Mary Ann is headed back to school to get a 2 year degree and certification as a Veterinary Technician. This means 2 more years of college classes with all the homework, notes and tests usually involved and this time around we both thought a laptop would be really great. We looked high and low to find the “perfect” laptop for her (and me!) and eventually settled on an MSI MS-1013. It is a 12″ wide-screen with an AMD Turion CPU and various other goodies. I’ve started writing a review of it that you can read here. Battery life should be some where between 2 and 4 hours, likely in the high 3 hours with modest usage.
This is a white-box laptop, meaning that you order the chassis and parts separately, then put the whole thing together. So not only did Mary Ann end up with a laptop, but I got to play with more computer hardware! I’d never really opened up a laptop, but it wasn’t vastly different from a desktop PC… just a whole lost smaller. You can check out some pictures here.