I’ve always wanted one, I think — right from back when my Dad got a cheap Compaq running Windows 95 that his company was going to throw out. It didn’t have a battery, was slow as hell (I had no idea then) and had nothing of interest to the me of now, but back then it was a wonder.

As the resident ‘explorer’ in my family, I explored that notebook to death. I played those silly DOS games from morning till night, and dreamed about how cool it’d be to own one someday — I started writing code because I thought it’d be cool to do something most people didn’t understand.

Most of the laptops I saw were 15.4″, and I always thought I’d get one until I saw — and fell in love with — a 17″ Dell my (then) boss at CAD Consulting got. It wasn’t pretty, but it was big and that was what I liked (I’ll probably get a 20″ or 21″ sometime, when weight issues are taken care of).

Since then, I tried hard to get one. When I finally could afford one, I discovered the less-expensive ones just weren’t powerful enough. I went for a monster desktop instead, which I took with me on my trip to Nigeria this summer. Something must have gotten loose during the flights (I had three stopovers) because I didn’t pad the suitcase well enough, and you should have seen the loading “people” (what are they called?) toss it.

Everything was messed up when I arrived, and I didn’t make things better when I forgot to switch the power to 220v. PayPal decided to lock my account for logging in from a suspicious country. All the money I’d been saving towards a notebook went down the drain — repairs and unpaid credit card bills during the period. To make matters worse, even though I padded it properly on my journey back, I discovered something had gone wrong again, so I had to go back to my old baby. So I lost my chance … or so I thought.

I got an unexpected windfall last month and straightaway did some research. By balancing price and specs, I arrived at the Dell Studio 17.

So what do I like about my new notebook? First, it’s cool (I seem to be stuck on the word ‘cool’ today). It’s fast, it’s sleek. But I love the mobility most of all. I no longer have to stay 24 hours in my room.

Strangely, now that I have it, I don’t feel any different. Even though I moved almost everything I have just yesterday, it feels like I’ve been using it forever…