Deputy Director of Notebooks

It’s that time again: Some families in the Commonwealth are launching their kids to distant colleges in the mainland. I am not (yet) aware that there is a CNMI Department of Notebook Computers to provide free computers to the Right People, so, barring that, the indignities of the free market will require people to pay for notebook computers for their school-bound kin.

It’s an important purchase. It’s an important choice. That’s why I take a look at it here every one or two years, as new generations of computers are rolling out.

Although I usually have some brands or models to suggest, this time around, I’d rather highlight the fact that there’s really no objectively best computer. When it comes to notebooks, we all have different priorities. Every notebook is a series of tradeoffs. For example:

Someone who types 100 words a minutes will have different priorities than a hunt-and-peck typist.

Someone who writes spreadsheets will have different needs than someone writing free-verse poetry and nose-flute sonatas, who will have different needs than someone doing computerized graphic art.

Someone who travels a lot with their computer has different needs than someone who doesn’t.

Someone with a large inventory of old peripherals, or of old software, will be in a different situation than a newbie who is gearing up from a clean slate.

Someone who likes Windows Vista has different options than someone who would rather drink a pint of weed poison than use Vista.

And someone who plays Turbo Killer Space Munchies on his computer will have different priorities than someone who doesn’t.

Our perspectives are, therefore, necessarily subjective. As for me, I travel a lot, so lightness and reliability are critical; and I am a fast touch-typist, so I have definite preferences for keyboard layouts as well. I use old software that I need (for example, Quattro Pro version 7, for spreadsheets, has yet to be beat; subsequent versions are worse, not better. This de-evolution in software is surprisingly, if not sickeningly, common). I don’t play Space Munchies, or edit video, or download music, or use Skype, or use web cams, or want the latest software, but there are a lot of people who will check “all of the above.”

Although a generic desktop computer can serve just about everyone, there is no one-size-fits-all notebook.

Would you like to know what brands the world is buying? I’ve been curious about that myself.

An outfit called Digitimes published data (see my blog for a link) on global notebook computer market share. In descending order, the top five notebook players for the first quarter of this year were HP (20.8 percent market share), Dell (15.1 percent), Acer (14.6 percent), Toshiba (9.3 percent), and Lenovo (7.5 percent). Apple, by the way, was listed seventh at 4.6 percent, but they are growing very fast and overtook Sony (now in eighth place).

Boiling things down to Saipan’s case, I asked computer store MEGAbyte of Saipan to highlight a few of their wares. They mentioned two Acers (one with a 15.4 inch screen, another with a 17 incher) and a Toshiba (15.4 inches). I think a buyer is far better off going with a local vendor than running risks from mail order, since, for one thing, it takes hands-on time with a notebook to see how it fits and feels, and, for another, local support is a real ace up the sleeve when setting up a computer.

By contrast, if you’d like some new gray hairs, try having a notebook computer sent from a distant vendor, only to discover it doesn’t work right, or is poorly designed, only to discover the vendor won’t do a thing about it. No vendor wants an “open box” to re-stock, broken or otherwise. Your credit card company will NOT automatically play financial Batman and rescue you from these problems.

If it seems like everyone, not just students, is shopping for a notebook, that’s because, well, they really are. Global notebook sales have (says Digitimes) boomed by a 35 percent annual rate.

That’s a heck of a trend, so maybe it really is time to appoint me Deputy Director of Notebooks. I’m not qualified for such a job, but since when does that matter?