I want to thank all of you who posted comments and sent me emails giving me great advice. The wireless network hardware and software has been purchased and will be arriving in a few days. IÂ’m looking forward to setting that up and seeing how the process goes. IÂ’ll be reporting about it here and will give it a rating in terms of level of cursing, from minor swearing to full fledge latrined-sailor mouth.

As for my laptop, after getting additional things to consider in the comments/emails I received, the search became a bit more broader, not narrower. It seems that what I want is what your average young male (20+) wants in system. So, to make sure I got what I wanted I made a list of all the things I need to do with my computer and all the new things I want it to have. It helped create a list of minimum required & features I need to look for in my new baby. Of course, price, user & editor's ratings will be the final deciding factors, but at least I would get something that had everything I needed to get me (and eventually my son) through the next 10 years. Below are my basic needs & the specs that will satisfy them.

My needs (technically speaking):
- Soft & gentle touch keyboard – that will stand up to my intense manipulaiton and not wear out with my heavy playing session. It also must not aggravate my carpel tunnel condition in the process.
- Long battery life – what’s the use of setting up a wireless network if I have to be hooked up to a power cable. I want to be free of cables! Free to go anywhere and be in any position I want when I play.
- Infrared port – so I can update and back up my phone apps (calendar, contacts, financials, etc) wirelessly between my pc and phone.
- Lots and LOTS of RAM for me to play with. That way I can install every last bit of software I use and not have to decide which pc I should install it on. More importantly I want to use multiple apps and access multiple files simultaneously. Right now as I type this IÂ’m running a file search on my hard drive, typing this in a word processing app, while listening to music with a headset and running a search via an online search engine. If I were to do my infrared hotsync between my phone and pc both would crash. Imagine being able to upload and download simultaneously. Now THAT would be HOT!
- Fast processor w/high benchmark scores. I don't want some salesman telling me how fast it can go. I want to have proof of how fast he can go and make sure he can execute all my commands at or near warp speed BEFORE I put my money on the table. Right now my pc is running real slow with all the demands IÂ’m placing on it. This girl is tired of slow! I WANT TO PLAY REALLY FAST AND WANT POWERFUL THRUST SPEEDS on my new baby. As for processor type, I think weÂ’ve established that CORE DUO is mostly hype. I recently discovered that it can only run 64 bit apps knocking it out of contention with me.
- Solid graphics processor with longevity – as my son will eventually be inheriting my new baby. Looking 5 or 6 years down the line when my son’s 12 or 13 he’ll want the laptop to be able to play dvd's, video and online games on this baby. I'll want the laptop to be able to be upgradable and functional for 4 more years beyond that, well at least till he’s 16 and can afford to buy his own racehorse.
- Multiple networking platforms This pc will be my virtual office (where IÂ’ll be answering calls made to my office phone line remotely on htis laptop and emailing via the VPN simultaneously) when IÂ’m working from home. To be truly wireless I'll need for the pc to have Bluetooth capability. But when I travel I want to be able to have access to Wi-Fi Hotspots and connect via the local office network when I visit the Wash. DC office (Ethernet).
- Expansion ports/slots - Yes, I want to have the oppty to have my baby interface with any number of peripherals and grow with all my ever-increasing needs: IEEE 1394a (FireWire), Serial port, S-Video out, I/II/III PC / SD and Express cards.
- It also has to be able to handle hot swapping and have easy seamless integration with any state of the art high performance gadgets I have in order to keep this baby very happy. Gadgets like a dual layer optical drive CD/DVD+RW, bluetooth telephone headset and bluetooth keyboard and mouse.
- Finally, it has to remain quiet and stay cool at all times, but especially during long, intense and rough mpa playing sessions. It also has to play flawlessly with me in the hottest of environments [@=>30F & @=<105F].

Ohhhhh, writing about my fantasy laptop felt sooo gooooooood. Sighhhhhh! Now that I'm clear on what I want, I can focus on making sure every single one of my needs is met by an exciting, new, high-performing, state of the art, piece of equipment. YesÂ… YesÂ… YES, I WANT IT ALL! Ahhhhhhhh! and IÂ’m not going to pay a lot for it either. NO siree! IÂ’m going to make damn sure of that.

ItÂ’s now time to flex my excited and nimble fingers over my current hard keyboard and fire up its search engines. This is a job way beyond Zonker and his Library Elves or Mr. HelpfulÂ’s capabilities. This is a job for me to embark on alone. IÂ’ll let you all know when IÂ’m finally finished and successful.

Again, thank you all for your help and suggestions!

Posted by: Michele at 10:23 AM | Comments (1) | Add Comment
Post contains 998 words, total size 6 kb.

I've been a very good girl, and Uncle Sam thinks so too, so he's rewarding me with a very nice refund. So I'm going to be very, very good to myself and finally buy a new, top of the line laptop. I've narrowed it down to either a brand new HP Pavilion dv5000z Turion 64 or a scuffed up floor sample of the latest Lenovo ThinkPad T60 1952 - Core Duo T2400 1.83 GHz. I've also decided to set up a wireless network at home because there are times when I want to have the freedom to move around with my laptop and enable my son to have online access when he does his homework.

The advice I need is simple: help me select the laptop by you guys chooseing the spec's. The bottom line is I'm unsure if some of the new tech features are really advances or just hype used to drive up prices. Also, any help/guidance you can give me in selecting a wifi solution for my apartment environment will be greatly appreciated.

So should I choose:
a) AMD or Intel Core Duo ?
b) Password or Biometric security?
c) Fast Ethernet vs Ethernet, IEEE 802.11a, IEEE 802.11b, IEEE 802.11g, Gigabit Ethernet
d) Open Slots: 1 Memory, 1 PC Card vs. 1 Memory SO DIMM 200-pin, 1 CardBus Type I/II, 1 ExpressCard 34mm/54mm.
e) DDR SDRAM or DDR II SDRAM-667 MHz

Finally, I'm doing research into setting up a home wireless network, any suggestions or tips on things I should look out for or include?

As always, I am very grateful for any advice or suggestions you share with me. Who knows, my new system might inspire me to blog more frequently. Right now my Thinkpad 600E just doesn't cut it anymore for travel and mobility. BTW, does anyone know if T1G's friend is still looking for a laptop?

Posted by: Michele at 01:34 PM | Comments (6) | Add Comment
Post contains 320 words, total size 2 kb.

1 I will review the laptops in a few, but as far as the wireless, I've setup a few using the Linksys that supports g and I like them. b is slow in comparison and sucks bandwidth. I turn off b when I set it up. I use WEP128 and setup at least a 16 character alpha-num key. After installing the software for the router on the laptop (I've bought the package that came with a PCMCIA wireless card.), I then right-clicked on the icon that it puts in the System Tray and selected "Let Windows Manage My Wireless Network". That interface worked great and is one less program running. I'm going to look at the laptops now, but I already have two other links to give you that aren't on your list. heh

Posted by: _Jon at May 15, 2006 02:49 PM (aHLPi)

2 Given the choice of those two laptops, I would take the HP. It is heavier, but can do more, IMO. The specs are impressive for that price range. And I've always been partial to AMD. They are power hungry. If it get's ripped, no security will matter. It ain't kids nabbing these things. There are ways to reset the BIOS password and get around anything else that may be setup. woot.com has a refurb'd lt today for about a grand, worth looking at, meh thinks. Also, when I sell these houses, this is the lt I'm getting: http://dynamism.com/x1/specs.shtml

Posted by: _Jon at May 15, 2006 03:12 PM (aHLPi)

3 The 11g network is definitely the way to go. Google up network security, there are some little things you can do that will help alot. The simple thing to remember is that you don't have to have a completely secure network, it just has to be more secure than the others in the vicinity. Hackers will look for the easier of two targets.

Posted by: Ted at May 17, 2006 10:51 AM (blNMI)

4 Ted is right about the wireless thing. _Jon is right about the Linksys - I use them and they've always been reliable. These are the things you can do to make your wireless more secure. Do them one at a time and check the connection after each change to be sure you can browse. And the "reset" button is your friend if you get really messed up. -change the name of the base station and give it a good password - allow connections only by those with a MAC entered in the list (there's a page for that) - if you worry about someone snooping your connection then enable the WEP connection then you will be encrypted up to the wireless router As for the AMD or Intel - _Jon pointed out the power thing. The other thing is that unless you do intensive number crunching or lots of photoshop stuff you don't have to worry about the processor speed. Get the least expensive one - RAM is more important. Hope that helps some. I'm looking into getting a new computer myself but I'm looking at desktop. It's frustrating trying to figure out the best thing.

Posted by: Teresa at May 18, 2006 09:49 AM (jgXyO)

5 I had the HP dv5000v at my last job and just loved it, loved it so much I went and bought one for home (but ended up with the HP dv8500v, it has the number pad on the side and a huge ass screen width). I can not say enough good things about HP laptops as I went with HP because my last home laptop was a HP and never had problems with it. As for wireless we set one up at home and have a secure encripted one, I suggest that as neighbors have tried logging into ours but can't. I actually set all this up myself, so anybody can set up the wireless with no problem.

Posted by: Quality Weenie at May 18, 2006 11:10 AM (XG7jZ)

6 If you are set on wintel, I agree with QW and a lot of the advice above. I set up the lair with a Linksys wireless/wired so I can have the best of both worlds, along with good security. Change the name, use MAC, and tweak the other features as suggested and it gives good security. Then again, I also recommend the PowerBook laptops hands-down over wintel, so take it all with a grain of salt.

Posted by: Laughing Wolf at May 20, 2006 07:42 AM (KTIad)

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