My recent vacation did have one downside. I was busy editing the newsletter on the passenger side of the car when my driver got lost. So I placed the notebook down with the external trackball on the keyboard and switched sides in the car.

In the transition the top of the notebook was forced down on the trackball which completely smashed my 1 year old $3500 Dell Inspiron 7500 beautiful 15.1 inch screen.

Ouch!

Fortunately I was able to secure an external monitor and was able to use the computer, but obviously not as a computer. It would cost $1500 to replace the screen and it just did not seem to make sense so I decided to order a new one.

I was tempted to order the new Apple Titanium PowerBook G4 notebook . In my estimation it is clearly the best notebook on the market. Weighs only 5.3 pounds and has a 15.2 inch screen with an internal DVD. One battery on the Apple lasts Five Hours! This is the longest lasting battery on the market.

The Apple notebook also has the incredible wireless networking called Airport which lets you surf the Net without wires in your backyard while your modem is connected indoors.

What I really like about it though is that when Mac OS X is released next month it is nearly an instant on from hibernation. It is actually quicker to wake up than a Palm Pilot. The Apple notebook is, without question, the coolest notebook on the planet at this time.

Unfortunately all my applications are Windows based and I could not justify the extra expenses involved since I would have to run a PC emulation program to run my programs on the Apple, which would seriously cut down the speed of the notebook. The Apple notebook also does not have an floppy drive which I use quite a bit in my sneakernet activities from home to office.

So I settled on the second best notebook on the market the Dell Inspiron 8000. It is absolutely amazing what they have done in one year. They cut the weight down by 3 pounds. It is down to 7 pounds, but that still is two pounds more than the weight of the Apple for the same functionality.

So for about $500 more than the cost of replacing the screen I now have a brand new computer that has double the memory (256 megs) and is 50% faster (400 MHz to 650 MHz). I purchased it with two batteries so I have 7-8 hours of battery life. Plus, for the next three years I am protected from future accidents.

One of the BEST features of the Dell is their insurance program. For another $170 the entire computer is covered for ANYTHING, including breaking your LCD screen. About the only thing they don't cover is if you actually lose the notebook. Needless to say I purchased the system with the insurance this time.