www.felixcohen.co.uk

So, I'm eager to get myself a new laptop, since my nice little compaq evo n410c was stolen from me a few weeks back (satisfyingly, sans CD drive and running Linux, so it's hard to believe they could do anything with it...). Most upsettingly, of course, is the great collection of stickers I had built up for the little machine.
Given the fact that I have a more than capable linux desktop box from work perched on my desk, and that my iMac has gone back to apple to have it's logic board replaced (because, believe it or not, Apple screwed up and brought cheap capacitors that have started to pop all over the insides of people computers. I caught mine at the ominous bulge stage...).
All this change has left me thinking what my optimal computing solution is. Here's what I need to be able to do, and it's clear that I need some combination of Apple and Linux systems...

• Play iTunes music to my airport express (and control it with my phone
• Use photoshop (NOT the gimp) for design and wireframing pages
• Access to as many tty's as humanly possible
• Massive portability in a laptop; I can't abide 14" screens and even the macbook feels a little, well, chunky to me. Also, I loathe and detest the new macbook keyboards
• Generally nice power. I don't need a great deal, especially on a xubuntu laptop, but enough to handle big MySQL databases and operations. The compaq was 1.2Ghz, which seemed just fine
• A desktop machine I can use with dual monitors
• etc

So, mainly because the keyboard makes me die inside, I won't be going for a macbook. I think. Although it is realistically the only machine that will handle everything I want on its own, it just strikes me as being a bit of a risky proposition (and I just know I'll get spanked on the upgrade cycle...).
Now, I could wait around for the much rumored new iMacs, and see if they take my fancy. I've also got my eye on this hot little laptop, which is a) ridiculously small and b) has a touch screen(!). And should run linux absolutely fine.
Or I could bite the bullet, learn to love the keyboard and get a nice MacBook (I have 10% off at the Apple Store, so this is very tempting...). Which would connect to everything I want and be awesomely powerful. But also slightly too pretty to cover in free culture stickers and too tempting for thieves and, in my iBook experience, pints of lager.

Decisions, decisions. If anyone would like to weigh in on the comments, feel free!

Felix