My (now dead) laptop had a 17" screen and a full-size keyboard with keypad. And I always use an external mouse if I'm doing real work. I only use the laptop mouse on a plane or if I just take my laptop upstairs to the sofa... which happens once in a blue moon.

My new laptop is smaller. 14.1". I decided to go for a lighter laptop since I'm doing more traveling these days. I figured I'd try to get used to the smaller keyboard (no keypad) and if I get used to it, this new smaller laptop will be my primary workstation. If not, I'll go back to using my repair 17" when it comes back.

As it stands, I think I'll be sticking with the new one. I think I'm past the "learning curve" with the non-huge keyboard and I like the size for portability, so I'll probably just stick with this new one.

I used to use an external keyboard with my laptops (before I had the full-sized keyboard on the 17" laptop) and I'd lug my external keyboard wherever I went. But with the 17" laptop I got used to being able to use the laptop keyboard and not have to carry the external keyboard with me. And I prefer to use a single keyboard--otherwise I'm used to using a full-size external keyboard but if I ever want to use the laptop keyboard, I'm not used to it. So I stopped using an external keyboard.

And, for what it's worth, it turns out I ended up keeping Vista on my new laptop. There was a driver issue with my serial cable but it was only an issue because I didn't have any information on what company had made that cable (and it didn't occur to them to put their name on the adapter itself). But a friend of mine connected it to his Mac and his Mac happily identified the manufacturer. I was then able to download the correct Vista driver and it worked fine. We also solved my network problems by switching to a different wireless channel. And my 2GB of RAM came in and I installed that and it seems the speed is adequate. Sure, it'd be faster with XP but it's no slower than my previous laptop (which was fast enough anyway).

I tried installing XP on the new laptop but failed heinously. XP detected *none* of the peripherals on the laptop, not even the wired network. And I couldn't find XP drivers. So it would've been a major project. Once I resolved my two Vista issues it just made more sense to stick with the pre-installed OS.

Regards,
Craig Steiner