I favour laptops/notebooks for myself. I have to tote them around a lot. I look for lots of USB ports now and XP
. (I prefer 98SE as I can generally repair it, but XP has more drivers these days including for the little memory sticks that I depend on.)
I just had two laptops crater on me (the first one took a lot of data with it--I had backed up some of the shortcuts, not the original documents
. The first was worn out. The second I blame on the shop that reloaded Windows XP.
I was talking with one of our techs on the phone recently. He had worked for HP. (Our company has HPs--thousands of them). He suggested Toshiba or Fujitsu or ACER instead. Also recommended against Dell. I don't think he had an ax to grind. I shared some of the same opinions, and as all men know, I am as fair as the day is long.
(Ft McMurray in Dec, anyone?)
One thing about laptops/notebooks, the keyboards get flakey after a while (somewhat explains some of my earlier posts). The keyboards are also not very comfortable for heavy use. We have taken to using an external keyboard on a USB port and I like a separate track ball (Logitech's Marble Mouse for me--it works left-handed or right-handed).
For home, I have been buying desktop machines. I used to put them together myself, but I can't service them anymore (too far away). Have to let the shop do it. They all know me on sight now.