Study this ‘laptop list’ before buying
Palm Beach Daily News has an article that will help anyone loking for a laptop decide what features they need and are most important to them.
‘At home, I’ve replaced outdated or defective laptops so often I’ve concluded they should come in six-packs.
But battery-powered portable computers are a necessary evil. And since this is the time of year when many parents and college students are shopping for a laptop for school, spend time considering some things you should know when shopping for a portable computer.
• Battery life: Make sure the ability to operate on batteries for an extended period is important to you. Most people tend to use a laptop as a portable desktop computer, plugging it in at home, in offices, hotel rooms and dorms. If battery life is crucial to you, get lithium-ion batteries for the most run time.
• Processor chip: Make sure your new laptop uses a chip made especially for a battery-powered computer. These chips tend to run cooler and drain the battery more slowly. Among the chips that fill this bill are the Intel Pentium M, Mobile Intel Celeron, Mobile AMD Athlon and the Mobile AMD Duron.
• Screen: Today almost every laptop computer uses a liquid crystal display (that’s LCD in retailing lingo). A few years ago it was important to look for active matrix screens, but now that is a feature common to most laptops advertised. If the laptop will often be used at home or in a dorm room, consider buying a regular monitor, too, for a larger or sharper image. You can simply plug the monitor into your laptop at home and unplug it and use the LCD screen when on the move.
• Memory: Laptops tend to come with less memory than desktops. While it’s easy for home users to add memory chips in a desktop, it’s more complicated when working on a laptop. That’s why I recommend at least 512 megabytes of memory in your laptop. That’ll delay — or maybe even eliminate — the need to add memory over the lifetime of the laptop.
• Hard disk: Get the largest hard disk you can reasonably afford. For the reasons stated above, it’s best to avoid the need to upgrade later.
• Networking: The givens are that the machine should have a built-in dial-up modem as well as an ethernet connection for times when it’s used with DSL or cable modems. You won’t have any trouble finding those features.
I suggest you also equip the machine so it comes out of the box with wireless connectivity. Surprisingly, this won’t add much to the cost. Remember that laptop computers are made to be used on the go. For college students, wireless connections, as well as high-speed wired connections, are common.’
Read more from Palm Beach Daily News.
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