How to Purchase a Good Laptop

Purchasing a good laptop depends on your needs.

Laptop computers are very useful for students, business professionals and self-employed people. With a laptop, you can bring your work with you wherever you go. Instead of only being able to work on your computer from home, as with a desktop computer, you can bring your laptop with you to the library, bookstore, coffee shop or even a public park. Your laptop stores all of your important information, data and documents; therefore, before you choose one, you need to ensure you're purchasing a good one for your needs.

Difficulty:

Moderate

Instructions

1. Consider what size laptop you need. The size will depend on what you're using it for and if you plan to travel with your laptop often, either across town or across the country. Generally, a student user will need a 13-inch display or smaller, while a home user might need more like a 14 to 16-inch display. Business people who travel should opt for a 12 to 15-inch display and photographers, videographers and web designers will likely need a 17-inch display or larger.

2. Decide how much storage capacity, measured in GB, you need to have on your laptop. The more storage, or memory, the laptop has, the more expensive it typically is, so you don't want to pay for storage space that you don't need. Laptops typically range from about 160GB to 320GB or larger. Since students and business people are typically the only ones using their laptops, usually 160GB is plenty. Households where more than one person might be taking up memory space should opt for at least 250GB, and professionals like photographers, videographers and web designers should have laptops with 320GB or larger since their documents and programs tend to take up more space.

3. Choose a laptop with an adequate processing speed, measured in GB of RAM. Home users and business professionals typically need about 2 to 4GB of RAM, and students can get away with having 1BG of RAM. Professionals like photographers, videographers and web designers typically need about 4 to 8 GB of RAM for their programs to function at optimal levels.

4. Factor in the laptop's central processing unit, or CPU, which basically determines the laptop's performance level, such as how much you can do on your laptop at once and how smoothly applications run together. There are two major companies that offer CPUs: Intel and AMD. Starting with Intel, larger laptops designed for graphics professionals and gamers can have a Core i7 processor. Core 2 Duo processors have slower performance than the Core i7 but a longer battery life. These are found in smaller, thinner models. If you need to run many programs at once, a Core 2 Quad processor is the right choice, but if you only plan to run one program at a time, you can go with the Core 2 Solo processor, which is a single-core processor. Inexpensive laptops might have a Pentium Duel-Core processor or Celeron Processor, which tend to have poorer performance. AMD offers the AMD Athlon X2 Dual-Core, which is comparable to Intel's Core 2 Duo, and the AMD Athlon NEO, which is found in smaller laptops and offers a long battery life and low power consumption but less of a performance boost.

5. Consider the performance of your hard drive. HDD hard drives offer more storage than SSD hard drives, but laptops with SSD drives have longer battery life and generate little or no heat.

References

• CNET.com: Laptop Buying Guide