mobile workstation

I just ordered a new notebook.

I need this because Emily uses the main computer at home during the day for her business and since we are still a virtual company with no office space, I require something that I can plug in at Starbucks and I didn’t want to be like this guy.

The research for this took way more hours than it should have — something we are hoping to eventually address with Notches btw.  

I did a low-budget, average user notebook buying guide from a couple months ago and while much of that transfers over, I am pretty hard on machines and have some specific requirements. My brother Kevin has one of these too and he’s happy with his.

Anyway point by point here’s what I went for:

  • Dell Precision M65
  • Intel Core 2 Duo T7200 – nice price/performance point
  • 2 GB RAM – more was just too expensive in a notebook
  • 15.4″ WUXGA – this is what drove everything else. My mother just bought a 15.4 widescreen HP machine that I helped pick out and I like that 15.4 is the same height as a 14″ model, which means you could plausibly open it on an airplane. WUXGA is 1900×1200 resolution. I find that vertical resolution is the most important thing about a screen.
  • 80 GB, 7200 RPM HD – fast, but not big. Big stuff can stay on the home machine and I have remote access to it 24/7 thanks to Windows Server 2003 remote access.
  • NVIDIA® Quadro FX 350M 512MB Turbocache, OpenGL — ooo, fancy. I knew I didn’t want integrated Intel video
  • Media Bay Battery – when you really need battery life, these go in the spot where the DVD drive lives and can hopefully get me six hours or more total.
  • Everything else is defaults

The other main option considered was the Asus R1F tablet PC, but I made the final call on screen size and resolution. In the same field as the M65 I looked at the Thinkpad Z61p, but it seems that it was a little thicker, a little heavier, and IBM wouldn’t give me a business lease. Dell came through with a superior buying process.

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2 comments

  1. Just for the record I got my machine. Here are some thoughts.

    It was early. Dell always does this, they say it will be Dec 15, it came Dec 5th.

    The build quality is much lower than I was hoping for, my Thinkpad is put together better.

    The screen is beautiful though, very crisp and I’m loving the resolution (for the most part, more on that later).

    They forgot to add my bluetooth modules, so they are sending it in the mail.

    Vista installed beautifully, no problems there.

    It is very fast, no doubt about it.

    Overall, I guess I’m happy, but this is one un-sexy machine.

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