h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

I need to buy a laptop in the very near future, was looking for suggestions as well as warnings.

I don't want to spend huge chunks of $$$ on the latest, coolest gadget. It should be relatively light-weight, as I'll be traveling with it, don't want to lug anything too big. I'll be using it for writing, want to install photoshop and be able to do at least basic photo edits with it, so a decent quality monitor for graphics(though not a huge one) would be good. I'd like to be able to hook up to internet to check emails and h2, of course, so I don't want something toooo slow, though I'm used to modem hookup, so it needn't be extraordinarily speedy, either.

Won't be using it for games or anything or that nature, but the memory should be big enough to hold loads of pics and still chug along smoothly.

I'm thinking I might want to get a graphics pad (advice welcome there, as well)so I can move the curser around easily and precisely, as the mouses on the laptops I've used are a nightmare to work with.

It's VERY important that the puter be stable and not have a tendency to pitch fits, as I'm an idiot when it comes to fixing the most basic problems and won't have my contingent of techno-geeks along to sort things out for me.

It would be *nice*, though not necessary to keep a bunch of music on there as well, so I'd not have to bring the boom box on my camping trips. But I don't want to spend much extra cash to have it function as a stereo.

Many thanks, all!

One of my friends has told me that Toshiba is the way to go, he suggests this one: Toshiba Satellite® Notebook PC (A75-S211) at $1250 after the rebate.
The Toshiba Satellite Notebook with Mobile Intel® Pentium® 4 Processor 532 is cheaper at $1050 after the rebate, but not as fast.

*sigh*

Does that amount of fast really make a difference to me, since *I'm* not especially fast and don't need to run bunches of things at the same time when I'm traveling?

Well get one for around 600 pounds plus my wife has got a MaxData one it is fantastic it cost 625 pounds.

I used to be a big Tosh fan, but I would research the models - look for problems with them on fora, webs and newsgroups. They have had several models which have been complete nightmares. However that is good advice in general I would recommend having a shuftey at the NEC laptops ( http://www.nec-online.co.uk ). So far we have had no problems with them (touch wood ) Until later....
BCNU - Crescent

The Toshibas I've had (about three of them) have all been prety large laptops, and probably not what you'd describe as portible.... I've seen three relaly great portible laptops (that actually have a battery life that in the first few months at least will mean you can have it running for a couple of hours with out needing to plug it in), can't remember what makes they were though, I'll get my lodger to bring them back home again if you want something that is as portible as possible, the ones that don't have the A and D drives built in are probably the way to go as this saves on weight, though if your likely to be using a lot of CDs/CDRoms and floppys in it, it might just be easier to foresake the extra portibility that you gain when looosing the extra weight they afford to the machine.... Would you want a truely wireless machien?; bluetooht/yfi and all that malarcy Actually... now I think of it... the last laptop we ahd to play with (which had a nifty touch screen designed for designers/arcutechs etc), was fantastically expensive, if rahter sleek and small and nifty Hmm, one of the others we were testing was made by a small company in the UK, so I don't know if that'd be any good the ohter..... I'll remember at some point

Thanks everyone!

I'll keep looking into the matter, and welcome further advice.

Are you looking for a Mac or a PC? The Macs (iBook, PowerBook) are *way* better, but they are a bit more expensive. If you're not a Windows person then definitely go with the PowerBook, which is simply beautiful.

On the other hand, PC-wise, I have a Dell Inspiron that's about five years old and is incredibly reliable, not to mention relatively powerful. I upgraded it to Windows XP and it barely murmured. It's got a huge hard drive that stores my music and video, and runs all my programs and all that. I suppose that's what I'd recommend.

I would *not* recommend Sony Vaio (looks good but runs incredibly slowly) or eMachines (the 'reasonably-priced' model that you can't trust to check your email or even play solitaire without exploding).

So there you go.