How to Choose a Gaming Laptop

Are you in the market for a laptop computer to play your favorite games on? Today's games require more memory and graphics than ever before, but fortunately, laptops are improving as well. What you'll need is a fast computer that handles the best graphics.

Difficulty: Moderately Easy

Instructions

1. Know which type of games you'll be playing. Your preferences--newer or more classic games, online or disc-based games--will greatly determine the requirements of the laptop you'll need.

2. Find a laptop with the best graphics card available. If what you're looking at doesn't have the latest one on the market, get it upgraded. What's the point of having the best games if your computer can't handle 3-D graphics?

3. Check the computer's RAM capacity. You want the most you can get. This combines with the graphics card for handling the graphics. A Windows XP or Mac OS X computer should have at least 256 megabytes of RAM.

4. Get the fastest computer you can. You need the best processor to keep your games moving at optimum speed. Nothing ruins gaming more than the game going too slow. Anything with the latest Pentium processor is always a good idea.

5. Make sure the screen is sharp and bright, or the thrill of the latest game graphics will be lost. The screen's resolution is measured in dots (like 800 by 600). Get something with those numbers in four figures (like 1,280 by 1,024).

6. See that the computer has plenty of hard drive space if you play games that are installed. Of course, you can always get an external hard drive and connect it to the laptop.