A tale of two laptops

One of these things is not like the other

Here are two laptop computers.

The computer on the left …

• Has a big, beautiful screen that renders movies (and Pirates of the White Sands) in dazzling detail
• Has a very good built-in speaker system that gives decent, but far from perfect, sound quality, plus the ability to get really high-quality sound through earphones
• Has a full QWERTY keyboard plus a numeric keypad, although the arrow keys are awkwardly placed
• Has a hard drive and a DVD/CD reader-burner
• Runs about 4 hours on a full battery charge
• Is fully compatible with iPods and the iTunes software
• Weighs a ton and should really be considered “luggable” rather than portable
• Is clunky and unrefined in appearance, so as to be ashamed of in public
• Runs on Vista, which still has a lot of bugs even more than a year after introduction
• Runs all of the standard software that the rest of the world expects when you send files, because you don’t have any choice other than Microsoft
• Didn’t cost a lot

The computer on the right …

• Has a small screen that renders colors well but can’t do justice to a big movie
• Has a dismal sound system that really makes earphones a must
• Has a minimal keyboard with no numeric keypad
• Has to use plug-in peripherals to use DVDs and CDs and may not even have a hard drive
• Runs about 4 hours on a full battery charge
• Is fully compatible with iPods and the iTunes software
• Weighs almost nothing and is truly portable
• Has way cool styling that attracts attention at an Internet-enabled eating establishment
• Runs on Leopard, which seems to have been mostly free of start-up bugs, but still has a few
• Runs all of the standard software that the rest of the world expects when you send files – provided you get the Microsoft software
• Cost considerably more than comparable computers that use Windows.

Here, you have a demonstration of the fact that there is no one computer that will be right for everybody. The one on the left, while not perfect, suits my needs very well. The one on the right, again, doesn’t suit Gerald’s needs perfectly, but it is the one that does the best job for what he wants.