Thanks as always to The Other McCain for the Rule Five links!
The first time I worked in Japan, in 2009, I took along my personal laptop for the job – an old Sony Vaio, the operating specs of which I forget, except that it was running Windows XP.
That laptop crashed and burned on the first day of a three-week stint in the Land of the Rising Sun. The company gave me a loaner to get me working again, but it was a Japanese machine; the Windows and Office versions were Japanese. I was able to use Western characters in Word, but the menus were all in Japanese; only my knowledge of “where shit is in Office” managed to make it usable. That evening I went to Bic Camera in Kyoto, which is sort of a Japanese Best Buy, and looked for a laptop – great prices, but all Japanese keyboards and operating systems.
So I emailed Mrs. Animal to find me a new laptop and DHL it to me. She did so – a wonderful Hewlett-Packard Pavilion, a big 17″ powerhouse that, in the years since, has been dragged all over the globe; Europe, Africa, Japan, China, Canada, Mexico and all over the USA – until a few days ago.
After almost seven years, the old Pavilion finally gave up the ghost. So now I need a new laptop. With that in mind, I would like to solicit the opinions of all you True Believers as to where to find a replacement.
My preferences:
-
This might actually be a good sales pitch. 17″ laptop with a separate numeric keypad.
- At least an i7 quad-core processor.
- At least 16 gig RAM.
- Preferably a graphics or gaming rig, to handle recent gaming and photo/video manipulation
- Combo SSD/HDD for speed in loading OS and programs
- Windows 10
I can add peripherals, so a DVD/Blueray drive is optional.
Any thoughts? I’m willing to run up to $2k for the right machine.
