I desperately need a new laptop to add to my collection. My current stable of laptops isn’t cutting it any more. You see, I have a computer in every room, and for pretty much every occasion. I have a first generation Acer netbook that I use while watching TV in the living room. There is desktop in the office rigged with two 20 inch screens, a Dell ULV Vostro for school and work, and a quad-core AMD Toshiba plugged into a 23 inch IPS monitor in the dining room. Am I too wired?
Oh, and I forgot, I have my trusty second gen iPad that makes the rounds as well.
I need a new and VERY fast laptop that can hang with me for a couple of years while I liquidate the others. Having four laptops + an iPad + a desktop is a bit ridiculous, even for me. But what should I get? I’ve already been burned by HP’s Pavillion DV6 that I returned last week after two days of playing with it. Talk about poor craftsmanship- I wasn’t expecting a MacBook Pro, but at least something comparable to my Dell or Toshiba notebooks. The faux metal, plastic panels weren’t cut evenly and there was excess glue all around the edges. It even had warped edges to boot!
The nice people at HP offered me a maxed out, fully loaded ENVY 14 for the same price I paid for the DV6 (2820QM, 8GB RAM, 2GB VIDEO RAM), except the ENVY has a slower graphics card that only allows a gig of RAM. It’s the closest thing to a MacBook, but I don’t know if I’ll pull the trigger.
I keep comparing laptops to a MacBook Pro; should I make the switch (again)? When you do some comparison shopping, the HP ENVY 14’s specs would equal a $2,500 MBP 15. But I can get the ENVY for $1,300. See my dilemma?
Should I factor in the resale value of the MBP? Should I buy two HP ENVY 14’s for that price?
I already have an iPad, and I think I may jump from Android’s ship to join the legion of iPhone users and get the iPhone 5; should I fully transition and become “Macafied”?
Uggh, the mere thought of stepping into a Mac store and being greeted by those cult members has me cringing. So is it really worth it?
UPDATE:
After much debate, I decided to go with a fully loaded Alienware m14x (i7 2820QM, 8 GB RAM, 3GB VRAM). I got a GeekBench score of 9350 yesterday, so I guess I need to do a bit of optimization, and perhaps get an SSD to break the 10k barrier.
