Posted 19 March 2012 - 12:03 AM
My IBM Lenovo Thinkpad T60 has been with me for half a decade. I did use an HP laptop but, well, it did not quite make it through the intensive use that I put my laptops through. The Thinkpad survived because of its solid construction and a lot of other Thinkpad users will tell you the same. The Thinkpad line-up was the reason people went to IBM for laptops. Sure, they were over-priced but they were solidly constructed and lasted longer. Think of it as a Toyota or a Jeep that just keeps going on and on and on. There are a lot of used Thinkpads still out there so if you are trying to decide between a netbook or a second-hand pre-owned laptop, you might want to take a look at what Thinkpads are out there simply because the netbooks just don't have the computational power if you are trying to develop software, work with graphics, or do anything else apart from word processing, email and web browsing. I don't mean to say that netbooks can't be used, but I'm simply saying that it would take longer for a netbook, powered by an Atom processor, to do something that was built for a more mainstream processor.
BTW, you mention that you have 2 computers and a laptop. Do you have a home network setup, or are all of them independent with separate Internet connections?