Two years ago, I said good bye to my lone Desktop. I wasn’t sure how I would survive 🙂 since I had so many peripherals, but I am doing pretty well so far.  I only use a Notebook these days.

Would I still buy a Notebook or a Netbook would fit the bill? Was just thinking if I were to buy a notebook next, what would I be looking for?

Pre-Installed with  Ubuntu: The last 2 Notebooks I bought, had Windows pre-loaded. I didn’t have an option to buy without Windows, this is a big pain. I am paying for something that I am not using, so why not have a choice? Ubuntu pre-installed notebooks are available, but there is not enough choice. Currently I need to boot into Windows perhaps once in 6 months to update my camera software, only because the application doesn’t have a Linux port. Other than that I don’t need to use Windows.

Good Battery life: This is important, I  can’t survive with just 1-3 hours. I would look for 10 hours of battery life, useful for long flights or go for meetings the whole day without a charge.

GPS built in: This will help in integrating with Google Maps.

3G Built in: With 3G getting very common these days, it makes sense to have the 3G build-in, so you don’t need to carry those dongles.

SD Card slots: these are common these days in Notebooks and Netbooks but now can’t do without them 🙂

More USBs: I already have 3 USBs and sometimes find them insufficient specially when I connect external mouse and keyboard.

eSATA: With external 1TB hard drives becoming cheap, the bottle neck to transfer huge amounts of data becomes the USB port. eSATA is about 3 times faster and you can get a hard drive casing with an eSATA port. Make sure your notebook/netbook has an eSATA port too.

LED Monitor: These are nice displays which are easy on the eyes and they have already started showing in laptops. What would be even better is an epaper type reader  that doesn’t hurt the eyes since we spend so much time reading in front of the computer each day.

Good resolution Webcam: these are also common but not all of them are high resolution. With Skype video getting pupular this is nice to have.

Tablet Convertible: I have see a few notebooks which can double up as a tablet, they are a little rough, but nice feature to have. Not sure if I would actually use it alot. But my wants exceed my need.

SSD: Solid State Drives are getting cheaper, they are safe to use in mobile environments and consume less power too.

What about processor speed? Well this is irrelevant today. For basic computing todays processors are fast enough. Most PCs have only 5-10% utilisation so why have this craze for faster processors and hurt the environment? when we can buy small low powered processors?

Netbook or Notebook?
I may invest in a Netbook instead of a Notebook, they are sufficiently powered for my need. Now only if they have a nicer keyboard too.