I picked up a new acer laptop last weekend for 170$ from Canada Computers.

On one hand, the keyboard is crap, it’s a bit slow, the screen has poor viewing angles and the wifi is a bit flakey.

On the other, it was 170$, the screen is minimally adequate, battery life is decent, has usb3, and after I replace the HD with a SSD, there will be no moving parts because it’s fanless. Did I mention it’s 170$? I also like the multi-touch touchpad. My current laptop is a 10 years old IBM ThinkPad – the keyboard is glorious. Everything else is suffering… although CrunchBang linux actually made it seem a lot faster than it was.

Since I need win7+ on the move, and since I already have a win7 desktop that’s only 8 years old and was such a beast then that it still functions now, I picked up the cheapest thing that met my needs and I’m happy with it. In a year or three maybe I’ll see something better, or maybe I won’t need windows anymore. I think I want a luxury, low power laptop and I couldn’t find anything out there for me this year. Maybe I’ll have better luck next year.