Notebook

Note-taking is one of those topics that appear to have been solved long ago, yet offer plenty of opportunity for new contestants. There are multiple reasons for that, but for me the number one is encryption. The major players, Microsoft OneNote, Evernote, and Google Keep, store your thoughts and ideas in plain text on any synchronized device as well as their cloud servers. In the age of hacks, leaks, and exploits it does not take much to conjure up scenarios where those thoughts become public knowledge all of a sudden.

My current laptop is nearly three years old. That is a pretty long time, and I have contemplated getting a new machine more than once in the last years. I even went so far as to buy a more fancy replacement, but that attempt failed miserably. After using the new device for only a few days I realized that I had taken my Lenovo T520’s qualities for granted too much. I had thought a sleeker, more modern notebook would have all its qualities, too, albeit in a more appealing hull. Boy, was I wrong. As I wrote after trying to work on a Sony:

I have been using Lenovo laptops for more than seven years. They never failed me - not a single hardware fault or software instability in all those years. OK, not everything was great - I distinctly remember the R60 which had an atrociously bad screen - but apart from a few glitches here and there IBM come Lenovo delivered great quality again and again. And yet here I am ordering my first laptop from an entirely different manufacturer. How come?

For a geek, one of the most fun things is choosing a new toy. I experienced this once again when I needed to buy a new laptop computer. The selection process was a lengthy one, during which I looked at and considered practically every model on the market. The benefits of that are twofold: I get a new device, whose strengths I appreciate and whose weaknesses I accept because I know there is no other model better suited for my needs on the market. You get this: a very personal laptop computer buyer’s guide.