The market has been influxed with a wide range of laptops all promising to fulfill your needs, consumer or corporate. However getting the right machine can be a very tricky affair.
A laptop is usually designed for someone who likes to take his/her business/information with them.
The first step then is to identify what precisely is your need. Laptops are ideal for those into heavy multimedia, gaming and on the go business. Average home users looking to replace their desktops can easily select a low-range laptop, which will cost $500 or thereabouts. However students at home may need to do a lot of Web research involving storage of photographs, video etc. A low-end laptop might not be able to handle this load.
Therefore you need to move a bit higher. A mid-range laptop sets you back by $1,000 to $1,500. If your choice is a gaming laptop, then you need to be ready to spend at least $3,000. Once the financial aspect is out of the way, you will need to look at the following hardware:
* Processor - This is easily the most important thing to consider. Intel Pentium M, Mobile AMD Athlon 64 and AMD Turion 64 Mobile are high-powered chips that can give you an extended battery life. However they are ideal for regular travelers since they cost a neat packet. Intel's Celeron M and AMD's Duron and Sempron can be found in low-end laptops.
* Display/Screen - A larger display is ideal for extensive use. However you will have to decide based on the costs since bigger display screens mean more money.
* Memory and video - The laptop has to have at least 1 gigabyte of memory and a card with 128 megabytes of memory.
* Drives and weight - Using a 60GB hard drive is ideal for many users, but gamers will want at least 100 GB. Weight is also important if you are going to be carrying your laptop with you always.
Remember that it is you who will be using the machine. A wise choice now will stand in good stead later on. Happy buying!
