What laptop to buy…

After thinking on my trip to the Philippines…

I thought of buying a laptop. So I can bring my work with me, and even work on the long plane trip. Be more productive on lost time.

But I really do not have much money, the plane ticket is so expensive. I even searched for the best deal I can get for plane tickets, regardless of airlines and stopovers and not landing at the Centennial airport in the Philippines which is way better than the other terminal in MNL.

So I searched online for a good laptop deal with some low monthly payment. My first decision was if I will get an iBook/Powerbook or a Windows Notebook. I’m totally sold out with the power of the Mac, but after thinking of it, I will settle for Windows and will just start of with a MacMini for my use at home. But I’ll buy the MacMini when I come back from the Philippines. The my other desktop will run Linux.

Now that I have decided to get a Windows laptop, where do I buy it? What brand? I first searched on the websites of HP, Dell and Sony.

Initially, just by looking at the displayed packages, Dell has nice deals, good prices, low monthly payments. But all three websites had a “Customize” option. You choose the parts you want and the site computes the price along with the monthly payments. It tells you anyway if you are putting things that are not compatible so you can fix your options.

After customizing, making the options as similar as I can on all three brands, guess what’s the result? Dell, the one with the cheapest advertised prices, suddenly became the most expensive among the three. And the best deal was on HP.

I chatted with John on his views of the matter… Although he is a Mac advocate, he said since I am a PC guy, buy a Windows laptop and not a Mac. Which I agree, and I’d just buy a MacMini when I get back to the US.

He shared his views on using credit. And low monthly payments on a long term makes you pay for something for so long, until your laptop is old already and there are new ones out and you are still paying for the old one you have. But he also knows my concern of building up my credit history, since here in the US, no credit history, it is like you are unknown when you will buy a house or car. So he suggested to ask them if using credit will really help my credit history.

I am still studying all my options. I’ll let you all know what I got in my next posting.