Win7 Question

bruno · 18 Oct 2009

Hello Windows 7 users:

At present I use Windows 2003 as home computer and a Windows XP in a laptop as an office/travel computer. I wish to consolidate my computing usage into 1 single computer. Here is what I wish to do, with some related questions about how to do it. All feedbacks, comments, advice, suggestions, don’t-do etc. are welcome.

I wish to use a portable computer, such a Netbook, Notebook and laptop. The smaller and lighter will be the better. On my desk, I wish to put in a KVM (keyboard, video display, mouse). I will dock the portable computer with the KVM when working long hours at my desk. Else, I travel with the portable.

My operating system of choice is Windows 7, of course. I called Asus about their Eee PC 1000 HE. They don’t have a computer with preloaded Windows 7 yet. I will be running Stata and SAS statistics software on this machine. I am looking for a 64 bit machine, with at least 2 GB memory (probably 4 GB would be better since Windows 7 supports 4 GB), and 1 or 2 GHz of single or dual processors. My first question would be which portable would you recommend in this situation?
I looked around but could not find many built like this. Which shop would build to fit at fair price?

Most of the time, I prefer a monitor in portrait orientation mode on my desk. I noticed some 24 inch LCD monitors for $200 but could not find one that can be used in portrait orientation. Dell has a 21 inch that goes portrait mode but it costs twice as much. Any monitor suggestion will be welcome.

USB keyboard and mouse are easy to find. With limited number of USB 2.0 ports, is there a device I could plug in and multiple my USB ports instantly, like with a surge protector type outlet?

While most computers come in with 100 G plus hard drive, I do not expect space problem for applications and storage of office type files. I also use with the Stata and SAS statistics software some relatively large datasets. With this portable computer, on the go or at my desk, I wish to use an external storage type device of 1 TB or plus. In fact, I wish to buy 2 identical such devices at once and use them as backup for each other. So, I wish to have one with backup software and password protected/encrypted access. Which brand would you recommend?

Thank you.

bruno

Zen00 · 18 Oct 2009

If you're running stat software, you're going to need the RAM, 4gb then.

That rules out netbooks, which don't support more than 2gb of RAM because of the Atom processor (so anything with an Intel Atom processor is out).

You can easily buy USB hubs. There are keyboards you can buy with them built in, making them two in one functionality for you.

For your external storage, you might want to wait till USB 3.0 becomes available on a computer, so you can transfer almost 5gb of data per second. That will be sometime mid next year or so.