A short reflection on the last few laptops I’ve purchased. Mainly of interest to compare specs and prices over time. I still have the receipts for the last four computers going back about six years. Did computers get faster or cheaper or both?

This list excludes various computers received as gifts or through work or anything which I didn’t personally decide to purchase.

Prehistory

These are systems I remember purchasing, but the dates and prices are approximate. Their current whereabouts are also unknown.

Fujitsu P2000, with a Transmeta Crusoe at 800Mhz. 128M/20GB, 10” 1280x768. About $2000 purchased sometime around 12/01. Even for the time, it was kind of slow, but it was a lot faster than the 200Mhz Pentium it replaced. Lightest laptop around with a DVD drive, and it was widescreen long before wide was cool. I used this one as my daily system until getting the next Fujitsu far below.

Compaq 1.6Ghz P4. 512M/40GB, 15” 1600x1200. About $1200 (maybe 1400?) around 12/03. Hot, heavy, the P4 was a terrible mobile processor. Due to the weight, this machine never graduated into regular use. I also built a dual Opteron 1.6Ghz workstation for about $1500 in 3/04, which was a comparative screamer.

Modern Era

Now we come to the systems I was able to find receipts for. All these systems are still working and in use today. While not listed specifically, all of them have integrated Intel graphics of the appropriate generation.

Fujitsu S7020. 2Ghz Pentium M, 512M/40GB, 14” 1400x1050. $1678 on 12/1/05. This was a great laptop, very similar to the Thinkpad T series, but with a plastic shell making it slightly lighter. The keyboard layout and feel are almost identical. Primary regret was that the dual core chips came out not long after, otherwise it would have reigned longer as king of the laptops. The battery finally stopped holding a charge however.

Lenovo T60. 2Ghz Core2, 1GB/120GB, 14” 1400x1050. $1396 on 4/24/07. Finally gave in to processor envy, only to discover I probably didn’t need two cores anyway. Oh well. Bought the extended battery, which unfortunately makes it just deep enough to strain my backpack’s laptop pocket. Also quite heavy to carry around all day, but it’s a capable machine.

Apple Macbook. 2.4Ghz Core2, 2GB/160GB, 13” 1280x800. $1299 on 3/18/08. First wide (read: short) screen of the modern era. Purchased only to get into Mac/iPhone development, not because I needed an upgrade. Use it mostly for managing iGadgets with iTunes. Never really settled into it.

Lenovo X200s. 1.8Ghz Core2, 3GB/250GB, 12” 1440x900. $1542 on 8/1/09. My first downgrade. Like a slower version of the T60 with less screen but costing more. It is exceptionally light, however. Bought this one after a long trip with the T60 convinced me I wanted something lighter, but I wasn’t ready to give up a real computer and use a netbook. On the downside, the small battery is something of a joke, mostly just useful to carry between rooms.

HP Pavilion G4. 1.9GHz A4-3300M, 4GB/320GB, 13” 1366x768. $379 on 9/1/11.

Lenovo T430s. 2.6GHz i5-3320M, 4GB/320GB, 14” 1600x900. $1157 on 7/22/12. Price includes bay battery. Cheapest real laptop yet.

Thoughts

(Before the T430s purchase.) The T60 was probably the best value. Only the Macbook is cheaper, but that’s a budget system. Funny that Apple comes out the price winner. To answer the original question, my computers haven’t gotten much cheaper or faster. They got a little cheaper, but then I switched priorities to lightweight and the price went back up. Looking at my schedule, it may be time to get another laptop and the current generation of CPUs is finally starting to get faster again. However, all of these systems are holding up well. It’s only in the gaming graphics department that they fall down, and they were never useful for gaming to start with. Also, Lenovo’s current offerings do not have a good screen (size and resolution) selection and it looks like that will only get worse.