<div style='font: 10pt verdana; text-align: left; padding: 0% 10% 0% 10%; '>After having a laptop for a while, I've realized/concluded a few things:<ul><li>Eventually, you <i>will</i> want to be more mobile. I made my apartment wireless because I had this great laptop, but I was still constrained to using it either at my desk, or very close to it. I felt silly. And even though I don't bring my laptop to campus regularly, I find that I'm bringing it with me for group meetings very often, and will use it for presentations.<li>Those few extra pounds make a difference. The guy I'm working with on a group project has a 15 inch PowerBook. Sitting on my couch with my 7 pound Dell feels a lot heaving than sitting on my couch with his 5.5 pound PowerBook in my lap.<li>PowerBooks have the best physical design of any laptop I've seen, hands down. Most PC laptop screens (like mine) don't start until about two inches above the base - that's a lot of wasted space. PowerBook screens have much smaller borders. This fact alone probably cuts down on the size of the machine the most. The screens also attach at the bottom of the base, instead of on top of it. This means the screens can't go all the way down, but I could live with that since again, it cuts down on the size of the machine.<li>When the computer is as close to you as a laptop is, you don't need huge screens. I like my 15.4 screen, although honestly, I'd probably be okay with one a bit smaller.</ul>I know I probably sound like I'm trying to sell you on PowerBooks, but I really do think they're the best laptop out there. Like me, though, you're probably really used to Windows. (I have another reason for wanting a PowerBook - OSX is Unix based, which I'm sure you don't care about.) So I doubt you'd actually decide to change the OS you use. But do I suggest you consider looking at a smaller laptop.</div>
