My Ideal Laptop

While it depends on what you do with your portable computer, my ideal laptop has yet to come along.

While I have found other things that are ideal (or close to it), I have yet to find a laptop that has the features I want in a small sized case.

The new Apple iPod MP3 player is great. I got mine the other day and have been using it extensively over the past few days. The size is perfect for me, and the fact that it feels solid and has easy to use controls makes it what I might call the perfect MP3 player. 5 GB is plenty - I am only using 1.4 GB of it for MP3s; the rest is empty. I'm listening to it on the plane back to New York (I was away over the holidays) as I write this article.

Before I left, I transferred a CD that I just bought onto the iPod. It transferred from my computer to the iPod in about 5 seconds. The sound quality is better than if I were playing the CD on my portable CD Walkman. Apple always somehow manages to be innovative. In a few months, though, the market will be flooded with MP3 players from other companies with a similar feature set to the iPod for a lower price.

My Power Mac G4/400 is also almost ideal. At 400 MHz, it is fast enough for what I do and is able to run the applications that came before it as well as ones that came out more recently with no problems. The tower case is nice; I like the extra drive bays. I have added a second hard drive and someday may add another. The other option was the G4 Cube, and while that is also a nice machine, I now know that it would not have been what I needed.

My PowerBook is nice, but it isn't perfect for me - or even close to it, like the iPod or my G4. The screen is nice; 14" is a good size for me. I don't really like the trackpad button (I much prefer the one on the 1400), and the keyboard feels sort of cheap, even though it is pretty comfortable to type on. I don't like the location of the power button; I much preferred when it was with the rest of the keyboard. And while the rubber coating on the outside of the case has survived very well, I can't say much for the plastic. It has been scratched and worn away in several areas - and I think I treat my computer pretty gently. It is also too easy to accidentally pull the lever on an expansion bay and release the battery or CD drive.

But at this time, my PowerBook G3/333 it is the only thing with the features I want.

What would be ideal for me? I would like something with a smaller case - not much bigger around than what the screen takes up. On my PowerBook G3 there is about 1 cm too much space around the screen. I don't want a bigger or smaller screen. Bigger means it is too hard to carry around, and it turns into more of a desktop replacement computer. Smaller means I can't see what it on the screen, and I have to lower the resolution - making text blurry and giving me less desktop space.

I would like a stronger keyboard. My top complaint about the iBook, PowerBook G3 and G4, and new iBook is the keyboard. It isn't made well enough and is too easily broken. I would also like the power key back on the keyboard and the volume and brightness controls off the keyboard and possibly above it. I would also like a better trackpad button - something that "clicks" more when you press on it.

A slot-loading CD-ROM drive would be nice. I don't need DVD or CD-RW; it would be nice if this were optional to reduce cost and so I don't end up with something I won't be using.

PCMCIA card slots are a must - not that I use the one I have in my G3, but I like them there in case I ever want to add a capability to my computer (I may consider adding something like FireWire to my G3 at some point).

I would also like RAM expansion to 1.5 GB or more, and while hard drive size doesn't matter (10 GB is fine), I want it easy to access in case I want to replace it with a larger one in the future.

Pretty much any current G3 processor is fast enough for me. 500 or 600 MHz would be great. I also want a graphics chip that has a decent amount of VRAM (at least 16 MB) and is accelerated when running OS X. Since OS X is accelerated mainly for the G4, G3s really do run more slowly, and a fast video card helps improve performance.

Right now, my G3 should last me about two more years. I know I need to buy a larger hard drive. My 4 GB drive is almost full and also occasionally makes some noises that annoy me, not to mention that the drive had some corruption problems which came back several times, until finally with OS 10.1 they seem to have disappeared (so far). I also need more RAM; 192 MB isn't enough to run OS X well.

It's a never-ending upgrade cycle, and in six months, my "ideal" laptop will no longer be ideal.