So the gaffe (boss) asks if I could help choose a pc for his kids. Being computer illiterate himself and someone who claims he wouldn’t piss on a computer, decided I’m probably a good person to help out in this situation.

The other gaffe who is currently on holiday asked for a good laptop and after much browsing around. I decided on the JVC. I know its maybe not a manufacturer you think of when it comes to laptops, but this one is so small with a 6 hour battery life. Which were precisely the requirements. Something small with plenty of battery life. And when I noticed it had over $400 off from what it should be, I was like buy, buy, buy! He never did until there were none left in the country by then the price was back up with less memory.

Anyway I got a chance to have a go when I was setting it up and I was less impressed. But he liked it so it was good.

So back to the first gaffe, pc for the kids one. From what I know, what kids do on their pc’s is work in M$ Word, and a minor bit of web browsing right ? well not quite. They do everything and then some. Downloading, editing, ripping, who knows what else. But fixed desktop machines although kewl, theres nothing that a laptop cannot match. And the laptop has the advantage of being portable around the house especially with wireless. I mostly recommend laptops for casual users. Browsing and the like can be done while watching the TV. Double productivity.

We saw a nice HP desktop machine, but was a little pricey. Price wasn’t the issue though, as when the salesman asked what our price range was I was a little stumped. I had $900 in mind but I was kindly reminded by the gaffe, “Yas, I don’t want anything cheap and crap, it doesn’t matter about the price”.

Long story short, I’m a bit of a fan of the Compaq laptops. They have very nice screens ample keyboard size too. Also I picked one of the better models with a memory card reader built in, which is unbelievably useful. I also got one of those baby M$ mices for laptops. Even though laptops have a touchpad, one can’t beat a mouse.

Although I was price concious all the time. Choosing the wireless router made me sweat. The store we went to are known for overpricing certain products and the routers were where they made cold cash. IMO way overpriced. Although I don’t use a netgear anymore, netgear products are the pick of the pack for me. The choice was between a normal one which was over priced. And a super duper router which I’ve never knew existed. Apperently has far more range than any other router out there. The reason why I started to sweat was because I’ve been to the gaffes house and its not small. So I asked where the laptop will be and where the phone line is. The standard would have done or stretched. Then he said will it work in the garden though. Thats when I grimiced. You can play five a-side football in his garden, its fairly large. He decided he needed the super powerful way over priced one which is fine by me, less chance of having flat spots with no internet connection.

I think I made good choices I’ll find out more once I see the setup in use. Although my bro and sister have a very similar setup and its been very good. I don’t own a laptop at the moment but I’m drooling over the dual cores. Maybe even a Macbook Pro, but won’t be for sometime now.