♔ 43

[corner_of_woes]

♔ 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.