Do I want a notebook or a desktop?

There are a few things to take into account. Back in the UK it was a case of do I want to use the computer in more than one place and the answer to that pretty much made the decision for you.

That is still a question to ask yourself but out here you have to remember the houses in Spain are generally smaller than in the UK because we spend so much of our time outdoors, so have you got the space for a desktop.

On the other hand notebooks are usually quite a bit more expensive than desktops for a similar performance and it is more difficult to get spare parts for them, so how deep is your pocket.

Many people think that a laptop and a wireless internet connection will allow them to do their computing in the garden. A nice idea but in practise not many laptop screens have sufficient brightness and contrast to be visible in the bright spanish sunshine.

A little horror story from one of my customers;

The customer had a Toshiba laptop that was 2 months out of the guarantee period when the motherboard failed.

Toshiba wanted £800 to complete a repair and the computer had to go back to the UK.

Had the computer been a desktop the same repair would have cost €100 as it could have been completed by me here with standard parts.