4 Things to Consider When Buying A Laptop
Laptop computers compose 50.9 % of all computer sales in the US. They're sleek, powerful and getting cheaper every day. If you are thinking of joining this growing segment, take a look at the following information to equip yourself for your upcoming laptop purchase.

1) Primary Functionality
Before you head to the store (online or retail) consider the following question: What are you planning to use the computer for? Are you planning on gaming or just tooling around the Internet? Is it for the kids' homework, or is it something that needs a bit more power to do some video editing? A computer bought for the kids' homework may only need a low end (basic) processor, while something for gaming would call for a far more powerful processor. For most of us, it is a delicate balance of performance and price.

2) Who Made What?
Most of the laptops sold today are actually made by a handful of Taiwanese companies. The top five companies (Quanta, Compal, Wistron, Inventec, and Asus) actually manufacturer over 85% of all laptops sold worldwide. All the top tier computer "manufacturers" generally are not really "manufacturing" laptops, but rather contracting one or more of these companies to manufacturer their laptops for them. Because such a small number of companies make the majority of laptops today, the internal components are pretty much the same. The good news in all of this is that top tier manufacturers' laptops pretty much have the same reliability.

3) Faster, Higher, Stronger
With the delicate balance of performance and price to keep in mind, the three BIG things that will determine your laptops performance will be: processor, memory, and video.

· Processors
The current high-end processors are generally considered to be the Intel Core 2 Duo and AMD Turion 64 X2.

The mainstream middle-end processors would be the AMD Athlon 64 X2 and the Intel Pentium Dual Core.

Look for one of these 4 processors to get the most power for your money.

· Memory
Computer memory is pretty simple - the more you have, the better. Do yourself a favor and don't even consider a computer with less than 1 gigabyte of RAM. I guarantee you will be disapponted if you go with less.

If your new operating system will be Windows Vista, stick with 2GB of RAM.

Some environments require Windows XP, which is hard to find on a new computer these days. We can still get Windows XP and can install it on your new Vista computer. (Call us for details.)

· Video
On video memory there are two distinct options: using a "discrete" (separate) video chipset with dedicated memory, or using an "integrated" video chipset that shares the computer's main memory. Generally speaking, discrete video chips perform much better in gaming , video editing, etc. For e-mail, writing and surfing the webintegrated video will do fine.

4) It's Small and Cheap, It Must Be Good??
One of the big trends currently is small, very, basic cheap laptops. These usually have very basic processors, low memory and hard drive capacity, and may include an operating system you're not familiar with such as Linux. These laptops are great for travel and as a second laptop for the kids - but for any kind of serious computing, they are not really recommended.

More than anything else I can think of (besides parachutes) the old adage applies here: You get what you pay for. Pay a little more and go mid-class rather than settling for a cheap machine. You'll pay 20% more for 90% less frustration.

My Pics:

Sony and Lenovo - A little more expensive, but worth it.

Apple - Yep, I like 'em. Should you run Windows or Mac OS? That's next month's topic :)

As always, if you have questions about navigating your laptop choices, please give us a call.