What Laptop to buy???

I get asked this question numerous times a day. I will try to give out some pointers for what and how to buy. First of all you have to be true to yourself. WHAT ARE YOU GOING TO USE THE LAPTOP FOR? Please, be honest; you won’t be doing any gaming, more like writing essays and surfing the Internet. Next is the screen size, there is a difference between 14.2” and 15.4” screen. Screen resolution goes hand in hand with the size, the higher the numbers the better.

Here are some examples for cheap laptops

WXGA   1366×768…………………. Not that good for 15.4” screens, very cheap

WXGA   1280×800………………….. Pretty basic

WSXGA 1440×900………………….. Very good

WSXGA+ 1680×1050……………….. One of the best

Then there are only two left 1080P and 1920×1200 which is as high as over the counter laptop screens go.

As you can see the resolutions sometimes have the same abbreviation; therefore, I suggest going to your local OfficeMax, Best buy, Office Depot or whoever sells laptops to see the screen for yourself. Laptop screens and resolutions effect the user directly by being either comfortable or not, so I suggest making sure you like it. Big controversy is the hard drive size, I personally suggest 250GB. The hard drive size, depending on the deal, is irrelevant to me. Now-a-days you can buy external storage, and I doubt that you have over 100GB of MP3`s that you have to have on your laptop. I did not mention family pictures because those should be burned or backed up. The size of ram is irrelevant also, because it is so cheap, and I will post a tutorial on how add RAM soon. Now, the part that matters the most: the processor. Obviously there are two companies, Intel and AMD. Intel has three most known chips CELERON, DUAL CORE, CORE2DUO, and then Atom and Centrino. Celeron is waste of money, very weak. COREDUO is an entry level dual-core which is more than enough to run Office, internet browser, antivirus scan, and watch a movie, at least that is what I am doing while writing this article. CORE2DUO is very powerful and can take on many tasks at once, but it comes with a higher price tag. Then there is AMD and their processors. General knowledge about AMD is that they get hot, and that is not good for a laptop since the place is very constricted, but that all depends on the laptop design. I have personally seen a laptop that baked itself; it was not an AMD though. AMD has only three major chips for laptops: Sempron,Athlon, and Turion. Sempron is like Celeron, pretty useless, but Athlon and Turion are strong enough to stand up to Intel`s line up. Graphics card will make a difference in playing videos and battery life. Intel, ATI and NVIDIA are the market leaders. Mostly the cheap laptop have on-board graphics card, which uses the ram as the memory for itself. The expensive once have dedicated memory (their own) which makes them faster and more expensive. Most of the laptops come with a DVD burner and some with HD or Bluray Disc player. Then all you need are some USB connectors, but you can get lucky and buy laptop with HDMI and eSATA. As the last is battery life and weight. You can expect a 15.4” laptop to be between 5 and 6 pounds. Battery life anywhere between 1.5 hours up to 3 hours, all that depends on what you are doing on the laptop.

What to Buy

Get a laptop with screen resolution that you like

Get either CORE DUO or TURION or CORE2DUO for more money

2GB RAM is enough but more is always better

160GB+ HDD depending on the deal

14.2” or 15.4” screen or bigger

DVD burner

Here is an example of great deal  http://tinyurl.com/ql9j8s