Laptops are as ubiquitous as were desktops 5 years back. More than a style statement they have become essential part of life at least for a working professional on-the-go. ‘CONVERGENCE’ and ‘CONNECTIVITY EVERYWHERE’ are the buzzwords today. And laptops today are packed-to-brim with the features that give you all the available options regarding the above services. They are not the laptops of yesteryears which could not match the configuration of an average contemporary desktop PC and were obscenely expensive, rather laptops of today can easily match the performance of a contemporary desktop and that is the reason why more and more peoples are giving preference to laptops over a desktop, this reflects in the sale of laptops over the past few years.
As the technology is improving at a fast pace, every component be it processor, RAM, graphics card or display is getting more efficient, powerful and paradoxically cheaper than thier predecessors. The pace of development is so fast that the eloctronic gadgets are are getting obsolete faster than the apparel fashion trends. In the market a funny saying goes that whatever you you buy today would become a DODO tomorrow. Unfortunately most of us want to buy laptop but dont know exactly what to buy and why ?
But then we technology freaks want the best available today, if we do some homework before buying our laptop we can be a little (if not complete) future-proof. Following are the key point to refer to while buying a laptop today:
1. Define and note down your requirements: Means what do you you want to do with your laptop? For example I would do mostly Office Work (Word Processing, presentations etc.) or gaming or watching HD movies or audio-video editing or programming singly or a mix of these.
2. Secondly define your budget: Means note down how much you will spend on buying laptop especially, set the upper limit say for example $ 700 etc.
This step is important because there is a great variation in prices (Ranging from as low as $350 to obscenly high $5000 or even more) depending upon configuration and brand. Thus you may get confused and lured to spend more.
Now the above homework done, you are now ready to go through the basics of configuration and other criterias. Following are four best configurations according to different needs and budgets, you can pick the one that suits your needs and wallet:
1. Entry Level Laptop
Price range $500 – 600
Look For-
Intel Celeron M Processor 1.6 to 1.83 GHz, 512 MB to 1 GB RAM, Hard Disk 80 to 160 GB, At least 2 USB Ports, 14.1” Screen Size
Inbuilt Bluetooth or at least an external Bluetooth Dongle, Preferably WiFi also
Comment—This laptop will work fine for All the office work, Internet Surfing, E-mail, chatting, Watching Movies (But not HD Movies) and Occasional Photoediting with PhotoShop.
Best Suited For – Working Professionals on-the-go
Not Ideal For—Gaming, HD Movie Viewing, Graphics processing, Programming and other resource intensive processes.
Example- HCL G28 CP, Entry Level laptops of HP, Compaq, Acer, Dell, LG etc.
2. Best Value For Money (Not-so-expensive and good for almost every task)
Price Range $600 – 800
Look For-
Intel Dual Core processor, 1-2 GB RAM, 160-200 GB Hard Disk, 2-3 USB Ports, 1 FireWire Port
Bluetooth and WiFi, Onboard Graphics Solution and Webcam
Comment- This laptop will do all the work you will throw at it except some very resource intensive softwares and games like Professional Video
Editing softwares, Maya, 3Dmax, Games like Crysis, Call Of Duty etc.
Best Suited For- Everyone except Hardcore Gamers and Graphic Designers and proffesional video editors.
Example- Dell Inspiron series, Lenovo 3000 G410, Lenovo 3000 N200, Intex M7225, HCL B30 C2D etc.
3. Multimedia And/Or Gaming Laptop
Price Range $1000 –No limit
Look For-
Intel Core2Duo Processor T5550 or Higher 1.8 to 3 GHz, 320-500 GB Hard Disk, 2-3 GB RAM, 4 USB Ports, 1 FireWire Port, An HDMI Port,
Reasonably Powerful Graphic Card like ATI Mobility HD 2600, GeForce 8600M GT or any other having at least 256 MB of video memory
Inbuilt TV tuner plus a media center remote, Inbuilt Dolby Digital Speakers, ( preferably you should buy a home theatre 5.1 channel speaker system separately for movie veiwing and gaming)
A 15.4” to 18” High Resolution Screen
Bluetooth and WiFi, Webcam
Comment—A laptop with above specs will bring you your movie viewing and pleasure to ultimate level, most of the games of today would run fine on this laptop at medium details.
Best suited for Movie buffs and gamers.
Note: Hardcore Gamers better invest in a Desktop PC because they are much cheaper than a laptop of the matching configuration and have many options of powerful graphic cards, so basically laptops are not ideal for hardcore gamers as of now.
Example- HP Pavilion Series (DV2713TU, DV2701TX), Dell XPS 1530, Sony Vaio VGN-FZ35GN etc.
4. A Levish Powerful Performer
Price No Bar—Starting from $1500
Look For-
Inte