Relevant points when putting forward case for new laptop

patwa_2

Hi, this is mostly a memory jogger for myself but it might help others in similar situations later.

Tomorrow I'm having a meeting to put forward my case for funding for a new laptop. My current one, an Acer Aspire 9504WSMi is technically a desktop replacement, and whereas the specifications are very good and it does more than what I need, it's totally unsuitable for carrying around with me at University, travelling back and forth between there and home each day.

To start with it's heavy, at nearly 4kg, which in itself is no big deal. But it has a 17" monitor, and it's increased size means it's difficult to find space in existing computer classrooms to use it (I need to use my laptop due to software requirements). Also, due to the high specifications, battery life is affected especially when I'm doing multiple things at once or using wireless access, with battery lasting just over 90 minutes at full tilt with all components enabled. And because of the short battery life and the need to keep it mains connected for longer than smaller laptops, it has a knock on effect on battery life.

So I need something smaller (15.4") and lighter so that it's more mobile and it means I have less restrictions as to where I can use it (e.g lectures and when working outside the classroom with fellow students). I do however equally need it to be fairly powerful as the speech and magnification software I use takes a lot of CPU power. Graphics and sound are not that important, but I'd prefer dedicated graphics as the newer version of the speech software gives better performance.

I think most important though is the technical support. I know the meeting will be bias towards toshiba because that's what they recommend to students usually (corporate discount?). But I'm leaning towards Acer as from personal experience they have excellent tech support. The first day I got the Acer, I found the recovery partition was corrupt so I couldn't restore the machine after I made a mistake setting it up. Acer the next day brought me a replacement machine, took mine away, fixed it, brought it back and collected the replacement free of charge. Toshiba on the other hand have messed me around, required lots of re-explaining things, shunting from Toshiba to their sub-contractors and back again, provision of insane amounts of paperwork and never updating on the progress of repairs or even explaining what was wrong when they give a quote.

I think this gives a fairly good case, I know I haven't explained the whole story (I got funding for a machine two years ago but there's a history there) but hopefully this mini brainstorm will help someone.

H.