Originally Posted by HTML Goodies To Go Article by Vince Barnes
A Noteworthy Laptop
Goodies To Go readers, being into web development and all thing Internet, are frequently techno-road warriors. This being so, I thought I'd share with you my experiences and the end result of my attempts to replace my trusty laptop. It's not that it no longer functions, or that there is something I cannot live without that it doesn't do; it's just that there's so much cool stuff out there that I had to get my fingers on some of it.
Actually, there is something it doesn't do that I am no longer willing to live without, and that is to respond to my touch on the screen.
Looking at my current machine and sizing up the features that must be present in the replacement, I determine that, apart from the standard stuff, the highlight is my wireless broadband access provided by my carrier, Verizon Wireless, via an adapter card in the PCMCIA slot. I've written about this before, as some of you may remember. We're not talking WiFi; it's a high speed (700-800kbps is typical) digital data service provided by the cell-phone company and providing national (US) coverage. CAN NOT do without that!
The touch feature is typical of tablet PCs, and there are other aspects of tablet PCs that I like. I cannot, however be without my keyboard - I do, after all, spend a good deal of time writing! What I need therefore, is a computer that can be a laptop part of the time, and a tablet the rest of the time. Machines like this are called convertibles or, and this is the name I like best, hybrids.
I started the hunt. I found quite a wide price scale but was astonished to find that no matter where I looked in the price line, hybrid after hybrid lacked the one feature of my notebook that I absolutely had to have -- they had no PCMCIA slot! I cannot understand why, when the entire purpose of the hybrid is to provide the best of both worlds, such a crucial feature is left out.
Despondent and about to call the world a rotten place, I decided to give Google one last chance. I did a search that included both of the words, hybrid and PCMCIA. Eureka!
(Actually, Googlereka!) The search results included a page in Gateway Computer's website. Off we go, and.... in about ten days time I will be the recipient of a gateway hybrid with a sparkling PCMCIA slot and a nice fourteen inch screen. A little while after that, I'll let you know whether or not it meets my expectations -- that is, is the world wide world still a fine and rosy place in which to live and work, or will I have encountered a techno-hades.
