Tuesday April 15,2008

Some lessons I learned over the last couple of laptop iterations (avalanche and rockslide):

• Size and portability are probably the highest priority
• I can sacrifice a little bit on the portability side if the hardware performance is a bit better
• Linux compatibility is quickly becoming a bigger deal for me. I don’t quite have the patience anymore to put in tons of effort to get my damn card reader to work
• Glossy screens have a lot of “pop” but the glare is really annoying (a universal truth at this point, I think)
• No one should be afraid of running 64-bit linux. It works like a charm.
• You don’t need a 32-bit chroot to use Flash
• Averatec laptops are cheap and on the surface that’s no big deal given the specs they tout, but they won’t last nearly as long as some of the more established brands.

Did I mention that rockslide is an “N Series” laptop? That is, I bought it with Ubuntu pre-installed. No Windows Vista!