The state of notebooks
I decided against buying a new notebook for several reasons, the main one being a slight lack of money. If I had bought a new notebook my last year of school would have been a little tight. So I decided to buy an HP iPAQ hx2410 pocket pc instead. Now I just have to figure out what to do with it. Put Visual Studio.NET back on my computer, hmmm?
One thing I found out while shopping for a new notebook is there seems to be a divide that exists. On one side you have power and performance and on the other side you have weight and battery life. The Compaq Presario R4000 series notebook, while being an incredibly powerful computer, sucks battery life and can only last maybe 2 hours. One the other side, the iBook, while being a lot less powerful, has a battery that can last almost 6 hours. I realized that there are two kinds of notebooks available today: desktop replacements and mobile computers.
The desktop replacements are for people who travel but still need the full power of a desktop computer. The Compaq falls into this category. These computers are for consultants who are in a different office several times a week. The get a desk and are able to plug the computer in. These computers give them all the power they are used wherever they may be working.
The mobile computers are for those people who are really on the move. These are designed for people who need battery life and can sacrifice some performance to get it. Students could fit into this category.
From the research that I did, the best computer on the market seems to be the Dell 6000d. It is a Centrino computer so it has battery life over power, but it is still a pretty good computer. It has, minimum, a ATI Radeon X300 video card with 64 megs of RAM and an Intell Pentium M 730 processor with 512megs of RAM. And it can get between 3.5 to 5 hours of battery life depending on which battery you pick. And the price is right too. In Canada, you can pick it up for 1499 (right now).