The keyboard of my Vaio is starting to act funny, and I guess the 512MB RAM and 50GB hard disc don’t quite cut it anymore either. It’s been serving me well for the past 3 years, longer then any desktop PC I had before, so I think it’s time to finally put it to rest. I’m currently ogling the Samsung X360, the only things I don’t like is the price and the Intel graphics chip. But damn everything else is sexy. I have the following must-haves for my notebook of choice:

  • a 13.5 inch display, this makes the notebook just as big as an A4 sheet of paper, anything smaller is too small, and anything bigger is too clunky :)
  • weight, I’m dragging around the notebook quite a bit, so the lighter, the better
  • battery life, I like to work when travelling by train, but only ICE trains have power sockets in Germany
  • needs to run VisualStudio, and must be able to run my own DirectX stuff (this rules out MacOS X, and using a Powerbook to run Windows is kind of a sacrilege, oh and… only web designers use Macs, rite?)
  • needs to have at least Shader Model 3.0 graphics
  • needs to have enough oompfh for Vista and Windows 7

Some of the new Vaios are runner-ups as well, but they are even more overpriced then the X360 (which is quite typical for Sony products) and I loath how Sony pre-loads the machine with heaps of useless software. I need to check out whether Samsung is guilty of this as well, but it’s hard to imagine they’d be worse then Sony.