Guides on Buying a Laptop
Wednesday, December 10th, 2008
A laptop gives you flexibility and freedom because you can work anytime and anywhere. There are many laptop choices to choose from. All you need is some research and a clear outline of your requirements. You may need a faster CPU and large hard drive but a reasonable price. When shopping for laptops or notebooks, keep in mind that there are many factors to consider, aside from performance level and connections.
Laptops and notebooks come in a variety of size, weight, screen dimension, battery life, and keyboard quality–plus Wi-Fi option.
Processor. Dual-core processors are faster than single-core processors, especially on multi-tasking performance. Laptops have the following choices: Core Duo and Core 2 Duo (Intel), Turion 64 X2 (AMD-Athlon), and Celeron M (Intel).
System Memory. Most laptops come with 512 MB of system memory, except for the cheaper ones. Buying laptops with 1 GB of RAM may extend its usefulness and lifetime.
Graphic Memory. If you’re a gamer during your leisure time, you should go for the advanced 3D graphics chip like GeForce Go 7900 GTX (nVidia) and add 256 to 512 MB of graphics memory. Otherwise, you may settle for a 128 MB of video RAM.
Screen. Laptop screens come in different sizes, from 12.1 up to 17 inches wide.
Battery. Most batteries run for 2 to 7 hours. Many manufacturers give extra battery for supplements.
Keyboard and pointing device. Some laptops have different keyboard layouts. You may want to know the difference between eraserhead and trackpad pointing devices.
Drives. Most laptops contain rewritable DVD drive combined with CD-ROM, or vice versa. A floppy disk drive can be added for an extra cost.
Hard drive. Cheaper laptops have 40 GB hard drives. You can still save money with 60 GB RAM. Hard drives are removable and replaceable.
Weight and design. Weight ranges from 3 to 17 pounds. 3-pound laptops are ultralight because they rely on external drives. Weight consideration should include AC adapter, cables, and other external modules.
Communications. A complete set of ports are not present to many laptop models these days. Most laptops have 2 USB 2.0 ports, FireWire (IEEE1394) port for external drive connection, MP3 player, digital-video camcorder, and removable media such as memory stick. Built-in ethernet, bluetooth, and WI-FI are standard in many laptops.
Here are some helpful laptop shopping tips:
- 1.73-GHz Pentium M processor – for everyday work like word processing, spreadsheets, e-mail
- 512 MB memory – or more, will get you work faster
- Extra battery – will let your laptop lasts longer
- 14.1-inch wide screen – or bigger, will not give you much eye strain
- 80 GB hard drive – is big, unless you have multimegabyte music or database files
- Touchpad pointing device – is better than a pointing stick; having both in your laptop is best
- Multiple USB ports – are useful for connection of latest peripherals
- All-in-one design – is heavier than a lightweight laptop that has external drives.