I want to buy a new laptop, but it’s been a while since I’ve been in the market for a computer so I decided to ask you, my readers, for advice. I want it to be light and not prone to overheating as I’ll be using it mainly as a net-surfing and blogging laptop (and maybe programming). I would like to be able to play games on it if possible (but the be able to play the most modern games on a laptop seems to mean having a GPU with dedicated memory which means it will be much more expensive, heavier, and it runs hotter). Anyway, I’m hoping to spend under a thousand (well-under, actually), and extra points if it’s available at Best Buy since I have a couple hundred on a gift card for them (though would it still be cheaper to get it from a place like NewEgg.com?).

Oh, and does anyone know how much of the cost of the laptop I can deduct from taxes since I’ll be using it a lot for blogging (a home business) and occasionally working my day job from home?

Thanks for any help.

UPDATE:

Wow. Lot of advice. Okay, let’s be more specific. How is this computer? Probably won’t run the newest shooters, but otherwise seems decent. What say you?

So what’s it with Leon Panetta as head of the CIA? I guess anyone who even has enough intelligence experience to know what CIA stands for is tangentially related to Bush’s policy (read: “pro-torture”), and Obama wanted to pick someone the left wouldn’t whine about.

Little tip for Obama: The left will always whine if you’re being practical. That’s what they do; they complain about reality and throw a tantrum until someone changes it. It’s best to just get used to the whining if you don’t want to be a complete failure.

You can also punch them in the nads, because the sound they’ll make from that isn’t anymore annoying than the whining. That another free tip from me to you; I’m being bi-partisan.

I have this neat idea. I think I’ll have to work on it and expand it and you can help out, but here’s what I got so far. Anyway, this idea, like all great ideas, comes from John Edwards: What if we had two Americas?

Hear me out: Now we conservatives all want freedom, and there is no other country in the world even close to the freedom of America. That’s why we get so angry at liberals; they try to screw that up even though there are plenty of crappy socialist, nanny-state countries already. They look down on patriotism, so why don’t they leave America? Because they’re lazy, and deep down they don’t want to be away from the protections of the USA.

The thing is, the sissies who want the government to take care of their worthless selves screw things up for those of us who want freedom and the government to leave us alone, but we can’t get rid of those sissies. So that’s where the two Americas come in.

See, we’ll have one America where it’s super difficult to pass any laws and especially any taxes and a second America where liberals can have all the government programs and crap they want. They’ll both be protected by the same military, but otherwise they shall not interfere with each other. We can call the two Sissy America and Free America. I’m not sure of how we’ll parse that out geographically, but make sure to include Idaho in Free America because I don’t want to have to move.

I think this is a workable idea. Liberals can keep all their goofiness; they just have to geographically confine it. Conservatives can then get their bubble of freedom in this world to do what they want and liberals don’t have to be scared that nasty freedom will hurt them. We’ll all still be Americans. Yay!

So what if liberals can’t keep enough business in sissy America to support all their government programs? That’s the thing; we don’t have to care. That’s their problem. They can’t take our money to do it. If they try, they need to remember we have lax gun laws. Try to make all your money making movies and drawing pictures and whatever the hell liberals do and leave us alone; we have real work to do, suckas!

So how would we draw this up? I guess we can just make most of both the coasts Sissy America; that’s probably easiest for everyone. And the Sissy Senators of the Sissy States will have to have a separate Sissy meetings to discuss Sissy laws. The Senators and Representatives from the Free States probably won’t have enough to do to make it a full time job; maybe then we can elect people who do real work instead of just lawyers.

I think this is an excellent idea with a lot of possibilities. I’ll have to keep thinking on it and draw up an official proposal. Maybe even liberals will like the idea of not having us conservatives block them and we can get them on board. Then we have a movement.

Harry Reid is apparently now taking credit for helping win the war. So by doing stuff like this, he was actually helping. By calling Petraeus a liar who couldn’t be trusted, he was supporting him. Wow; glad we got Reid on our side then.

Really, though, Reid could show up to the Capitol without pants and he wouldn’t be anymore of an embarrassment.

I saw this article in the Guardian (Europe liberal beats American liberal in distance from reality), and apparently people still see Obama as a blank cipher. In it, the author argues that Obama needs to weigh in on the current conflict in Israel, somehow believing Obama is going to have a radically different policy and really work to help the po’ harmless Palestinians from those mean ole’ Jews. That’s why things are going to go downhill for Obama quickly when he takes office; his biggest appeal was that everyone who wanted to could project all their hopes and dreams on to him, but as president he’s going to have to make actual decision and do actual things and the blank cipher will be no more. Just think of all the whining by the left-wing over Rick Warren; what happens when Obama actually makes a decision on something substantial?

Oh yeah; they don’t care about substantial.

Anyway, I thought this line from the article was funny:

“Yet if Obama were to take a tougher (some would say more balanced) line with Israel, for example by demanding a permanent end to its blockade of Gaza, or by opening a path to talks with Hamas, he risks provoking a rightwing backlash in Israel, giving encouragement to Israel’s enemies, and losing support at home for little political advantage.”

Opening a path of talks with Hamas when Obama takes office? He already has a funny name; what are people going to think when they seen him using a ouija board?