Following on from the last post about field computers, here is what I reccomend if you’re going to be doing field work and need a computer and want it to be a Dell.

The two major considerations when purchasing a laptop are how mobile and how powerful. The combination of the two determine how much money you’ll need to spend and on which model. The laptop market is usually broken into roughly 3 categories: desktop replacement, standard, and “thin and light”. Because most sizes can, given enough money, be configured with a wide range of power, it’s works well to decide on a size and then find one in that category that matches your power requirements.

When deciding on size you are trading off between comfortable usability and mobility. On the one hand, larger screens and better keyboards make for a much less irritating computing experience. A larger laptop can be used with almost the same ease as a full desktop – maybe more because the screens are generally better for your eyes. On the other hand, people buy laptops because they want to be able to take them places, and as a hiker and world traveller you know that the difference between an object weighing 3 pounds and 8 pounds can make all the difference in determining wether it actually gets to come along with you, regardless of what you had originally intended when you bought it.

Mobility

I’ll work from the following assumptions about your usage (if these are off then keep that in mind when interpreting my recommendations): the laptop will be transported around to different locations but not actually taken out and used “in the field”. At it’s most mobile it will be travelling by car and set up in the evenings in whatever lodgings you are using while moving from place to place. If (if) you are located out of a central base and making day trips, then you will only have to make it travel from the US/Canada to that central base and back. Outside of the field season you will probably want to use it stand-alone in your office. As such I figure you can probably ignore the very smallest laptops which are meant for constant movement. I would therefore expect you’ll want to focus on the “standard” category. These are defined by 14″ or at most 15″ screens and weights of 4 to 6 pounds. Give that, what I will do is pick out three machines: one super small thin-and-light, one compact but reasonably powerful “standard” and one powerful desktop replacement.

Power

As we discussed, the most power hungry application you will be running is GIS. Wordprocessing and stats can be run comfortably even on considerably slower computers, but it can take an irritating long time for slow systems to load and display large amounts of GIS data. On the plus side, based on the limited amount I know of your research, the GIS datasets you will be working with are probably not of the massive kinds that remote sensors sometimes attempt to muck about with. So really, you can probably work very comfortably for the next few years with a less-than-bleeding-edge system that will sit right about in the sweet spot of price and technology: one for which you will not have to a pay premium for the latest least available processors etc. That way you can spend some of the savings on nice add-ons, specifically lots of RAM memory. Especially for GIS there’s nothing better than heaps of RAM.

What model?

You mentioned you wanted a Dell, which is a fine idea. Dell always seems to have made decent laptops, and they have a huge line up, all of which can be customized for purchase so there is no lack of choices.

Dell gives you the option of custom configuring all of their laptops and then returns a price based on your specifications. What I’ve done is gone through the Dell lineup of laptops and configured each of them to what seemed like the best sweet spot between cost and power. In a lot of cases upgrading the power of the laptop costs an exponential amount, in each case I’ve tried to buy as much power as possible without going past that sweet inflection point. Below is a matrix showing the physical dimensions, weight and cost of each model as I configured it.

In every case I went for the following minimum requirements:

RAM: 512mb of RAM in 2 slots

Hard drive: 40gb

Media drive: CD writer/DVD reader combo drive

Tech Support: 3 years of on-site next business day service support with “gold” tech support

If one of these options was not available for a given model or prohibitivley expensive, I’ve noted that in the ‘notes’ section.

Dell offers a range of line ups. The ‘latitude’ and ‘inspiron’ models more or less compete with each other, the ‘precision workstations’ are meant for graphics intensive use and I’ve ignored them. Within the latitude line there are two sub-lineups, the Ds and the Cs. The Cs are the old style of Dell: they look like all Dell laptops always have. The Ds are newer, cooler looking with a “tri-metal chassis” which may be more rugged in the field, I don’t know. The “x” is their super small version. The Inspiron models come with a fancier case and cool colour inserts. I’ve ignored appearance in making my choices, but you may want to consider it. There’s nothing wrong with cool factor.

Many of these machines have the new Intel “centrino” certification, some don’t. All it really means is it can use wireless connections without needing a wireless card. Since you’ll mostly be working places that either don’t have any connection or use a cable, and you can always just buy a wireless card, I’ve ignored it.

Except for the super small ones, no Dell machines come with “firwire” aka IEE1394 plugs. Which is dumb. But they all have USB 2.0. Unless noted, all have serial and parallel plugs. So you should be able to plug almost all feild devices into almost all of these. And Dell always offers “port replicators” as a ~$150 add on for connectivity if you need them.

In a couple of cases a given model has both a 14″ and 15″ screen version available.

I’ve marked 1st choices with a >, 2nd choices with a *.

please note, dear reader, that this table got a little gumpered. if you really care let me know and I will actually sit down and format it

height width depth weight screen cpu notes price
latitude
c400 1 11.4 9.4 3.6 12.1 p3m 1.2 xtrnl cd, no parallel $2200
c540 1.4 12.5 9.9 5.4 14.1 cel 1.7 $1825
c610 1.4 12.5 9.9 4.9 14.1 p3m 1.2 $2300
>c640 1.4 12.5 9.9 5.4 14.4 p4m 2.0 sxga $1900
c840 1.8 13.0 10.9 7.4 15 p4m 2.2 uxga $2125
>d400 1 11.6 9.6 3.7 12.1 p?m 1.4 xtrnl cd, no parallel $2140
d500 1.3 12.6 10.2 4.8 14.1 p?m 1.3 30gb hd $1870
*d600 1.2 12.4 10.1 4.7 14.1 p?m 1.6 $2100
d800 1.5 14.2 10.8 7.0 15.4 p?m 1.4 wxga $1850
x200 0.8 10.7 8.9 2.9 12.1 p3m 0.9 384mb 30gb hd mediabase $2070
inspiron
1100 1.8 12.9 10.8 7.2 14.1 p4 2.2 $1670
1.8 13.1 10.8 7.9 15 p4 2.2 $1820
500m 1.2 12.4 10.1 5.0 14.1 p?m 1.4 sxga $2050
600m 1.2 12.4 10.1 5.0 14.1 p?m 1.4 $2104
5100 1.8 12.9 10.8 7.2 14.1 p4m 2.7 $1760
> 1.8 13.1 10.8 7.8 15 p4m 2.7 $1804
5150 1.8 13.1 10.8 7.9 15 p4m 3.1 sxga $2070
8500 1.5 14.2 10.9 7 15.4 p4m 2.4 wxga $2220

legend:

p3m: pentium 3 mobile
cel: celeron (no on-die cache, less speed for the speed)
p4m: pentium 4 mobile
p?m: uspecified pentium mobile chip (presumably either 3 or 4, both are fine)
sxga: allows higher-resolution graphics output than standard
wxga: “wide-screen” version of sxga
uxga: even better
hd: hard drive
xtrnl cd: cd drive not built in, attaches to outside with cable
mediabase: optional part that laptop can attach to and sit on containing cd and floppy drive

Recommendations:

thin and light:
The d400 is a good smallest option. It’s got a 1.4ghz processor which should actually be ok for you, with plenty of RAM space. The only real drawbacks are that there is no built in CD/DVD drive and no parallel port for attaching older field equipment. If you are more concerned about mobility than screen size this one would probably work very well. It has the nice new “tri-metal chassis” and centrino wi-fi connectivity. You might have to buy a port replicator and carry it around if you are attaching hard core field equipment later.

standard:
The c640 has a bigger more readable screen and mucho power (p4m 2.0ghz) for ~$250 bucks less ($1900) and about 2 pounds more weight and volume, making it compact but plenty effective. It has the older case. For $200 more you could get the new metal/centrino case in the d600 but with less power (1.6ghz). For *another* $160 on top of that you could push the d600 to 1.7ghz but it’s not really worth it. I’d say go with the c640.

desktop replacement:
if you don’t think you’re going to be moving it around too much and you want a full luxo field workstation, the 15″ screen and burning hot magma 2.7ghz p4m chip on the inspiron 5100 15″ version would kick all kinds of ass for years to come for a sweet $1800. It also weighs 8 pounds and would add a lot of bulk to your luggage but that’s the price you pay for power and budget. You could also get the nice bamboo green case insert to go with it.

final reccomendations:

I’d get the d400 or the c640 depending on your priorities. Since you’re going to be using it indoors a lot, I’d say probably the c640. It doesn’t have a lot of cool factor but you get a lot for the money.