[Prestidigitweeze]

Wizwor and R. H. Wright, et al.:

In terms of keyboards and displays, I've loved the Samsung laptops I've used so far. The older ones almost felt like my piano, and the pleasures of traveling with a matte screen are not to be dismissed. Shiny screens and flimsy keys are often what I've disliked about the newer HPs and Toshibas.

A bad precedent's being set in terms of lightness and flash over solidity. I'm terrified that the high-ppi PC laptops that will surely begin appearing over the next few years will all have inaccessible batteries. I've waited for decades for a laptop screen that doesn't exacerbate eyestrain and now Apple has yoked that feature to the defeat of manual upgrades and repairs.

(Kumabjorn: I'd love to know the specific benefits of a MacBook Air for a person studying linguistics. That might be the least banal endorsement of a Mac I've ever read.)

SeaKing:

I'd be more interested in Chromebooks if the ones I liked had real hard drives and could dual-boot into Windows. But then, I'd also want to boot into some undiluted flavor of linux, as I've been doing with my little netbook for all this time. Non-Android linux can be so beautiful and quiet you sometimes wish you'd never be nagged again by the clueless office receptionist that is Windows at its most diligent.

That said, I really wish I'd seen this thread before Black Friday. Brilliant price on that Lenovo desktop, and great suggestions on laptops overall.

Tubemonkey:

I, too, thought about the Kindle at $129. Problem is that my significant Lothar and I are occasional narrative-driven gamers and that's what we'd be doing for fun -- partly because the real Japanese games often have stranger stories than any film and can be as intricate as a novel. That Sony/Amazon Assassin's Creed PS Vita bundle was a one-of-a-kind thing: The geekiest controls ever to appear on a handheld wedded to perks and discounts that only a true vendor and desperate manufacturer collaboration could yield. The library will be small, but then again, I can't spend a lot of time gaming or playing when I'm supposed to be writing, editing, composing and practicing.

I'd have gotten a second one for her as a present if she didn't find gadgets unromantic.