Expert: Bobbert - 1/21/2008

Question
I am a teacher and I want to know what the best notebook is for my money.  I am concerned with buying the notebook with the software on it.  I don't want the trial offers on the software.  What is your suggestion?

Answer
Well, "best" is a fairly subjective term, best in terms of what? Whats your application load look like? Lots of video and audio work? CAD/CAM? Photo/graphics work? or lighter workloads like word processing, spreadsheets, powerpoint, etc

What kind of budget are we talking about? Generally with computers, the "best" computer is the most expensive computer, now I say this with some reservation, but generally speaking if you spend $5000 on a computer it will be faster than a computer costing $2000 (although I wouldn't neccisarily say $3000 better).

The MacBook (and variants thereof) is a solid choice, although if you would prefer to stay with Windows, I'd suggest looking at Dell, Acer, and Lenovo. You can probably get an educator discount depending on your status as a teacher (for example, if you're a teacher for a public high school, you can likely get a discount, if you're a free-lance music teacher, such a discount is probably much less likely).

The "trial offers" of software is relatively easily handled, just remove the applications, or just reformat the system upon delivery (with OS X this won't be as much of an issue, given that Apple (at least currently) doesn't seem to be big on including loads of adware and trial software).


I honestly can't help you with exact configurations, without knowing what kind of application load or budget we're talking about, so if you want more specific information, I'd need a reply.

-bob