Laptop

Having recently been in the market for a new laptop, I've come to the conclusion that they are now no more than mere commodities. It used to be the case that a laptop was much more expensive than a traditional desktop PC complete with tower, mouse and monitor etc. What you would miss in terms of performance and storage space, was replaced with the convenience of being able to pick up your laptop and deciding where you wanted to work.

In the last eighteen months, I have purchased three different laptop computers. Granted, I am what you would call a power user, yet none have had the last ability of a desktop PC. I’m not talking from a durability perspective, I don’t often move my laptop from my desk, they just seem to have more pieces that tend to go wrong.

For example, my first laptop was a Samsung. A fine looking piece of kit, one with a definite impact on the wallet. It was not cheap, yet it was not long before things started to go wrong with it. First to go was the USB sockets, they started showing signs of wear quite quickly as I had a number of things I would use the USB ports for. The next to go was the main plug socket, it actually seemed to be pushed into the machine so far, that it would not connect and therefore power on or charge back up again.

My second laptop was a top of the range HP laptop, I confess I posed as an employee of HP in order to get great service from my local electrical chain store. I was very impressed with the laptop, it had a widescreen, great sounds, good memory and certainly met all of my expectations. For all of six months that was.

Perhaps it was because I had a number of memory intensive applications running at the same time, or perhaps it is just a flaw with this particular model. Whatever the case maybe, it became apparent that this laptop had a nasty habit of overheating pretty quickly. The fan would sound like the engine of a 747 plane as it battled to keep the machine cool, eventually and without warning, it would just give up the ghost and die on me. Closing the machine off completely and at the same time I would lose all of the work I was doing at the time.

So I was in a bit of a conundrum, I like the idea of having a laptop, yet I am not a big fan of their reliability. I work from home running an Internet business, so some would argue that I should invest in the very best computer products. Yet my response would be that I already did that. So I decided that I would change my mindset towards a laptop, I would view it as a throwaway commodity, one which I expect to have a lifespan of no more than twelve months. So with that view, I decided to buy one of the lesser known brands of laptop and invest in a sturdy desktop with the money I saved.

I’m pleased to say, that both laptop and desktop are working fine. I can share my time between them both and use the desktop for the more labour intensive applications. The laptop is used for writing documents, record keeping and for my nieces to play games on, which is actually another story.

Laptop is the new commodity