apple, then I might actually be able to make use of
the installed OS; and, in the worst case, I could use
Linux. I think cmiller has said that he'd
go with an Apple laptop with plans to use his Linux.
Target market: I don't like the fact that Apple's
typical marketing for about a decade was the dumb
computer users. OTOH, this implies that the alternative
is overly complicated; and, frankly, it is, in the same
way that an irrational lab manager is complicated.
Boredom: I've been using x86 for a while, and it
hasn't surprised me in a while. Thusly, Apple's PowerPC
platform is attractive for the newness of it.
Teams: John
Crawford of Intel got his MS in CS
from my team, but
he's not working in IA32 any more. (It's funny that
Intel describes him as a "new college graduate" when he
joined Intel, when actually he had had a BS for several
years before joining Intel.) In the PowerPC camp,
I know a guy who designs parts of the PowerPC chip core
here in the triangle (Howdy, Wayne!), so maybe I should
throw in my lot with him.
Case material: Do those Titanium-composite cases
really add any utility? Nearly every laptop I've ever
owned or used or seen used has suffered some sort of
minor case trauma; in theory, it would seem that the metal
case might help protect the innards. But is a bent case
superior to a cracked case? The metal-case models
(both x86 and Apple) seem to cost about $500 more than
the closest plastic-case models.
Lack of a source: I'm not sure where to shop
for laptops any more.