Best PC laptop for GTD applications?

[John_Kristian]

Hi GTDers,

Brand new to GTD tech and I need to get a new LT since my ancient Dell will not support the newest software and it's likely to crash given its age. My budget is up to about $1400; I like the Dell XPS models due to their security, but I do transport it back and forth from the office 5x/week so it needs to be sturdy. Consumer Reports likes the Dell, but reviews from other places seem mixed.
Any feedback gratefully appreciated,
JK

 

[hiitinayuri]

I don't think the power or age of the computer actually matters in order to implement GTD. I'm sorry for the directness, but whenever I have somebody ask me what computer they should buy, I always have to ask, what's wrong with the computer you have now? And what do you want to do with the computer? If they say something like, surf web, do word documents and the like. Then the answer is always simple. First try to reinstall a fresh copy of your operating system, and if that fails and it's still too slow, then you need to be honest. Is it slow because you want to use it to play games? If the answer is no, then I would recommend installing a Linux operating system.

Because ultimately, if you are just surfing the web and using word processing, then any os can handle a simple text file. WordPad, Notepad++ Vim, Cherrytree (for outlining), Lion (for outlining) this programs are so lightweight and simple that I would find it difficult to believe that the computer has issues with that.

Otherwise, the only other solution would be to explicitly define what you mean by "newest software" so that the requirements of the software can be spec'd thus giving you a minimum requirement.

If you want to play games, buy a new computer, but I can't imagine that a GTD software would bog down a system so much. If it did, I would doubt it would be simple enough to be usable.

Those are my $0.02