My lovely mother is in town this week.  She has been thinking about buying a laptop for a long time, and I told her we could look around at available options while she was here to see what she liked.  When I mentioned that buying it this week would mean that I would be available to set up most of her software for her, she became very enthusiastic about this idea.

Buying a laptop computer is a bit of a crapshoot these days.  Most of the specs aren’t available in retail stores (and of course the employees don’t know what they are), and even if you have the whole list of specs, it is not easy to understand which will make a difference to your experience.  And then there are qualities of the laptop not available in the specs like how hot the computer will get and how long the components are likely to last.

Based partially on my very happy experience with a gateway laptop, we ended up getting a very pretty ‘garnet red’ Gateway M series with a 15 inch screen, a Core II duo processor and lots of RAM.  It is definitely way more computer than my mom needs, but she liked it, it was a good price, and if it holds up, it will be sufficient for her needs for a long time.

The most amusing aspect of buying the computer was dealing with the Best Buy “geek squad.”  The woman who sold us the computer lied about the battery life without blinking an eye, and said that the 1 year manufacturer’s warranty covers “only the hard drive.”  In a fit of electronics-buying excitement, my mom is also considering buying an MP3 player, and the Best Buy employee who forced his way into our conversation in the Ipod section of the store was also keen to give out misleading information.  When I said that my mom would likely be using the Amazon mp3 store and audible.com, he advised against buying an ipod because they “can only be used with cds and ITunes.”  That’s just not true.  And when I told him so, he just stared at me blankly and ran away after my next question.

But we made it out of the store with the first computer my mom has ever owned herself (ie not a work computer).  So that’s very exciting.  Now I just have to figure out how to get all the crap that comes preloaded off of it and make Vista as unannoying as possible.