corner_of_woes | ♔ 43 (Reply)

♔ My 2.5 year old laptop has been causing me problems lately with the sensitivity of the track pad and where my hands naturally rest, so I knew I would have to look into buying a new computer pretty soon. I sat down and made of small list of requirements before I looked into my options.

Must be capable of handling heavy extended use without overheating drastically
Intel i5 or i7 (as I'm not fond of AMD), 500GB HDD and at least 4GB of ram
I have carpal tunnel syndrome, so design of the keyboards and mice are important to me. eg: keyboard keys can't be spaced far apart etc.
Space is an issue in my bedroom, so nothing too bulky and a mobile computer is not needed.
Capable of dual monitor use and have HDMI support.
I store the bulk of my music and videos onto external hard drives and share my files between other computers.
Preferred to be under $1200 with taxes. Mother would pay the warranty if it was store bought.

Laptop route:

Pros: Portable, great space savers*, pretty cheap in the market because they've become too popular for daily use. Would leave me with more of inheritance money to spend on other things.
Cons: Not really meant for long term heavy or extended use, battery life does decrease after a while, non customizable. Pre-installed programs take up space and are often useless.

*Except for when you start getting into attaching a secondary monitor and other peripherals. Which I do a lot.

Desktop route (DIY):

Pros: Highly customisable. Likely to be Windows 7 and possible Linux dual booting. Great for the experience, which I haven’t built a computer from the bottom up in a decade.
Cons: Still pretty bulky. Would have to order most of the parts online because it’s cheaper. UPS would probably be the guys shipping the parts and if I miss the pick up by chance it’s a $35 cab ride one way to the nearest UPS store. Would have to buy a new keyboard in the bare minimum.

Desktop route (Store bought):

Pros: Handles long term use well if parts are not cheaply supplied. Prices are decent, unless you start looking into high performance/gaming computers.
Cons: HP/ACER dominated world and I have a lot of grudges against the quality of those companies’ products. Most desktop cases are bulkier and non portable; tend to be made of lower quality products vs. what’s actually out there in the market

Other options:

Pros: Macs are becoming pretty competitive in the costs of buying a laptop or desktop. iMac’s are mini macs are great space savers. Both product design and graphic interface wise; Macs are gorgeous. Potential to be customizable but I’d have to look into that. I am a quicker learner, so teaching myself the ins and outs of a new OS isn’t 100% impossible for me.
Cons: I grew up using Windows OS's and it's the OS I'm incredibly comfortable. Some programs such as Mediamonkey and MSPA updater are not Mac/Linux compatible. Mac keyboards and mice to differ from the regular ones both in design and functionality. Switching to a new OS full time is daunting, I’M SO USED TO BEING SO SMART ON WINDOWS ;A;

Buying a new laptop or a store bought one wasn’t appealing to me. Space, lack of electrical plugs (I have several crested gecko tanks and a 2g betta tank also in my room) and dealing with UPS’s services wasn’t one of my favourite ideas. In the end, I decided to get an imac since it was on sale at Best Buy and having knowledge of different OS’s is always a great thing to know.
Tl;dr version: I can’t believe I just typed (twice thanks to accidentally turning off the power bar to my computer) a 600+ word post on what essentially is #firstworldcomputerproblems. Oh self, go play Skyrim or make a cup of tea.