SHOW PEOPLE A PICTURE OF YOUR WIFE WITH A LAPTOP, and some of them comment on . . . the laptop! Reader Jason Watts emails:

Is that the Dell 700m? I just set one of those up for a doc at the medical school I work at. I am sold on that model. I have the Inspiron 8600, I was sold on the big wide screen but did not consider the size and weight, especially when you have to carry it across campus with books as well. The 700m is small and powerful from what I could tell. Plus I will hopefully attend law school in a year so the 700m will work nicely for that as well.

Bill Hobbs and reader Robert Berry also emailed last week to ask about the Dell — there’s some sort of coupon promotion going, apparently. I’ve had it for a few months now, and I’m quite pleased. Battery life with the extended-life battery (a must-buy accessory, as far as I’m concerned) is good at 5-6 hours even while using wifi or the Verizon card, which both drain battery power faster (especially the Verizon card). The display is excellent, and there are lots of ports, etc. My only real complaint is the absence of a hardware volume-control knob, and the presence of a 4-pin rather than a 6-pin Firewire port. This works fine, but it’s a nonstandard cable, and though it’ll connect to an iPod it won’t charge it.

Here’s my earlier post on the subject.

UPDATE: Bill Hobbs emails:

I just ordered the 700M with 1.8 gig, 512 mb ram, 80GB hard drive, CD/DVD burner, extended life battery and 4 year warranty with at-home service and 4-year complete care accidental damage warranty. The total was just $1553 before tax because there is a great $600 off coupon floating around. Word to the wise: Google “Dell coupon codes” to find the coupon.

He’ll like it.