Help me choose a primary laptop
 

OK, so I am moving around a lot due to my living situation and this will go on for a couple of months or so. I have four laptops at my disposal and I would rather choose just one, ideally. But, the paradox of choice has been invoked and it's getting quite confusing. They all have their pros and cons. Here they are, I would be interested to see what other think would be a good choice.

1. Samsung netbook [2009] / runs Slackware 14.2 32bit

Pros:

Small, easy to fit in a backpack
Great keyboard, very easy to type on
Battery life OK, around 5 hours

Cons:

Slow, 1.6Ghz Atom CPU
Small screen, cannot do serious work on it
A little heavy

This one is not really in the running as a primary machine, but it's like a permanent secondary for me.

2. Dell Latitude E6320 [2012] / runs Slackware 14.2 64bit multilib

Pros:

Large screen
Nice, large keyboard
Lots of hardware features
Relatively fast
Good for gaming

Cons:

Cumbersome and can't really fit in backpack
Cannot charge and use touchpad at the same time
Battery life not great, around 4 hours on average

3. Converted Toshiba Chromebook [2014] / runs Xubuntu 18.04

Pros:

Amazing HiDPI screen
Lightweight, looks good

Cons:

Build quality not that great
Touchpad poor - no buttons, everything is tap to click
Keyboard buttons and bit small

4. Dell Ultrabook [2016] / runs Devuan 2.0 [beforehand MX 18.1]

Pros:

Very good build quality
Looks great
Quite lightweight
Nice keyboard, comfortable to use with rubber-like surface
Battery life phenomenal - I would estimate about 8 hours or maybe even more
Fast - the OS runs great off its 3Ghz processor
Could easily fit in backpack [haven't tried yet]

Cons:

No internal hard drive - the OS runs off an SD card
Screen a bit washed out, but may be improveable with some contrast fiddling

EDIT: Since switching from MX to Devuan, font rendering has improved and the screen is much more confortable to look at.

It would be interesting to see what others think - it would be good to have just one to use all the time, especially since I have a lot of work to do and I move around.

sell all of them and get a good thin mid size 14" screen one, that has hard drive, wifi, keyboard, power button. the things you need on it, Ebay my last two I got for around $100 US both hp elitebook's. 8460p, hp 840 g2, like brand new condition, with nothing wrong with them. well one I needed to get new keyboard, $20 US.

Until then, take the lightest and fastest.

Depends if you need to run any heavy weight software, but I would take the last option, Dell Ultrabook [2016] / runs MX Linux 18.1, lightweight with a long lasting battery - for me, it would be running AntiX though. ;)

(Don't forget, you can store a lot of data on a pendrive, to go with it.)

agreed AntiX on SD Card or USB Stick.

The main problem with this machine is that the screen is really not that good - it hurts my eyes after a short amount of time and I can't work out what the problem is. I have Redshift running on it, but I don't know if it's font sharpness, font size, contrast, brightness, no idea. I'm using the converted Chromebook at the moment and it's so much more comfortable to look at.

To answer your question I don't have any heavyweight software I need to run - I use Vivaldi, LibreOffice, Evince and Spotify, that's about it.

BW - nice idea. I think at some point I may have to downsize this increasing collection by getting rid of two of them, so I will keep the netbook and one other. Sometimes having too many of something can get confusing rather than easier.

Either as BW-userx says or the 'cumbersome' Dell -- more versatile and can take the hdd and RAM and dump it, if necessary, with no great loss.
You can't tellme much about 'travelin' around' and the hazards it may hold in the adventure!
Beat wishes

Yes, I do like the cumbersome Dell but it's only really good for gaming.

I've more or less made my decision now - the Ultrabook. It's fast, very well built and touch typing is great on it. Very nice to work on, esp now that Devuan is running so well on it. As far as the other two laptops go, I'll give them away or sell them in due course, I think.