The Wife and I are debating getting a second computer. We currently have a desk top and are debating between a laptop or desk top. Without getting into the hardware/brands argument, what do you prefer and why?
use for us is really just normal wordproccesing, online for bills and research. (Although I do like to play a little HALO once in a while)

EDIT: I should add, The reason we are looking at getting a second computer is that our current desktop has been in the shop for the last 35 days and we are looking for sort of a back up system. A laptop would have come in very handy on our recent drive out to Minnesota from Vermont. total of seven days in the car.

The less you know about computers the more you need a laptop. They are more reliable and you can easily bring it to people to sort out when they go wrong.
The PC boys at work become your support for the price of a bag of doughnuts :-).
In England we have 'Which?' magazine to give advice on what to buy you must have something like that in the USA.
Sushi

Arg, posting at work the worthless software known as internet explorer ate my post.
What I was saying was my preference is laptop unless your into always swapping hardware around. Just be careful that some of the low end consumer laptops are desktop replacements and can't really be used on a lap so if your looking at one of those then you may as well just get a desktop.
We just replaced both our laptops with smaller netbooks, much more handy to show years worth of pictures, small enough to go anywhere.

It's pretty simple.

Do you travel?

Do you need to use it other than your desk?

If so you need a laptop.

If not then a desktop would be fine.

Desktops are cheaper for comparable systems.

If you get a laptop and are someone who keeps their technology for a while I suggest the 3yr warranty it's normally 100 bucks and well worth it because laptops are prone to break if you move them often. Also you will need to replace the battery at least once in a 3 year time span or enjoy recharging it a lot.

I pretty much get a new laptop every 2 years. I use it only for travel, and only lose a couple hundred when I sell it which is good based on what I pay and how quick computers decrease in prices.

I wait for laptops to go on sale at Dell then use my purchase program, and additional coupons to save even more. I think my most recent laptop cost $700 shipped/taxed/etc and it's normal rate was 900-1200. I got the 3 year warranty which added I believe $120 to the cost too, and a larger battery. It's one I can play games on or multi-task the crap out of since I work on it.

I use my desktop 99% of the time, and I keep it for approx. 3 years before replacing, however during that time I may upgrade a few things. I build my desktops and have for the last 15 years, and they last others an additional 3-5 years after I am done with them. Use good components and they last a VERY long time. I say 3 years because you don't even need to upgrade every year or two to continue working how you were with the new applications nowdays it's the games that decide if you need faster or better

My next desktop will be as soon as the i7 processors, mobos and ram price drops, A LOT!

Since you have a desktop already it would be better to get a laptop as your secondary system IME. Laptops are a lot more portable and totally self-contained. That said, for any serious work (or hardcore gaming if you're into that) a desktop is always preferable. Desktops are much easier to upgrade and tend to offer better performance at the same price.

I use computers all the time and type a lot. I've got both a desktop and laptop at work and use the laptop often, but usually with a full-sized USB keyboard and mouse. Typing on a laptop keyboard is a pain, ergonomically and otherwise.

I've used a laptop (three actually) exclusively for the past 8 years. When I travel I just put my workstation in a bag and walk.

Laptops have never been more reliable than desktops for comparable age, use and abilities. Laptop components are a compromise and subject to much more daily stress than desktops, which are constructed of more robust components and usually at a lower cost due to scale etc. For every desktop that came across my bench, I'd estimate at least three equivalent laptops came in for repairs for the same level of use.

However, I would still recommend a laptop for the OP. Since they already have a desktop, they could enjoy the added versatility of a laptop. The ability to go wi-fi or 3G abroad as well as on demand file access wherever they go is quite handy.

I've switched to a laptop just for the freedom it offers to use it anywhere within my home. I rarely take it on trips.

I have and use both. Laptops are more expensive to repair if something happens, and you will have to spend more for the horsepower to do graphics-intensive games, but in almost all other ways laptops are king.

I have a tiny netbook I picked up for $250. No moving parts, and will run for 4-5 hours from the battery without a recharge. I still use my desktop most of the time because it is available, and I may get another desktop in the future just because it makes life easier when I need to add a TB of disk space or download video from the camera. In the scenario you describe, a laptop would be a good fit.

desktop is easily upgradable however laptop can't be done.

do you need to use pc at cottage often?

Do you travel alot and need to use pc.

if you answer yes to the 2 above questions, you need a laptop.

I was a very early user of PCs, I bought desktops and built them from parts. my last purchase was a laptop and I would never go back. The price difference is not as big as it used to be and reliability is very good. I can use it anywhere in the house, even outside if I want, with my wireless network.

One other advantage is if I have to evacuate (I live on the coast in Florida), it is easy to take with me. During the 2004 hurricanes I had to evacuate, at that time I only had a desk top (large tower), so I had to remove my hard drives and take with me.

Did I mention I really like the portability.

I saved a couple bucks by buying a refurbished laptop, but there are a lot of good deals around now.

Just my 2.5 cents...

++++++ on that. We have a lot - a whole lot - of computers and I'd NEVER buy a desktop as a second system

My primary is a desktop, becuase it is big and powerful and I can fix it without having a case of nerves. (Hate taking apart laptops.) But if it is going to be a secondary, then a laptop is a good choice. But a TRUE laptop, not a netbook or a desktop replacement.

I like my little netbook, it is kinda the Leatherman of computers- light, portable, and most of the time it can do what I need, but I wouldn't use it for my heavy lifting. Heck, I don't even like typing at it for very long, and it doesn't even have an optical drive- I have it because it is small and light.

I'm not a huge fan of the desktop replacement-type laptops, just because I'm still not convinced they are cooling well enough for what is often desktop components in a laptop body.



Matt, for you, the only specific recommendation I'd make is to avoid the Staples in Burlington like the plague- their tech boys have talked themselves out of any future sale with me as a team.

If your consideration is to buy the laptop to back up your pc, just get a 100 gigabyte storage device. Cost dimes on the dollar to a laptop.

If you need a 2nd computer for the house and transport is not such an open, it is much cheaper to buy pc. A desktop pc will usually work faster and be easier to navigate and hold more info.

If you like portability and not gaming hard or streaming hi-res vid then laptops are great. You can work anywhere on docs and it's not hard to find free wifi, (Hooters and Buffalo Wild Wings for example), for internet access. I often sit on the couch with my laptop and watch movies or tv while surfing the net off linksys at home.

Actually this desktop is set up to my home wireless network with a compact wireless USB adapter. So anything is possible.

If you need to do any number work, a cheap keypad is $10 and a laptop mouse is about the same. I'd still recommend at least an 80 gig storage device.

Laptop.

$.02

Also consider a simple netbook for just word processing and browsing the net. Being smaller than a laptop they are handier and easier to stow.

All depends on what YOU need.

For me, a laptop is something you use when you can't get to your desktop. So how often can you not get to your desktop? Often: get a laptop. Infrequently: Get a second desktop.

Alternately, buy a laptop (and possibly a docking station) and plug in an external fullsized keyboard, monitor and mouse. Of course, then you've just turned your laptop into an overpriced low-end desktop. But that gives you the capability to un-dock the laptop and take it with you when you need to be mobile.

For years I almost exclusively used laptops, as I liked the convenience of being able to take them everywhere. All was great, never felt like I was loosing anything by not having a desktop.

However, last time I went and looked at computers I realized...for what I was paying for a pretty good laptop, I could build an awesome desktop setup.

I set my budget at $3,000 and priced out $3,000 laptops, as well as $3,000 desktop builds. To get roughly the same thing I could get in a $3,000 Desktop, I would have to buy an over $4,000 laptop. The price advantage, plus the fact that the desktop is much easier to upgrade and fix over time (thereby lasting me longer), made me realize it's worth it to own a good desktop.

So, now my main computer is a custom desktop that well exceeds the performance of what you'll find in most big box electronics stores (core I7, Radeon 4870x2, Blu-Ray burner, 24" monitor, ect); plus it has multiple hard drives setup in RAID so my information is safe even if a drive failure occurs.

With that in mind, I still haven't tossed out all my laptops. Instead, I wiped them clean, put only the software on it that I would need for basic tasks and working. Then, I just take one as I need it and load on only the files I need for what ever I'm doing at the moment. If it gets broken, stolen, a virus, ect....I don't have to worry about it. This works out just fine for me, as I can do my work on the laptops when I need portability, and just transfer it to the desktop when I'm done.

In short, having a solid desktop built with high end hardware and a few cheap laptops has become my preferred choice.

That doesn't sound like it needs a lot of power, especially if this is a backup and you can live without HALO when you don't have the desktop. You may find some sort of netbook is enough. You do need to think carefully about power and price, though. For example, I'm guessing you won't be playing HALO on your drive to Vermount, but if you are away from a TV for a week, you might find you do appreciate having some entertainment in the form of games or DVDs.

I switched to a laptop this year. I agree with what others have said about price and power. This one is physically large and spends 95% of its time on a desk, as if it were a desktop PC. It's still convenient to be able to lug it to other rooms sometimes. It has a BlueRay player and a 17" screen, so it gets used for watching movies eg in bed. I've never taken it out of the house.

It uses a lot less electrical power than my old PC. I expect that's a trend with all newer devices, but laptops tend to be more optimised for low energy consumption.

I found that I used the removable drive so little that its not a dealbreaker. I bought my last laptop in 2003, 12" display, 1" thin, external cd drive. plugged it in 6 months later for the first windows install then again 6 months later to install linux, then maybe again a coupel years ago for the garmin gps software/maps. Since my wife has a laptop also I have an external dvd burner so we can use it with either so a couple months ago I replaced the laptop with a netbook and use the external dvd burner if I ever need a drive. If I want to watch a movie the 42" hdtv with surround sound is going to be better than any laptop, its just annoying that you can't find any laptop now that are not widescreen, its most annying on my work one where they just pushed out MSOffice 2007 with the toolbar now taking 1/3 of the height, I wish they would quite making laptops try to be dvd players, or at least make the wide screen a way differentiate between consumer and business machines.
I found that after a few years I quit trying to worry about having the latest and greatest system out there, would rather spend the money on other toys so spending a little more for a laptop up front was aceptable to me. I paid close to $1500 in 2003 for that nice light small one, replaced the 20G drive with a 60G, then a couple years later a 120G then later a 160G then bought the netbook for $300 and put a 500G in it for $100 so I haven't spent that much.

Thanks for all of the input Friends, Oddly enough my Wife has recieved much of the same advice from her sources. No pressing need to purchase so we can take our time. Thanks all

Ok, I can't help myself: How in the world does the repair shop justify having a PC for 35 days? Is this a factory warranty repair?

On to the question:

If you're looking for a second PC, I'd recommend a laptop or netbook. I think it's important to understand the distinction between laptop and netbook, though, and I'm not sure that's been touched on.

A netbook is essentially a very under-powered laptop. In general, surfing the web and doing word processing will work fine, as will most games that aren't graphically intensive (board games, older 3d games, etc.) However, no matter what brand you pick, you're going to get an underpowered CPU, vastly underpowered compared to what you can pick up on even a very low-priced laptop. Fortunately, with one major exception, they have plenty of CPU for handling the use you described. That exception is (some) Flash applications. In general, Flash itself is a huge CPU resource hog, and this means most Flash apps run poorly on netbooks. Youtube runs OK, but Hulu stutters quite a bit, for example. All of the Flash games on Facebook/Myspace also run poorly. So, if you frequently play those "little" online board game type things, you'll be surprised to find out that your netbook runs Unreal Tournament better than Facebook Scrabble. Now, on the pro-netbook side, we have: Light weight, super-convenient size, plenty of power for e-mail, (non-flash) surfing, word processing, running simple games, watching most multimedia (I use mine to watch Netflix's online streaming movies, which run through Media Player - they run well), and a good battery life due to the lower powered CPU. Also, due to size constraints, netbooks usually do not have an optical drive. You'll have to use a networked or USB drive if you need to access a DVD or CD, so you may want to factor that into the cost (which isn't too large, but it adds to the overall cost if you need an optical drive)

As for some buying tips: You'll want to get one with Windows XP -- avoid Vista at all costs on a Netbook -- and you may consider getting one with Windows 7 on it when that's released if you don't mind waiting. (I don't think they're doing the free upgrade to Win7 from XP machines bought between now and release like they are Vista machines.) Max your RAM out. (Usually to 2GB, using a 1GB chip. It's a pretty cheap upgrade.) Check the specs on the Netbook you're interested in to make sure it has user-upgradeable RAM. Another thing to consider is the type of screen, and the screen size. Most brands have bright, but glossy, screens. These look great indoors with no direct light sources on them, but if you're out and about, in varying lighting conditions, the glare can make the screen unreadable at times. The bottom line is that the anti-glare coating costs more, and these are budget machines so glossy is more common. Both of the netbooks in our household are from Asus, and have anti-glare screens. The other decision is screen size. Ten inch screens are most common, and it's a good, usable size. The keyboards run about 92% of full size and are pretty easy to get used to typing on. The nine inch size is considerably smaller overall, with a correspondingly more crowded keyboard. It took me about ten minutes to get used to typing on the ten inch, but about three or so days of regular use to get used to typing on the nine inch. I suggest trying out both yourself. The nine inch is a lot more portable, and I don't mind the KB too much, so I love it. My wife much prefers the ten inch for ease of typing and for the additional screen real estate.

As to brand: Most of the more commonly-seen brands are very decent, including Asus (who started the trend), Acer, Dell, and HP. I don't have any direct experience with the Samsung or Toshiba netbooks, but would expect them to be good. I'd avoid Sony and Gateway at all costs, and that's from the POV of selling both brands for a while. Gateway, due to the very high rate of problems with new machines, and Sony for their terrible support and overall poor attitude toward their consumers, not to mention they're priced way out of line for the hardware in a netbook.

If you consider a laptop, for your needs even a low end one will do just fine. At that price-point ($400 - $500 max) you're not that much more than NetBook cost, even cheaper than some NetBooks, so no reason I can come up with to consider a NetBook (unless you want their very small size). You will also get more bang for your buck with more memory rather than a more powerful CPU. If you want more speed for your buck, load a lightweight Linux on it rather than Windows. If you want blazing speed, boot Linux so it loads totally into memory, thus using your harddisk for permanent storage only (not for running the OS from). For me, one of the biggest decision points in buying an inexpensive laptop is the keyboard. There are some really terrible ones out there. And the very best are only mediocre compared to a desktop separate keyboard. Forget the trackpad - they are all horrid, and for emergencies only IMHO. Get an external mouse and don't worry yourself looking for a decent trackpad (there is no such thing).

If you're tempted by laptops, I'd say: (1) Inexpensive low-end model, (2) External monitor, (3) External Keyboard, and (4) External mouse. The money you save on buying the low-end model will cover the expense for the external components.

Your getting too much into personal preference now. If your going to buy a laptop then buy external everything you may as well just buy a desktop.
A touchpad has a learning curve (its only a trackpad if its an IBM, thats their name for a touchpad) just like a mouse had a learning curve when we first got them. I paid for my very first laptop in 1998, before that I had company assigned ones or ones that came from the trash bin, I've used touchpads and haven't bought or used a mouse since then. Synaptics makes the best touchpads, though Alps has nearly caught up, the apls touchpad in my katest company laptop is useabe, the trick is to crank the speed up so your not using multiple movements to get from one end of the screen to another then for fine movement you roll the finger back and forth a little bit. I turn off all the extra stuff, scorlling, pinching, squeezing, any other gestures they come with to get the whole pad area.
Now if your going to take the advice of some and buy a $400-500 don't plan on using it as a laptop much, those have the most flimsy cases, weakest hinges, worst cooling, etc and are pretty much stuck to a desk. Those are the $5 chinses made pocket knife that breaks the first time you use it. The business machines are the swiss army knives and leathermans, they may not have the best sound cards or other fancy gadgets you find in ones you buy in the retail stores but they have stonger cases, hinges, cooling designed to run hours at a time, etc.
Netbooks are not as limited as some make them out to be. I haven't owned a desk in years, out laptops have always sat on the end of the couch (again buy business models that can still keep the inside cool) and the next step for us was netbooks. I replaced my 1.2GHz 12" machine with a 1.6GHz 9" netbook and it works great. Its my only home machine right now not counting my 500MHz file server used to dump backups to. I run all my garmin software, keep up with a dozen or so forums, have years worth of mail and pictures (past the 30G mark of pictures) track all my projects, tools, etc on spreadsheets and have nearly a dozen other OS's running as virtual machines; need windows 7, windows server 2008 R2, Solaris 10, etc I just start up a virtual and there it is. I haven't found anything yet I needed a larger system for.

The truth is, for about 99% of the tasks someone who doesn't play games needs most newer computers are grossly over-powered. The only thing I've seen that our Netbooks have issues with are the afore-mentioned Flash apps. And that's more of a failing of Flash for being such a CPU hog for what those apps actually do than it is of the netbook.

Laptops are getting very cheap - some nice ones for $400 -500 on sale. Get a keyboard that feels right to your hands, a reasonable screen size ( 15 -17") and a mac.

Matt: when you get your desktop back(35 days? I hope they don't get paid by the hour) get a external hard drive and put Halo on it. Now go to www.tirgerdirect.com (look at the refurbished or off lease )and get a good used laptop. if you don't have a wifi router get one at the same time. Now you can take all your information with you and play halo. and use the laptop where ever you travel.

Without going into details I paid for a system restore and data backup at a large store with big yellow tags. The brillant young mind that did the work chose to do the system restore before the backup. Needless to say I am not paying for the data recovery. I have expressed my extreme displeasure with the dept manager, the store manager and the corporate office as well about the length of time it has taken. it is now 41 days and still no pc back. belive me, compensation is being discussed.

There is an old saying: "There are two type of people. Those who do regular backups, and those who wish they had." Unfortunately it sounds like you're in the latter group this time. Depending on someone else to recover/retore your computer after whatever disaster must have befallen you is not the way to go (as you found out!) When you get your old computer back, and also when you get the new one, make sure you put a strong backup strategy in place so you don't end up in this mess again.

Agree. I've seen 1.0 TB (1000 GB) drives available to use as back-ups. Not having tons of multi-media, I make do with a mere 120 GB back-up HD and it's mostly empty.

The external hard drive is the way we plan on protecting our data from now on. Also I have a list of regular weekly chores, Data back up is now on the list every Sunday night.

The Asus EeeBox B208 might be worth a look. Especially if you have an HDTV with a spare HDMI connector.



http://www.engadget.com/2009/03/17/asus-eeebox-pc-b208-with-dual-core-atom-and-hd-4350-graphics-un/

If you have two computers that you leave on all the time, you can create a simple daily job (I think Windows calls them "scheduled tasks" or something) on computer A to backup it's important files to computer B. And another separate job on computer B to backup it's files to computer A. So it's totally unattended and automatic. Years ago I used to do exactly this using a free program called SyncBack. Get it at http://www.2brightsparks.com/downloads.html - scroll down towards the bottom to get past the paid versions to find the free one. That's probably all you need. Now I have a more sophisticated backup procedure using a Linux server to control things, but that old "A->B, B->A SyncBack" Windows routine worked very well for many years. I didn't sync the entire computers, just the important personal files that couldn't be regenerated by reinstalling the operating system. Documents, photos, music, etc.

I also reccomend the free version of SyncBack. I haven´t tried every backup software but I tested quite a few of them (mainly the free or open source solutions) and only SyncBack passed with flying colors. Others sometimes behaved unreliably or didn´t have important features.