Well, I may as well post it here. I need a laptop, but I'm particular about them.
*None of that slick, glossy stuff. I can't keep it pristine forever, and I'll just get pissed as soon as little scratches start to show, so a plainly textured plastic is best.
*Netbooks are out of the question. I can't do Gimp on a screen the size of a glorified smart phone.
*Matte screen. Gloss shows fingerprints and a hand is the most convenient way to clean off dust. And it reflects whatever is on my shirt like a mirror which is a real pain in high-light situations. Matte screens diffuse the reflection so it's not as obstructive to seeing what's on the screen.
*Frontal speakers. I sleep with the music library from my computer and it sounds like shit with the screen closed if they're mounted above the keyboard. Bottom mounted are useless because I actually use the laptop on my lap so the sound gets muffled by my body. I don't give a shit about an extra bass speaker or beats audio or anything so long as I can hear it with the way I use it.
*A screen latch for peace of mind.
*Numerical keypads irritate me because they're duplicate keys that shift everything to the left. I never got into the habit of using them, so they just get in my way.
*CD/DVD is pretty much a gimmie these days, I'm not interested in Blu-Ray since I don't buy movies.
*Trackpad must have a scroll area, preferably one which is marked on the pad. Also right and left click below the trackpad. Above doesn't make any sense because you can brush the pad and move the cursor when you go to click and then suddenly you're on gnaa or something. Rubber/silent buttons are preferable.
*USB? Working USB? Please? And if it can supply enough power to run a laptop HD off of it, that'd be the bees knees.
*I really don't like those power plugs that have a 90degree bend coming out the back. Those do a lot more physical damage if someone trips on the cord.
*I like IDE hard disks because they don't require an external power supply to run on decent USB ports. It's nice to be able to access my disk from any computer by just plugging it into the USB cord. SATA is acceptable, but wouldn't be my first choice. And no SSDs, I'd burn through those so fast it's unreal.
*No formal warranties please, I can't stand trying to talk with conventional tech support people. They either have thick accents which I can't understand over a phone, or they walk me through the same baby steps I've already tried at least 5 times before even considering subjecting myself to tech support, or both. And since nobody sells preinstalled machines without all the bonus junk and trial software I don't care about, there's a 0% chance of me keeping the OS it comes with.
*It should be able to run XP. Meaning any necessary drivers should be available for XP. It's a little thing, but the font anti-aliasing in Vista/7 drives me nuts. And I've yet to find out if you can still use a classic Windows theme in 7. The rounded corners and bubbles and stuff that aero has just wastes precious screen area, and I multitask 'til you can't read the window names.
*I'll also probably be using Ubuntu or some other similar distro as the main OS since I can't be bothered with antivirus and security management.
*An SD card slot is great, but not required.
*I also like media control strips, but that's also a non-critical feature.
*Power plugs like pic related are nice because they won't break off inside of the hole and leave a piece behind.
*I'm kind of partial to HP. Don't know why. I'm not sure if I'm fickle enough for this to be a problem.

>>626
Reminds me of something.