What You Need To Know When Buying A Laptop
Buying a laptop can be a confusing and worrying experience - there's o many different notebooks and laptops out there that picking the right specifications for your needs is crucial. This film takes you through all the main laptop features, so you can make an informed decision.
-
Step 1:
-
Performance
-
This is possibly the most important step. What are you going to be using the laptop for? Are you just writing Word documents and re-arranging spreadsheets, or will you be using it for gaming and high-end and demanding graphics packages?
The Processing Power is the number of calculations the computer can do per second, essentially. The faster it is, the better. Do a little research into the fastest processor you can reasonably afford – this is the best way of making sure your laptop will last as long as possible. Laptops with Centrino processor technology, like this one, are extremely popular because they're hot at multitasking and give great performance considering a laptop's relatively-limited space, whether you're viewing videos, uploading, downloading, gaming or whatever.
VideoCards take the strain off your processor by handling any complicated graphic work. They tend to add a couple of hundred quid to the price, but are generally worth it. It's worth making sure your graphics card is bleeding edge if you want to run graphics-heavy applications. -
Pulling data to-and-from the Hard Disc is a slow process – RAM is much faster. The laptop stores frequently-needed information in memory to speed up anything it needs to do. As such, the more memory your computer has, the better.
Make sure you future-proof your purchase as much as possible and consider that your needs may change.
Make sure you future-proof your purchase as much as possible and consider that your needs may change.
-
Step 2:
-
Size
-
Big screens are great if you're going to be doing a lot of graphic work or gaming, but the bigger the screen the more space your laptop takes up; if you're going to be carting it to and fro, and using it on packed commuter trains, you might like to look into buying something a little smaller. Bigger isn't necessarily better, but you need to think about how comfortable you'll be carting a massive laptop about, or how disappointed you'll be squinting at a too-small screen.
You can buy laptops that are specifically designed to be lightweight and mobile, so if portability is an issue you might like to look into one of those.
-
Step 3:
-
Battery Life
-
Are you away from a power socket much? Do you travel up and down the country? Are you the forgetful sort who dumps a laptop by the front door after a long day's work and forgets to charge it for the next day?
If so, you're going to need as much battery life as possible; you might like to look into something like ours here, which uses Intel's clever Intel Centrino processor technology, which intelligently saves as much battery as possible. Running out of juice is always an issue when using laptops – you'll find the damned things go dead when you most need them alive, so it's an important issue to look into.
-
Step 4:
-
Connectivity
-
How much Internet connectivity do you need? Most laptops these days come with WiFi installed, but you'll need to double-check before purchasing if you want to get online.
Failing that, make sure you've got enough for what you might need in the future – you might only need a wired connection at home but never underestimate when you might like to use the laptop to check your email in a WiFi-enabled pub over a crafty pint.
-
Step 5:
-
Hard Disc Size
-
How much space do you need for your stuff? The good news is that these days new hard discs are relatively cheap, but there's no room for expansion in a laptop in the same way as there is on a desktop PC, so pick carefully. Most people won't really need more than 100GB of space, which is generally plenty so long as you're fastidious with uninstalling unused software.
-
Step 6:
-
Operating System
-
For Windows PCs there are currently two options – XP or the most recent release, Vista. You'll find that most shops are pushing Vista, which is swishy and impressive, but some prefer the older XP as it's more stable.
-
When buying a laptop, there's a lot to consider, and a lot of different permutations available. Weigh up all the different options and work out what you're really going to use it for.