Laptops, Netbooks, Ultrabooks, and You.

I am a big believer in using what you have. I am one of those people that is resourceful with the tools around me. My husband is frequently amazed by the meals I make with whatever we have in the kitchen. To me, it is like a puzzle. Use what you have and be as frugal as possible. That way you have money to splurge on other things. That is why I have been trying to use this Kindle Fire tablet and keyboard for the longest.

This is not working for me.

The keyboard is way too small for my chubby fingers. I can’t properly admin from it. The touch screen thing drives me batty. Also, I don’t care what you say, SILK IS NOT A BROWSER (#BrowserBias2018).
While I do own a lovely laptop, my laptop is a behemoth. I hate lugging it anywhere. It is a proper gaming laptop. I need to be able to write and admin the site from my living room, or the break room at work, or wherever I am at. I think it would be conducive to me trying to write more in 2018. Not just for the blog, but in writing prompts and the like. I could be wrong though and it would just devolve into another way for me to read more fan fiction. We shall see.

Intel has trademarked the term Ultrabook. For them it means a line of high-end sub notebook computers that are smaller (think old school Net Book) but has a decent battery life. This is exactly what I am looking for. I need something small and compact. I don’t need to game on it. I need to be able to admin the site, surf the web and write my short butt off. Also, and this is a pure vanity situation, but I need it to fit into my new Kate Spade backpack. There is a small list of older models of Ultrabooks listed on Wikipedia here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Ultrabook_models. That will give you some examples on what I am looking at.
I have some other rules for this new piece of equipment coming into my life:
1. It must be small. No full sized laptops
2. No HP Laptops. I had an incredibly bad experience with HP that nearly caused me to fail a college course several years ago. Ever since then I have been put off HP. HP if by some chance you see this blog, and want to talk to me and prove me wrong about your products, feel free to reach out. Leslie@geekygirlguide.com
3. No Lenovo laptops. Want to know why? Read here: http://money.cnn.com/2015/02/19/technology/security/lenovo-superfish/index.html
4. I need a solid state hard drive
5. No less than 128GB of drive space
6. I would prefer a Windows machine, but would do Linux if everything else was there
7. My price point is $500 dollars. Ideally it would be under $400, but I am not holding my breath on that one. For all of you scoffing at the price, saying I will not find what I want for that price, you better watch out. I love a challenge. Also, one thing I love more than reading? PROVING PEOPLE WRONG!

So that is it as far as my requirements. I must tell you, when I first started writing this, I scoffed because I thought I only had one or two requirements. Turns out I am slightly picky. Picky is good though. It will ensure I get what I need and what I want. I’ll be taking you along on #UltrabookWatch2k18 with me. I’ll be researching Ultrabooks and writing about what I find here, using the requirements up above to see if what I find is a good fit for me. I hope you will come along with me on this journey. Maybe you will find something you didn’t know you were looking for as well.