How FM use impacts purchasing decisions

[Rene Stephenson]

Thanks, Peter. I was one of the daring few who jumped into the first version of the then newly available laptop dual core Intel chipset. Unfortunately, that chipset was discontinued after 6 weeks' production due to lack of support for power save features. If I had been more cunning, I would have negotiated a restock at the time. This idiosyncrasy has been the bane of my laptop usage...well, that and the fact that the battery doesn't last more than an hour or so. The video card is dedicated, but it also generates a TON of heat, and there have been a host of problems cropping up with that heat at the root of the issue. Plus, it doesn't help that it has been dropped and slung onto the floorboard due to sudden stops in traffic a few times.  :-\  So, I think I'd have to rebuild from the motherboard and graphics card all the way up.

I am heavily reliant on 10-key, so I'm afraid that forces me into looking at laptops with 17" screens...but I just hate having that size...almost a luggable, really.

I'm hearing Parallels and other solutions for Mac are the workaround for FM dependency; and SPARC+Solaris is the non-PC environment for FM. I would be fine without the Windows security updates. I keep auto-update disabled anyway and let my IT guru selectively install the ones that are truly needed and proven not to be a Pandora's box. (Color me paranoid, but I once lost too much time with a Windows update that interfered with stuff right before a deadline.)

 
Rene L. Stephenson


----- Original Message ----
From: Peter Gold <peter at knowhowpro.com>

Hi, Rene:

...
If the only problems on your current laptop are lack of resources, or
messed-upness from long use installing/uninstalling/updating, etc, you
could consider a new hard drive, more RAM, and deactivating the
necessary applications, then reinstalling XP on the new drive,
copying, reinstalling, activating. If the machine's resources are
maxed out, then a new PC or MacTel with XP while it's still available
is a logical choice.
...