Technology for World Travel: Best Travel Laptop (on a reasonable budget)

My friend Celestin from Rwanda asked me yesterday "What's the best laptop?" and I responded in typical tech fashion: "It depends! What do you do with your laptop? How often are you on the road? Do you do anything besides web, email, word processing and PowerPoint?"

Assess your needs

If you're like most of my global traveling colleagues, you usually run just four programs on your laptop: an e-mail client (MS Outlook or Lotus Notes), a web browser (MS Internet Explorer or Firefox), a word processor (MS Word), and presentation software (PowerPoint). Some of you might watch or show DVD movies on your laptop while on the road. (If you can do without a CD/DVD drive while you're on the road, you'll be able to settle for a much smaller and lighter machine but still have access to a CD/DVD drive when you're back in your office.) If this describes your computing habits, then most laptops out there have way more power and features than you need.

Choose a "Top 5" Brand

If you travel or are based outside of North America/Europe, then you should go with a name brand laptop so that your local IT repair facility is more likely to have spare parts. The component that's most likely to need replacing is also one of the more critical components of the laptop: your hard drive. This should limit your choices to the top five manufacturers in terms of global market share: HP (20%), Dell (15%), Acer (13.3%), Toshiba (9.8%) and Lenovo (8.4%). I've found Toshibas to be reliable but often over-priced and Acer doesn't usually make any of the "Top 10" lists so that will reduce us to just three brands: HP, Dell and Lenovo.

Follow the Experts Recommendations But Not Their Wallets

CNET, ZDnet, ConsumerReports (subscriptions required), PC World, Laptop Magazine and others all keep up-to-date lists of their favourite laptops, and some of them (ZDnet, CNET, Consumer Reports) allow you to refine your search to the category you're looking for - I'd suggest refining your search to "Thin-and-light" (4-6 pounds or 2-3 kilos). It may seem a small difference but in your carry on the thin-and-light laptops make a big difference. However, these ranking sites still give you more computer than most travelers really need. Some of these ranking sites will give you lists of cheaper well-recommended laptops but they usually earn their money by reviewing the latest and greatest laptops.

HP Pavillion dv9500t

That said, ConsumerReports had high praise for the HP Pavilion dv9500t (US$1150) while PCWorld also liked its cheaper cousin, the dv6500t (US$1079). The Dell Inspiron 1420 got a very good rating at CNET reviews too but as often with the Inspiron line they get low user reviews. The Dell XPS m1330 has gained great reviews from the experts and users for packing a lot of things into a small and attractive package but you'll pay US$300-400 more than the Inspiron.

Prices vary greatly with Dells, but it's best to check their Outlet store, especially toward the end of their sales quarters (mid-Jan, mid-April, etc) for great deals on factory-refurbished or 'scratch-and-dent' laptops that are greatly discounted because of cosmetic blemishes. In the Lenovo line, the 3000 N200 got a mediocre 7/10 rating at CNET but they took marks off for speakers and gaming performance, something you probably won't care about.

Settle for Less, Save on Stress

Though this is still probably more than you need if you're the kind of user above, the minimum hardware configuration I would look for today in a laptop is a 60GB Hard Drive, 1GB RAM (get 2GB if you can afford it), and a dual-core processor running at 2GHz. Of course that configuration comes in many packages and if you want small and light you'll pay a premium. If you watch for sales and settle for a slightly heavier 6 pound (3 kg) laptop, you can save between US$300-800 on the above prices. For instance on Nov 19 I found a Dell Latitude 620 with 2GHz Dual Core Processor with 80GB HD, 1GB RAM, and a CD-RW/DVD combo drive for US$829, and it had an enhanced video card. The Dell Latitude line takes the punishment of travel a lot better than other laptops and will keep you powered for a reasonable time (up to 6 hours) if you buy the extended battery.