Laptop profiles: The Indie Guy

Profile: The Indie Guy

For a certain breed of technology consumer, avoiding big corporate brands has become a way of life. It's becoming increasingly difficult to avoid The Man in everyday life, however, when Whole Foods has gone corporate, Starbucks and Wal-Marts are seemingly everywhere, and iPods are just another way of keeping music locked up behind a big-business firewall.

Our friend, the Indie Guy, refuses to patronize any of the big-name retailers, eschewing Dell, Lenovo, Gateway, HP, and Sony in favor of lesser-known names such as Asus, Systemax, and Velocity Micro. Depending on whether he is a pure vegan or a lacto-ovo type, Alienware or Voodoo (owned by Dell and HP, respectively) may or may not make the cut.

The sad truth is that the Indie Guy's quixotic quest for a laptop is almost inevitably doomed to failure. Even if he chooses a small, independently owned vendor, the company uses the same CPUs from Intel and AMD as the big-name brands. (In the case of the CPU, the Indie Guy will lean toward underdog AMD.) There's always Via, but the handful of laptops with Via processors tend to be of the $500, President's-Day-sales-circular variety. And even if the Indie Guy carefully chooses his components and manufacturer, he'll likely end up with an OS from Microsoft unless he jumps into Apple's arms or chooses Linux (big, bad Dell earns points for selling systems with Ubuntu).

When it comes to shopping for a laptop, Indie Guy wants the same mainstream specs as those perusing Dell's site or wandering through Best Buy. Unless on a strict budget or looking to play the latest 3D titles, we generally recommend a middle-of-the-road set of specs, including a dual-core processor, 2GB of RAM, and a 120GB or larger hard drive.

Key specs:

• Screen size: 11-, 12-, or,14-inch display: The move to 14-inch mainstream laptops makes the 15-models look downright old-fashioned, while any self-respecting Indie Guy will likely be hanging out in his local fair-trade coffee shop, where an ultraportable system with either an 11 or 12-inch screen is preferable.
  
  
• CPU: Sure, going with a Via processor that can be found in some low-end models means the Indie Guy is supporting a smaller company than AMD or Intel, but the performance hit just isn't worth it. While AMD isn't as big a company as Intel, its recent acquisition of video card company ATI may make it just as toxic to the Indie Guy. This might be one instance where it's worth it to bite the bullet and just go with a basic Intel Core 2 Duo CPU--the latest T7000-series for larger laptops, or the ultralow voltage U700-series for ultraportables.
  
  
• Operating system: Another largely no-win situation. Hearty souls can try one of the Linux laptops offered by Dell, but the lack of support for popular programs may make it a tough road to travel. Apple definitely has more indie cachet than Microsoft, but really, is it indie if the company also makes the iPod and the iPhone?

Some semi, sort-of indie laptops to check out include:

Name	Starting price	Screen size	Dimensions (width by depth by height)	Weight
Averatec 1579 Great 11-inch ultraportable, but watch out for small vendor service issues.	$1,299	11.1 inches	10.5x8.1x1.5 inches	3.4 pounds
Asus G1 A gaming laptop from a nonmainstream company, and even better, it's squeezed into a 15-inch body.	$1,799	15.4 inches	14.0x11.2x1.6 inches	7.0 pounds
Apple MacBook You can't really call Apple an independent upstart, particularly when the company is poised to move into the No. 4 spot in the U.S. market this year. But, hey, you avoid Microsoft, a company that's regularly accused of engaging in monopolistic practices, which never sits well with the Indie Guy.	$1,099	13.3 inches	12.8x8.9x1.1 inches	5.1 pounds
FlipStart 1.0 Started by Microsoft cofounder Paul Allen, this handheld system bucks every trend, eschewing UMPC slide-up keyboards for a shrunk-down laptop form factor. Your dollars will go toward supporting a billionaire, but points for trying.	$1,999	5.6 inches	5.9x4.5x1.6 inches	1.7 pounds
Everex StepNote NC1500 Via processor, low price, no frills--it's everything Indie Guy could want, as long as he doesn't want to do too much multitasking.	$498	15.4 inches	14.2x10.8x1.4 inches	5.6 pounds

See the Lightweight