Recommend a laptop, please

In My Humble Opinion
1

My laptop continues to crash periodically, though the shop can’t find anything wrong with it. Therefore, I’m in the market for a new one, as follows:

  1. A laptop or smaller notebook (down to 10" screen; I need this for work I can’t see or manipulate well enough on an ASUS eee with a 7.9" screen).

  2. Under 3.5 pounds.

  3. XP or easily XP-able by a not-very-skillful user.

  4. Reasonable battery (3 hours or higher).

  5. Reasonable repair record.

  6. I prefer a built-in DVD player but this is not a deal-breaker.

  7. I prefer 3 USB ports but will live with 2. At least 1 must be on the right because that’s where I want my mouse.

  8. I don’t need a huge amount of memory or fantastic graphics. I don’t watch movies or play games on my laptop.

  9. I have about $500 to spend, and would prefer to spend less.

While I prefer Macs, I need a PC for compatibility at work.

Thanks!

2

I think Dell has something with a 9" screen that may fit your requirements. It is very difficult to find XP any more. It is not available, for example, at the Microsoft employee store, although both the small Dell and the EEEPC (with an 8" screen) both have it so they must be selling it to OEMs. Do not, however, expect to able to buy a Vista machine and downgrade it to XP even if you can find a legitimate copy of it.

3

All modern Macs are bilingual and can boot a Windows OS, and they make good PCs when they do. Setting it up to do that isn’t particularly complicated although it is something you would do yourself with your own copy of XP after you buy the Mac. (Or pay some geek to do it for you, etc).

But I don’t think $500 will score you a MacBook. Unless it’s used.

4

I’ve got the eeePC 700 and it’s a pretty cool machine, but it’s screen is microscopic and the keyboard sucks because of the fucked up placement of the up arrow key where the right shift key should be.

I am seriously considering buying the ASUS Eee PC Eee PC 900HA XP. It’s got a bigger screen, 160GB hard drive, 1GB main memory and only weighs 2.5 pounds. It probably has a similarly screwed up keyboard, but for $329, it looks like a bargain. It doesn’t have a DVD player, but I don’t think any of the super lightweight competitors have one either. It’s also got Windows XP, which is just easier for me to deal with than Xandros.

5

Yes, my eee has Xandros and Open Office, but even though it hogs space, were I to get an eee 900 or 1000 I’d get XP because Open Office doesn’t do all the things I need and I’m no Linux expert. However, I do need a bigger screen because otherwise my grading site opens up wonky (and a lot of pages are unreadable).

ETA: I have had too many problems getting Macs to interface adequately with work equipment, plus too many times when I can’t open Mac-created documents on one work machine or another, even when they were formatted in RTF, that it’s not a great option for me.

6

Update: I got an HP Mini 1033CL. I installed both Open Office and Office 2003 by using an external optical drive. It has no VGA port (it was a gift, and it never occurred to the giver that it wouldn’t have a VGA port). HP says it will have an adapter for its expansion port soon. I discussed this with some of you fine folks here. Other than the PITA lack of a VGA option, the HP mini is pretty nice.