time for a new {laptop, netbook, tablet...}

[cellio]

My trusty iBook has died and the Apple Genius declared a hard-drive failure. Apple no longer sells those, though I could go looking for a third-party solution and that's not off the table yet. But maybe it's time to move to a machine that can support an OS newer than 10.4 and a Firefox newer than 3.6, so I'm considering other options too.

This is very much a secondary machine, for traveling, going to a class or meeting where I want computing power and not just paper, using in parts of the house other than my desk, and occasionally for taking to work if I need access to personal computing during the work day. I don't do a lot of that last, but it's happened. The iBook was also useful to me during a multi-day DSL outage; I could at least take the laptop to the library or bookstore for access. So I use the machine sporadically, but when I do use it it's important enough that I don't want to do without.

Apple's current laptop offerings are too pricy for me -- I'm sure they'd be great machines if I used my laptop all the time, but that's not my use case. It looks like used or refurbished Macbooks (just plain Macbook, the laptop Apple sold until 2010) could be an option; if you have experience with those, please tell me what gotchas lurk there.

I'm talking about Macs because that's what I have on my desk at home and some consistency of user experience (and software) is useful. (Among things, having the Soncino talmud/etc collection on my hard disk is useful. I bought that for Mac; I don't want to rebuy for Windows.) I'm willing to consider Windows options but I don't know that space yet.

Alternatively, tablets are appealing -- more portable and "instant-on" and just generally more convenient. I've used Dani's iPad and it's very nice. Just one problem: they don't seem to be designed for composing text documents and that's an important use case for me. For example, I often compose blog posts or other documents offline and then post/email/share them later. This calls for a text editor and access to the file system. If one is internet-connected then solutions might exist (SSH to a Unix shell was suggested to me recently), but we can't assume a network connection. (I actually don't know if there's an SSH application for the iPad.)

(The other problem with tablets is the keyboard, but there exist add-ons for that. And ok, a third problem is that everything these days seems to have a glossy display and I much prefer matte, but I think I'm doomed there.)

Dani commented that what I really want is a Linux tablet. Yeah, now that you mention it... is anybody working on that? Can Android tablets meet my needs? Which ones should I be paying attention to? (~10" screen rather than 7" required.)

So I'll be doing my Google research, but I'm also interested in hearing opinions from y'all. Thanks.

Comments

[alienor.livejournal.com]

I have a netbook (which several years ago was considerably cheaper than tablets are today; but I don't know what the prices run now or what you're considering) that works well for my needs (portable, long battery life, wifi).

The problem I have with it is that it's an 11" screen and a 1024x600 resolution. Many webpages are just unusable (menus falling off the edge of the screen). A tablet would probably autodirect you to the mobile version of the site, so you wouldn't have that problem. But, perhaps netbooks have higher resolution screens now?

Some folks also report having a hard time switching to the smaller keyboard of a netbook. I can type on it, go to work and type on a regular keyboard and a weather proof (rubber) keyboard, then come home and type on a gaming keyboard. It's never been an issue for me, but it's something else to consider.

Netbooks seem to be going out of style now. I bought mine in 2009 and don't feel like I need to upgrade it (ever) to do basic websurfing/email/writing (so the 2010 Mac should be more than adequate, I'd think).

[cellio]

Thanks!

Oh yeah, I knew I was forgetting something. I am definitely not interested in the funky newfangled widescreen shape on anything smaller than a desktop monitor (and really, I'd rather skip it there too). 1024x600? Ugh. In my universe web pages are still fundamentally vertical, and text documents certainly are.

[alienor.livejournal.com]

My phone (android) tries to use it's sensors to figure out which way I'm looking at it when showing me web pages, and that's pretty annoying (shaking the phone when it's wrong). There's an option to default to always the wide view, but not an option to default to the vertical view. An always on vertical view wouldn't be desirable for a phone, anyway, since some web pages are unreadable on a phone screen vertically (at any reasonable font size).

I don't know if you'd have that problem on an android tablet. If you want, I could ask my mom how her tablet behaves.