[nativepaul]

Originally Posted by JThiessen

I use the pc for the normal bill paying/accounting, email, porn surfing, blah, de blah...

Get an IBM/Lenovo thinkpad without a doubt, they are as good a laptop as anyone's, but as far as I have seen are the only ones to have forward and back web navigation hotkeys above the cursor keys, it makes web surfing much easier 24/7 but especially so if you need easy one handed operation.

It grinds my gears, no one would buy a mouse without forward and back buttons these days, yet on laptops were expected to trudge all over the screen with the trackpad/rollerball/nipple or remember the 2 button combination hotkeys and use both hands which is a PITA. What REALLY grinds my gears is that some Mfg's laptops have a pair of blanked off caps above the cursor buttons where they could easily put forward and back buttons but chose not to for whatever reason, GRRRrrrr! Anyway god bless IBM for their quality of life improvements, I shall be sticking with you at least until the others catch on to the importance of ergonomics.

I dual boot with windows XP to run all my old software (its an old machine, but I have a desktop too so am not bothered about upgrading often) and Ubuntu which I primarily use for browsing (and Brian Ubuntu found and installed drivers for all my stuff automatically on both my and my dads laptop, installing was much easier than with windows) which is a good solution for getting the security of a Mac (and lower temps/longer battery life, Ubuntu asks a lot less from a PC to run than Win does) with the compatibility, design variety and price of a Windows PC.

If you do buy an IBM laptop and follow the tip above to reinstall windows to remove all the bloatware, i would recommend you back up and reinstall the IBM hard drive software as it senses a zero G freefall situation and parks the hard drive before it hits the ground avoiding any damage, my 2004 IBM T42 has fallen of the arm of my armchair onto the wooden floor in my lounge countless times without damage and I see that as a testament to the software.