Buy a laptop

How to buy a laptop

Confused, about the various offers available in the market for your lappy? The guide to a perfect laptop doesn’t exist, if one does not know what all he needs to extract out of it. The world is progressing, and so is the IT industry, bringing out new inventions has become the order of the day, and hence this leads to confused consumers. Buying a laptop isn’t the same as buying a new desktop pc, so it’s highly recommended that you take a quick glance…

There are 3 types of lappy’s available in the market today, namely, a notebook, a laptop, and a desktop replacement. So the choice should be yours, as to which one do you choose for yourself. 

A notebook pc is a very small, light and a very efficient working system that often just manages to satisfy your business needs. Its ultra light, ultra small, and if you’re a frequent traveler, you might consider this option beforehand. A notebook is not built for gaming or entertainment purposes, or any sort of multitasking if you’re thinking of. The idea behind this is, to have a very small, light weight travel assistant with you, so that it’s easy to carry everywhere without any sort of hassle ,can be as light as half a kg. A laptop on the other hand is capable of delivering a mix of good performance, and yet being easy to carry. The performance and so does the size and weight of your system (up to 1.5 – 2 kg’s). Talking about the desktop replacement, as the name itself suggests, it provides all the functionality one can get from a desktop pc. The size increases with the price and the computing power. It’s good for those who’re thinking of replacing their old systems with new portable systems. Can weigh anywhere near 2 to 4 kg’s. do not confuse yourself with just the brand images, there are companies, but there are competetive products out there as well,talking about, Sony,IBM,HP,Compaq,Alien-ware,Samsung...etc

After you’ve chosen the type of system you need for yourself, we start off with the features you need to have for your system.

Battery backup:

A very important concern for any user, is the need to have a working laptop everywhere, be it on the road or in the air. Verify when purchasing a portable computer how long the battery lasts. Be cautious, as many manufacturers will indicate a battery usage time but this may be at the lowest possible settings; ensure that the manufacturer clarifies what the standard battery usage life is when using the portable computer in all power modes.

Display:

With LED in picture these days, the laptops are bound to give a crisp display. While purchasing a laptops, make sure that your screen viewing angle, is high, and that the backlighting and contrast ratios are good. Often in daylight, users  aren’t able to view the content on their screens due to the daylight, so make sure that the display panel must have a good amount of backlighting. Moreover, laptops having LED panels are much more slim, compact, and lighter than their predecessors having LCD’s or TFT’s. To know about these click here->

Hard drives:

As the technology progresses, DVDs move to bluray’s , 128kpbs mp3 to 320 kpbs aac, games getting heavier and heavier, HD in picture, and with the release of Windows 7, I’m sure there’s a need for better and more competitive hard drives, that have high data storing capability as well as high data read and write rates.

Disk drives:

Without saying, optical drives with bluray technology is a must for all, if you’re considering of buying a future proof laptop, capable of delivering high quality entertainment and mobility all at the same time.

Web cam:

A web cam is a must for all the laptops, so nowadays, almost all the brands out there, are having atleast 1.3 MP webcams. So don’t settle for anything less

Card reader:

Believe me, having a good reader can actually save you a lot of your time, and efforts. I was reluctant to have this feature in the beginning, but gradually realized the importance of having one. A good card reader supports almost all the major card formats, and that’s what makes it a “must have”. You can’t practically carry pen drives all the time, or carry connecting cables with you for all the devices you have. If you think of synchronizing your stuff using Bluetooth, its fine, but just consider the fact that Bluetooth is a time consuming technology, especially if you’re dealing in >100MB’s.

Sound system:

The agenda of the manufacturers these days, is to give breathtaking quality to their consumers, in every field. The competition makes it even tougher for them. A good sound system consists of a good sound card and good speakers

Video card: Video cards are becoming an extremely important factor when purchasing a computer. While this may surprise some, a video card can make or break a computer when it comes to playing games on the computer. Most games today require additional video memory as well as special video modes such as OpenGL. With a video card with little video memory or without these modes, the computer will be unable to play these games. In addition, the advances in video cards can dramatically increase the user enjoyment of the game being played. There are basically 3 major companies in this fiels, NVIDIA,ATI,and Intel. I personally recommend NVIDIA.

RAM:

Random access memory as it is popularly known, courtesy, vista’s high hardware demands, is the need of the hour. Laptops need to have atleast 2-3GB’s of RAM these days to work smoothly without any interruptions. It’s a virtual memory that one needs, for every application say to play music, movies, games, or even a calculator, and with the rise of multitasking, the importance of RAM is further felt more.

Processor:

This is the heart of your system so do choose this one very wisely. If you’re thinking of a gaming laptop, then go for a single core processor, it has higher clock speeds, and if you’re thinking of choosing a pc that can do a lot of multitasking, then go for a dual core processor. However, quad core is also coming into the picture, but  the technology is native and sort of very slow. The clock speeds offered are very less, so if you consider processing a single thread on a single core and a quad core, the single core processor clearly beats the latter out. Quad core has an advanced designing, say 4 processors attached in parallel, so the algorithms need time to develop completely and gain full advantage of 4 in 1. After choosing the number of cores you need for your Laptop, its upto you to choose the brand, too. There's intel and there's AMD, out there competing. both are good, but i guess, but INTEL one has leapt ahead in terms of innovation, and advancement. it was originally AMD's idea to bring upron the dual core idea, but was perfected by Intel. So having an Intel processor has a nod, right away.

Protection:

Laptops can be manhandled at times, and can be treated with utmost disrespect, so to make sure that your investment stays safe, manufacturers are providing protection and recovery tools for the systems, so that no matter what, you don’t end up losing your data!

Upgradability:

Upgradability is one thing that people are often not at al bothered about, and after some time, this feature comes into act. Some companies offer upgradability at very high prices that it’s not feasible to upgrade at all. Do check out if your lappy has some upgradability features, expansion slots built in it.

Looks:

If gadgets can be eye catching, then why not your laptop? Laptops today are having a state of the design, body, that can woo your heart straight away, so choose the best o for yourself. It reflects and adds to your personality, remains with you for the most of your time, and is the best possible companion today, so why not invest in a laptop with some good looks. it not that you get to buy a laptop everyday, so choose a system that suits your personality well. you can get amazing designer work in exchange for peanuts, so do not compromise on the looks. my favourite one is the Mac book AIR

Brand:

Everything said, everything done, this is one thing that we all end up at. Choose a brand that offers you best support, quality, price, warranty, software and service.HP,Compaq,Dell,HCL,Alienware,Sony,Apple,Toshiba,Samsung,IBM, all are megagiants, though you'l get many other buyers, but i recommend you to go in for some quality brands. laptops can be a headache if they turn out to have some technical glitches, its expensive and painstaking at times.

 I think before buying a laptop you should consider online computer stores, the more you explore them, the more you get idea about the pricing and different technologies.

All the best for your new lappy, buddy!