Picking a new Computer...

For some time now I've been thinking about picking a new computer. There are quite a number of reason for that. The main reason still is the fact that my iMac is turning 8 years. Not that it doesn't work anymore, but it has become really sluggish and even a complete system re-install doesn't fix the problem. And of course I'm aware of the fact that the thing is completely outdated. The second reason is that you don't get any current software that works on this old machine and that also includes printers, scanners and so on.
I wasn't going to go for Desktop type computer. The main reason for that being the fact that my workplace in my apartment still isn't set up and that I like to work in front of my big screen TV. So it was quite clear that I was going for a laptop style computer.
Basically I was left with 2 choices Windows or Mac. Well the the decision wasn't quite easy. First I looked into the hardeware builds. Turns out there really isn't any difference between PC's and Macs anymore. I know Aplle wants people to believe differently, but that's just a load of bull. The remaing question that needed to be answered is that of the operation system. Having worked on Windows 7 I can first hand say that it is a rock solid thing. The OSX releases on the other hand that came out of Cuportino lately have been just one example after another of slopply coded and sloppy tested software. Paying a boatload of cash for a basically mediocre software is just not my idea of a smart buy. In general there is a tendency that Apple products no longer have the same quality than they used to have about 5 years ago.
And than there of course is the most important reason to turn my back on Apple. Let's face it the business world, especially the world of accounting a Windows dominated. No amount of Apple Propaganda is going to change that. If you want to work professionally in accounting you have to go Windows. No pretty little trick is going to change that. Since this was going to be computer I mostly will be using for work I started my research into Windows Notebooks.
When I started my research I had certain benchmarks. This was going to be more the a pure accounting computer. For that I would have been fine with an i3 Processor. But I wanted way more than that. I wanted that thing to have multimedia capabilities and therefore a fairly decent graphic card. And since I do a lot of converting of video footage I wanted a computer that can do that task, since it takes forever on my iMac. So the processor I was going for was an i7. And of course I had an budget of a max of 1100 bucks.
After quite some research it came down to 4 brands: Sony, HP, Asus and Acer. The Acer and the Asus notebook dropped out of the race since the configuaratioon I wanted to have would have blown my budget and I would have had to pay at least 1400 bucks. And that was an amount I wasn't willing to spend. So there were 2 brands left. Bot with pretty much the same configuration. So the day had come to finally got to the store. I was more leaning towards Sony Vaio. When I got to the store they had only the floor model left. Yes it was quite discounted and it would have been a cheap buy. But somehow that just didn't sit right with me. So I went with the HP. And by taking advantage of a sale I even got one with a bigger screen. Initially I was looking into 15" notebooks and I ended up with an 17" one. That might come in handy when doing wokring on spreadsheets and doing accounting stuff and especially it might come in handy when working on my website.
Here are some of the Specs:

• Intel i7 Quadcore Processor
• 750 GB Harddrive
• 8 GB Ram
• Nvidia Geforce 2 GB graphic card
• all the "usual" ports
• USB 3.0 and 2.0 ports

The only thing that I could have lived without was the operating system. It came pre-installed with Windows 8. And I'm not a big fan of that. Would have much rather had Windows 7. Of cours it's a piece of cake to insall Windows 7 over it. But for now I've decided to give Windows 8 a try.
Let's face it in the business world it's just a question of time when the accounting software you're currently using will no longer support Windows 7. So having Windows 8 on your system might be the smarter deciesion in the long run.