Quick Guide On Buying Yourself A Laptop

Some might consider this pretty lame, but here, I will try to give you some tips on buying a laptop especially for the students..

1. The Basics

There are 4 main types of laptops :

Ultralight
Pros : Extreme portability, designed for long battery life
Cons : Minimal power, very expensive, less durable

Tablet
Pros : Swivelling touch screen, good for note-taking, compact
Cons : Limited power, generally expensive, designed mainly for business not students

Budget/Mainstream
Pros : Best price, good power, lots of features
Cons : Less portable, beware of stripprd-down models

Desktop Replacement
Pros : Extreme power, biggest screen, best for gamers
Cons : Terrible battery life, expensive, not at all portable

2. What Matters Most

Screen Size
The bigger the screen, the more satisfying it is. But bigger screen also means heavier loads, shorter battery life and probably more expensive.

CPU and RAM
These 3 specs are the essence of your laptop : Get an Intel Core 2 Duo CPU and 1GB of RAM at a minimum. For gamers, you may opt for a real graphic card from Nvidia or ATI, not “integrated” graphics.

Battery Life
Most notebooks will get you through a 90-minute class, but few offer battery life beyond a couple of hours. Invest in spare batteries and tweak your system to save power when you are unplugged.

Price
It is not economical to spend so much for a starter notebook. Go with the one that you can afford and is optimally best for you.

3. Popular Laptops

-Apple Macbook Pro
-HP Compaq Business Notebook 8710p
-Sony VAIO FZ180E/B
-Dell XPS M1330

source: http://youngim.net/gadgets/quick-guide-on-buying-yourself-a-laptop.html

 

That's a good guide for a newbie. BTW, did you follow all these points before purchasing one and what notebook do you have?

 

Thanks. I'll be buying a laptop soon and this is good info.

 

Thanks mate! I was looking to change my Lenovo.

 

Hope you all will get something with these tips

 

I am sure this guide will help many people here

 

i think next time when i see a thread for laptop suggestion i will point them to this one. hehe nice thread.

 

Wow...This is really a useful guide for a person who is going to a shopping mall to purchase a new laptop. Hope this will be useful for all persons...

 

To many points

Best advice to be a brand name with good config and a good price that's all

 

Toshiba also has some nice Satellite laptops that are fairly small and pack decent processing power (mine has a Core 2 Duo 7000 series with 2gb of ram) and they tend to be much less expensive than the Sony VAIOs.

 

yeah.. thanks everybody for reading

 

Thanks nice guide. BTW, Is youngim.net your website? (just wondering)

 

Im hoping to be getting this soon :

http://www.dabs.com/productview.aspx?quicklinx=4Z53&CategorySelectedId=11105#specifications

My old one broke and we're claiming the insurance.

-Hecky.

 

we've made some price comparison study for ultra-portables, mainstream and desktop replacement laptops. If anyone is interested here is the link http://smart-parts.net/blog/?p=266

 

price is the most important, cause lifecycle of laptop or desktop is around 3 years...

 

Thats a nice piece of info that may help many here.

 

I also go with after sales service. Since I'm no techy, and from my past experiences, I get myself in a jam a lot. But luckily the people at the store are patient enough, and the hotline service is great when it's 2 A.M. and your laptop goes funny on you and your paper is due in a few hours.

 

Thanks, my knowledge of laptops was contrainted, now this'll help me when I buy a new laptop next year