[Please note this is an old blog post now and laptops and technology have moved on so please treat any information as old]

From my recent blog on the best 15 inch laptops out there I was talking with a colleague Henrick and he raised the question as to why I was looking at 15 inches. In Asia 14 inch and sometimes 13 inch are more popular - they love stuff small and cute in Japan for example. But here the 15 inch has dominated main stream laptop sales and for me this has also been the size laptop I have looked at in the past.

HP Envy Spectre 14 xt

Thanks to CNET for the image

 
I did have a serious consideration 4 years ago on the subject but the 15 inch won out.  This is the laptop I have now the dell 1530 XPS which is due for replacement as the screen is having freezing issues depending on the opening and closing movement (hinge) a slight adjustment gets rid of the green slime and all is well. Its also running the rubbish Vista. It will last me out until windows 8 perhaps later this year and the arrival of the Ivy Bridge 3rd gen Intel processors which should be much better for battery consumption. At the time I went for the 15 inch version and didn't regret it. I have perhaps watched 50 movies in 4 years and could be argued that a 14 inch might have been ok to do this as well. The display is a very important consideration for me. In todays market so long as I can connect to a big flat screen then working on a 14 inch laptop (usually sharing the same keyboard) should offer advantages giving up few of the disadvanages. Im actually tapping this out using a Samsung notepad an 11 inch N120 and it is fun for a short time to work on this. I think I would be fine full time with a 14inch machine, some 13 inch machines cram 14 inch worth of resolution into them but I would not go this low.

So thanks Henrick for muddying the water and giving me a whole new bunch of machines to compare ! I am finding myself looking at the smaller siblings of the same machines found in my 15 inch laptop reviews. Namely Dells XPS 14z, the HP Envy 14 and the Samsung Series 5, 7 and 9's.

The display becomes more critical for me so for these what are the resolutions for these ?

Dell 14z - A dissapointing 1366 by 768

HP Envy 14 Spectre1600-by-900 (What I want) but the RAM is just 4GB preventing me from going for it !

Please share these around and enjoy a world less serious.

Lads are just a bit different in India ! Le Beouf Touch

If you like your fashion so much so that you are buying it so often and throwing it away after a few wears out then you probably find Primark a great place. Its a zoo in their Oxford Street store with all ages sexes though mostly younger females doing the rounds. You see I think its about the feeling of buying something and that new smell. It goes so fast you need to get back in there tuesday evening to find the next fix.

You can buy plastic shoes that fit the bill of value and fashion. I'm not fully against such low priced items provided they are not sweat shop fabricated but this is another story and a complex one. Lets just see the side of fun for the moment and the colours of spring into summer. You see these shoes could be fabricated by moulding them and there isn't a stitch in sight.

Its the new UK punk style !

I chose this book to read thinking it was just a usual ‘chick lit’ book. I’ve been embroiled in the urban fantasy genre for a couple of years now and just fancied a good old fashioned love story to get lost in, but what I actually got was quite the opposite, an anti- love story if you will.

We first meet 26 year old Lou Clark as her boss decides to close down the café where she’s worked for the past 6 years, leaving her jobless and skill less. We follow her to interviews with Syed her jobcentre advisor who packs her off to menial jobs in a chicken factory and fast food restaurants, which she hates. Syed becomes so frustrated with her, that he suggests jobs in lap dancing and pole dancing clubs! Finally he sends her on an interview for a carer’s role, for which she makes sure there would be no ‘arse wiping’ involved. Much to her surprise she’s offered the job of carer to ex city high – flyer Will Traynor, who through a cruel twist of fate had been mown down by a motorcyclist whilst crossing a London street two years previously. Now quadriplegic with very limited movement in one arm, Will is suicidal and cantankerous 

What follows is a painful and poignant story of Lou’s desperate attempt at making Will’s life worth living again. Whilst she may fail at that, what she actually succeeds in accomplishing is learning to love herself and make her own life worth living again.
This is so far my book of the year, and I will definitely be reading further titles by Jojo Moyes. She’s an extremely talented writer who manages to write very rounded, if not always likeable ‘real’ characters; a rare oddity in today’s book market. A brave story that is well researched, I was beside myself with grief at the end of the book, and it’s been a long times since a book has provoked such an emotional journey in me.