The ultimate travel power notebook

I’ve searched the world over and found my true love!  I have extremely high standards when it comes to selecting a new laptop.  I was the founder of WidowPC, while I was there it was one of the world’s leading high performance PC boutiques.  I’ve sold the company and I’m now doing pretty much whatever I want, but that old-time custom boutique spirit is still with me.  

So, I know what I want down to the nuts and bolts.  And what I want is a nearly silent, light notebook with exceptionally long battery life, lots of muscle for MS Office, light programming, HTML editing, some graphics editing, lots of online multitasking, airplane work (14″ or smaller) and a great “feel” to the keyboard.

Consumer reports helped a bit, as did several reviews.  In the end, the HP DV3T and the MacBook’s new all aluminum unibody were the contest finalists, with the HP DV3T winning by a hair.  For better or worse, I’m addicted to the Microsoft compatible software.  So, if I went with a MacBook I’d have to install Vista.  No biggie.  That was my preference until I noticed that the MacBook needs a power upgrade to match it’s price tag.

The closest feature-to-feature comparison MacBook steps into the ring at a wallet-smoking $1,599.  Apple somewhat ironically throws in a “free shipping” bone with that, as if I’d care about free shipping if I had already swallowed the $1,600 barbed hook.   
Here’s what I’d get for $1,600 from the Apple store (screen capture, apologies for the poor picture quality):

And here, on the left, is what I’d get from HP for roughly $650.   Add to that HP.com is offering a free upgrade to 4GB of memory and a free upgrade to a 320GB hard drive. Add a 2.4GHz Intel Core 2 Duo Centrino based chip for an extra $200 at HP.com.

Both notebooks are roughly the same size chassis and display (13.3″ LED widescreen). The Macbook, certainly outranks any PC for style and skinny curves…it’s just sexy. The two are pretty much equal as far as standard battery life, weight, color choices, LED display, customer support, wireless range & technology.

The MacBook has better graphics power for games with the Nvidia graphics card, but I don’t care about games for this purchase decision. I used to be a big gamer, but in the past few years I’ve gravitated to live life-as-a-game. That’s another story. For now, my point is I’d rather have extended battery life than that extra 3D gaming muscle.

In addition, I can upgrade the HP DV3 battery to a 9 cell extending the battery life by about an hour.  Despite HP’s excessive 7 hour battery life claims, my guess is I’ll see 4 – 5 hours (PC World got 5). Which is still quite a bit more than the MacBook puts out.

So, the big differences are price and sexy-style. The HP bitch slaps the Mac on price for value. The Mac counter attacks with a sexy strut around the PC wall flower. But, daa-yum, she’s expensive!  What a problem, to have two smokin’ computers, either of which I’m sure I’d be happy with.  But I can only choose one. Instead of chasing the supermodel, what if I could court the wall flower and teach her how to strut her stuff?

After a few searches and a few phone calls, I found the geek-to-chic talent I’d need to pimp the geeky HP into a jaw dropping, heart breaker.  

Pimp No. 1: Like a woman, a PC’s skin is so important! IamHumanNow.com, makeover artists for Mac skins, now have skin makeovers for PCs. I chose the bamboo skin seen below, but they have plenty of options if you prefer something a little louder.

So, that pretty much makes the PC’s skin look great, even eye-catching. But, even with Vista’s improved user interface (compared to XP), I want something much more sexy…something a little more supermodel Mac-able.  My experience in the custom PC industry comes in strong for me, here, again…

Pimp No. 2: As soon as I get the machine on my desk, I’ll uninstall every peice of softare that comes with it except for the operating system.  Then, I’ll add the good stuff…  

My friends over at Stardock make some great user interface customizations for Windows that can make a PC look great, even look like a Mac or better!  Pretty sweet stuff, huh?  I’m going with StarDock WindowBlinds and StarDock Fences.  Between the two, I’ll have the OS X desktop feel with WindowBlinds, plus some sweet desktop icon organization with Fences.

Some tantalizing pics of this high endurance, nearly silent sweet heart… (yeah, she’s a tease!)

[First three images courtesy of, my friend, Darren Gladstone's PC World's HP DV3T Review, the last one is my photoshoped, artist rendition of how the bamboo skin will look]

So, my PC wall flower will be strutting her stuff with the cute confidence of the girl next door who just realized she’s HOT!  And I don’t have to deal with the ego bombshell.  You Mac lovers (including me)… we know there’s an ego thing there.  I don’t want the drama AND the price tag that comes with it.  That doesn’t mean Macs don’t continue to turn my head, but HP’s got the girl-next-door thing going on, for sure.  MacBook, we can still be friends. *wink*

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