Hey guys...man it's been a while since I've posted anything here...haha
I am in Germany right now doing automotive research with the National Science Foundation and my $%&$%& Toshiba Tecra M-4 (purchased in June 2006) tablet has crapped out on me. Too many problems to list here, and I am dead set on getting something new. Unfortunately, when I started at Virginia Tech a few years ago, the class of 2010 engineers were all required to buy tablet PC's... Freshman year courses were changed to force students to use tablets to write out computations with Microsoft OneNote, etc. I'll stop now so I don't start an angry rant.
Anyway, after my freshman year none of my courses have required a tablet, and none of them will, so I am going to buy a new laptop.
I am looking for something that is portable (11" - 14" display)
Any Core 2 Duo over 2 Ghz would be fine, discrete graphics, 2 gb of RAM, and preferably windows XP (I know that lenovo at least still offers XP pro.) I won't need a huge hard drive b/c I have a dedicated gaming/music/multimedia desktop that I leave at home. The less proprietary software, the better.
It seems to me like the Lenovo ThinkPad and the Dell XPS are the two best options. Do you guys generally prefer one over the other, or are there other reputable brands I should consider? (I am never buying a Toshiba again
)
Thanks for the help!
Edit: Following the restraints I gave, I was able to build a Thinkpad for about $1050 and an XPS for about $1450.
-Tory