after many years of use, my thought is this. unless you want a serious gaming platform that you can easily move from the living room to the bed room. otherwise:
It’s best to find a laptop with the intent of finding the lightest and the most long lasting/energy saving laptops out there, given that your reading wouldn’t be hindered by the smallness of the screen.
i think buying a laptop as a temporary powerful replacement for the desktop is a bad idea. first it will be a lot larger and heavier. You might not think about that too much when you buy it, how heavy can it be? but when time comes that you are deciding whether or not you want to bring your lapop along, it makes a huge difference.
it’s the same with cameras, it’s awesome to have a huge DSLR with great performance. But chances are a lot of time you’d leave it at home because it’s such a hassle, only to regret not having a camera with you. in that case you should have a small functional DC, instead of another powerful DC that’s as bulky as your DSLR.
In this case, your laptop should be that small and functional DC. And your powerful DSLR should be your desktop.
I have personally made that mistake of wanting the most powerful laptop. And it ends up sitting at home collecting dust often. Because when you are at home you rather have a large monitor, and chances are that won’t be on your laptop, and getting a powerful PC is cheaper anyway.
Second, a powerful laptop often means dies quicker. buying external batteries means a lot of extra weight and space. when you do travel with a laptop, being able to use it for the day without the need to plug it into the wall often means having a computer around or having a brick.
Third, a powerful laptop means you are less likely to want to use it on an airplane. If your job requires a lot of travel, it’s nice to have a laptop that fits nicely on the small tray tables, and can last the duration of the flight. You don’t want to have a laptop that dies on you two hours into the 12 hours flight.
Forth, when you are outside, you are probably doing the basic and necessary tasks anyway. you won’t be say compiling 3D models or doing things that requires a lot of computing power. you can even get a laptop that runs on linux and run Windows 7 on dualboot or Virtual Box, because linux OS will waste less battery than Windows.
Finally, make sure the laptop has excellent heat sink and doesn’t get too hot during use. I think often times that is ignored when people buy laptops. Doesn’t matter large or small, a hot laptop is uncomfortable to use, it slows down the laptop even crashing it.
having said all that, I haven’t been looking for one, so i can’t suggest a model directly. But I have been very tempted by those smaller laptops around.
