Hello all,
I've been gone for quite awhile after last Fall's flood disaster. We're recovering and have replaced our Desktop, which gets used mostly for everything. This includes all of our entertainment. This ties it up a most of the time.

My Wife got a Dell Laptop with a 15" Widescreen. It looks and works great.

I need my own Laptop computer now and many are affordable still. I'm thinking the 17" screen Laptops are going to be a bit heavy and bulky to cart around the house and even on my lap. I really like the 15" Wide Screen on hers, but I was wondering if any of the 14" are good. They make many I assume for more portability. A big factor in this is that my eyesight is not what it used to be.

I know many people here use Laptops and I was wondering what Display size do you prefer? Adding a Monitor is very simple now with the new PCs. We connect our 40" HDTV with an HDMI and another monitor as well.

Just wondering what the most popular screen size is for those who use BIAB and Realtracks and PTPA?

Any thoughts would be greatly appreciated.

Wayne,
P.S. I bought a Mustang I Amp for Christmas and I'm playing Guitar again. So it won't be very long till I have some new stuff. Thank you all for your support in the past.

More important to me than the screen size is the keyboard layout. With most of the 17" widescreen models these days, they have a dedicated number pad over on the right side of the keyboard. As I'm a nerd, I love to have that at the ready for entering in measure numbers, parameters on plugins, etc.

I would also look for an HDMI output on the lappy, as this can get you all the screen you ever care to look at, for a much less expensive outlay than a similarly sized monitor.

My wife got a Dell 15.4" 11 months and three hard drives ago. Their idea of in-warranty customer service was to send used drives (stripped out mounting holes) to a disabled lady senior citizen and say "have at it!" My wife is in no way a "power user." She just got her new Acer 17" and she's very happy with it. In fact, the Dell was a lot more money.

Sorry to hear about the problems with the Dell. Most people I know have Dell Laptops and haven't had any problems. Some are over ten years old
The others are all HP and they all have problems and never can get HP to fix them.
I think which brand is always going to be a personal decision. My wife's Dell is 6 months old, has an i5, 6gb ram AND A 750GIG hd. It was $499 at BJ's Wholesale here. Now I wish I had bought 2. I didn't have the money then and I also didn't think I'd ever want a laptop.

They all come with HDMI ports for the past year from what I've seen. What I'm looking at now is basically the same machines only now they all have USB3 ports.

I guess I'll get the 15". I love the feel of the keyboard on the Dell. That was my wife's main demand and I like it better than my Desktop Keyboard.

If I find a 17" that I really like I might get it. So far they still seem too big for me and my Lap and Sofa.
So are most of you using 15" laptops? Just wondering if anyone uses the 14" ones.

Wayne,

Having a full keyboard is important. Though I really never used the number pad on the right, The 15" Dell my wife has, has a full number keypad on the right. The only thing that takes a bit of getting used to is the arrow keys and the Home, End Page Up and Down. They are different on many keyboards though.

She did go crazy trying to use the touchpad. She's been using computers since the 80s and this touchpad drove her nuts. We just bought a Logitech Wireless. Works great and the usb plug is less than a half inch. We tried the mouse on our desktop and it works at 24 feet, so we got one so we could bring it to the table when we eat to use the PC when we watch things on our Flatscreen. No more getting up if the phone rings. We don't have cable so we use only the Internet for all our Movies and TV shows. Works well, better than most DVDs.

So I guess not many people go for the 14" Laptops. I know that looking at them in person, they do seem a bit small. I still like the size of her Dell 15". It's wide and I can read the screen with ease. Our Desktop is always set to HD, for Entertainmaent and all the type is too small for me to read.

Wayne,

Went to a Local Play rehearsal last night and 2 people brought their laptops. One 14" Acer and an ASUS 15" The ASUS won out on all levels.

I think I'll be sticking with 15" and chossing ASUS or Dell again. The keyboard on the ASUS felt great. They were both new. The Acer's keyboard didn't feel good to me. There are just too many models to choose from.

Wayne,

One more thing to look out for--- The samsung I bought in the last 6 months has a touchpad that is WAY too sensitive. It sits right under the meat of my thumbs and while typing will take over cursor position. Fortunately there is a function key enable/disable toggle available. You might want to look for a similar feature.

I have a couple Acers 15.6" in the house (56XX series I believe); one has ran well for a year, the other for two years of heavy use. Both still working fine.

I use a wirelless keyboard/mouse combo that takes one port and works great. So laptop keyboard is often not an issue. I have never found a laptop keyboard I liked better than regular. Or touchpad .. I'd rather just grab a regular mouse.

That said, there are times when I use the laptop keyboard when mobile, and it is OK for me, but some don't like it because the numberpad sits to the right of the letters pretty tight.

FWIW . . . I use only Lenovos 14" Thinkpads for live gigs. They have been solid work horses for years and the low profile 14. something screen is not imposive on my music stand.

Later,

Love my Toshiba Satellite ... 17" monitor (widescreen). Keys are full size, num pad to the side - plenty of space.

Cheers.

I just got to use a friend's Toshiba 17" and it was great. I loved the 17" display. Keyboard was fine.
They don't use the touchpad either and had a wireless mouse. It was really nice. The 17" is not that much bigger to use but the benefits of the larger screen was amazing. It made the 15" look small.

The 15" is very short from top to bottom and very wide. The Toshiba 17" just looked like a better aspect ratio. I don't know if it is different but I liked it a lot.

So I'm not going to rule out the 17" Laptops. Lots of deals on them. Maybe people don't want big laptops?

Wayne, Thanks all for your advice and experience.

If high screen resolution is important to you then you should be sure to check the 17" laptop specs because a large number of them have a much lower resolution than the 15".

Thanks Bob,
That's really good to know. Never thought of that. This will be my first Laptop since the old 386 days.
Wayne,

Quote:

---

Maybe people don't want big laptops?

---

Nope, just the market at work. Prices are coming down all the time.