advice from current and former WM students

Squiddy
Fri, 05 Jun 2009 10:20:17 +0000

My son wants one with a larger screen and I was wondering if that would be awkward to carry around.



You/he may also consider a more portable notebook, and a larger monitor for the room that would do treble-duty as a large screen notebook monitor, tv, and DVD / game console display. Some notebooks have HDMI outputs, and some tv’s have VGA/DVI inputs.

I’ve had 17-inch notebooks - you don’t want that - too big to put down, too big for most bags, and a 9-pound notebook starts to feel like 90 after a long day. if it were me, I’d look for a sub-5 pound, 12-14-inch “gaming” class notebook plus a 20-24" widescreen LCD monitor with a CATV input (for the cable tv system at W&M), and whatever input interface is compatible with the notebook (there are a lot of choices, but HDMI or DisplayPort are probably the two I’d look for.) Some monitors also support DVI or VGA inputs, which are compatible with a lot more notebooks, but I’d avoid that if I could.

Macbooks have the Mini Displayport interface, so if you can find a monitor that supports that plus cable tv, that’d be great, otherwise, you’ll need an adapter.

It sounds like a lot of choices - and it is - but it’s not unmanageable.