Laptops Buying Guide for Beginners

Analyze Specification First Before Buying a Laptop Computer

Do you think buying a laptop computer is so frustrated? There is many details on specification that make you headache – CPU, Video card, RAM, Hard drive, combo drive, etc. This article is a beginner guide to you to buy a laptop that suitable for your requirement.

Which laptop is suitable for you?

Laptop’s specification is very important because it helps to decide the laptops that best met requirement within budget. Someone uses laptops for word processor and internet serving only but don’t know laptops specification detail that will cause to buy unnecessary expensive laptop computer. Some laptops has specific external ports , for example, DVI port for LCD but not for VGA port or using in faraway environment that need a tough laptop, if not carefully check laptop’s specification, it will miss goal of laptop’s specific jobs. Reading specification need only a little knowledge that sufficient. There is a few part that important for choosing suitable laptop computer.

CPU

There is only two companies to choose for laptops CPU, Intel and AMD, which Intel is the leader of laptop computer’s CPU. Intel CPU series has

    Intel Atom – This CPU is designed for mini laptop and netbooks by few power consumption, small chip. A cheap CPU but not fast. Suitable for office jobs, internet serving.

   Intel Dual Core – High performance, cheap but not efficient in power management as Core 2 Duo or Core 2 Quad. This CPU is very good for every moderate jobs and it is a cheap CPU for laptop computer, however, it has a shorter (not much) battery life time and higher temperature.

  

  Intel Core 2 Duo – Most popular CPU for laptop computers CPU presently. High performance and better power management CPU recommended for every buyers.

  

  Intel Core 2 Quad – 4 processing cores in 1 chip for very high performance laptops but it is still expensive. It is suitable for CPU intesive jobs, multiple running application at the same time and modern 3D games.

If you want to buy the best laptop for programming and coding, you need powerful CPU. Although Intel Atom is ok for beginner programmer and students.

Chipset

Chipset has not much issue to consider for laptops. There is AMD , Intel and other company as NVidia, SIS and Via but Laptops manufacture choose best chipset for each laptops.

Memory

Bigger memory is better for laptop computers. You should consider on specification, how much memory installation in laptops. Today windows base application is require 1 GB or more. If you use Windows Vista use must consider to upgrade memory to at least 2 GB. In additional, there is two types of memory, DDR2 and DDR3. DDR2 is installed in most laptops but new high end laptops use DDR3. DDR3 is quite new and more expensive but not much performance improvement.

LCD monitor

The LCD monitor has variety of size, aspect ratio, contrast ratio, response time, surface material, native resolution etc. However, you may concern only size, aspect ratio, resolution, and surface material of LCD. Size is most important to consider, too small is pain to look at text, too big is heavy to carry. Aspect ratio is less import, wider is suitable for wide screen movie but has less height for text reading. Resolution is another factor to consider. Too high resolution is not good for small screen because texts on screen is too small to read. Surface material is important too. Glass screen has more beautiful images but it is not suitable for outside using because it has a very high reflection property that make difficult to read the screen.

Graphic card

Graphic card do the 2D/3D image processing for laptops. There is 2 types of graphic card – on board or integrated graphics and add-on card or dedicated graphics. Integrated graphic card is slower but cheaper and lower power usage (longer battery life), adequate for low intensive graphic processing such as office but not suitable for heavy graphic processing such as 3D applications or 3D games. Dedicated Graphics has higher performance but more expensive and require more power consumption. There is two main company that make dedicated graphic card, ATI and NVidia. There is an issue that be aware of overheating of dedicated graphic cards especially for some old NVidia (newer card has fixed it).

Hard drive

Hard drive is the main storage install software and data. There is hard drive capacity in laptop specification that is 160 to 250 GB is enough for everyday jobs except multimedia as movies and sound intensive jobs require much more capacity as more than 500 GB. There is another type of hard drive, SSD or Solid State Drive, that is fast, durable and less power consumption than normal hard drive but it is more expensive too. SSD is not necessary for normal using but if you work in shake and vibrating environment, it’s an excellent hard drive.

Battery

Batter is only the power source for mobile computers when do not use electric from buildings socket by power cord. Lithium ION (Li-Ion) battery is the most popular battery type presently. There is another type of battery – Lithium polymer, but it still expensive and not popular as Li-Ion battery. Many laptops specification has detail about number of cells and amount of watt power capacity. 3 battery cells and 6 battery cells installation use most in laptops. More cells is more power and longer time to use when laptop do not plugged on electric power socket. There is estimated time on using laptop with battery, check carefully it met your requirement or not.

External Drive

Mini laptops or netbooks may not have external to reduce size and weight but most laptops had a drive in it. At present, there is two option on external drive, DVD combo drive and Blu-Ray combo drive. There is not much Blu-Ray disk products is more expensive, however, Blu-Ray drive can use any CD/DVD, it is not a bad idea to choose Blu-Ray.

External Ports

There is many devices that working with laptop computer such as mouses, web cameras, wireless LAN, etc. Checking on laptops specification to meet requirement is very important. If you miss any require ports on laptops, it’s costly or impossible to find upgrade ports parts. USB ports is very popular ports that should have at least 2 ports.

Other Build-in devices

There is a number of built-in device in Laptop computers. Wireless LAN is the standard device for Laptop presently. Web camera is a choice for most of laptop today. Make sure that have required device on laptops specification completely. If you like this article, read my next article - "Dell inspiron reviews"