Going mobile

Hello, my name is Tobold, and I am an internet addict. I was feeling a bit like that last month when I was on a business trip: staying nearly a week in a hotel room which had free WiFi internet access, which was of no use whatsoever to me, because I didn't have a laptop. So naturally my thoughts turned to acquiring one.

First idea was to let my company buy me one. That idea quickly went out of the window. Not only is it rather difficult to get the company to spend the money, but if they do they insist of buying you one which can only be used for "productive" things. With Windows 2000, and you not having system administrator privileges, so you can't even install software on it.

Next thought was buying a laptop with a fast processor and good graphics card, which would enable me to play all sorts of games anywhere. That plan failed for two reasons: a) those machines are hellishly expensive, and b) you can only get those powerful machines with huge 17"+ screens and huge cases, weighing a ton.

So I reconsidered what I really needed, and decided that I wanted a machine which had enough horsepower to play games up to the level of World of Warcraft, but not necessarily Everquest 2. It should be small and light enough to be transportable. It should have WiFi, so I could use it to surf the internet in an airport lounge. It should have a battery life of several hours. And it should be affordable.

Mixing all these requirements, I ended up ordering a Dell Inspiron 6000. With a 1.6 GHz Pentium M, an 128 MB ATI Mobility Radeon X300 graphics card, a 15.4" WXGA screen, 512 MB of RAM, 40 GB 5,400 rpm hard drive, 8x DVD / 24x CDRW optical drive, two 9-cell 80 Watt-hour batteries, and a 802.11 b/g WiFi card. With all the extras (especially the Radeon graphics card), the thing ended up costing just below Euro 1,500.

I went for a Dell for two reasons. One is the price. The other is that getting a laptop with a US-keyboard layout and English version of Windows XP is not a trivial task here in Belgium. For somebody who knows at least a little bit about computers, Dell's system of chosing options on their website is optimal. For example, instead of one 6-cell battery, I got two 9-cell ones, and each 9-cell battery is said to last over 5 hours in the different reviews. And I was able to save 300 Euro by taking just a 1-year garanty, instead of a 3-year full service one.

The laptop comes with a bunch of free extras. Free transport is nice. So is getting 512 MB for the price of 256, the second stick coming free as well. I'm less enthusiastic about the free inkjet printer, because I dislike inkjet printers. I rather use my black and white laserjet, where the cost per page is a lot lower. I think the "give the printer away for free and overcharge for the ink" business model is a scam.

So now I sit here, hoping for several things. One is hoping for the laptop to arrive before I go on a one-week holiday end of this month. The other is hoping that the thing actually does what I want it to do, allow me to access the internet in a mobile way. With two batteries and a charger the weight will approach 4 kg, I hope that isn't too heavy. And having never used WiFi before, I have no idea how easy it actually is to get connected while on the move, and whether it is really free. For testing WiFi I also bought a WiFi ADSL modem, to replace my current wired one. I plan to still connect my two desktop computers with cables, but have the WiFi station to communicate with the laptop. I'll see how all this works out.
- posted by Tobold @ 9:47 AM Permanent Link