Thinking of purchasing a portable laptop? Why not buy the best in the market. But buying the best is not that easy. You are going to come across numerous brands offering different configurations and at different prices and therefore it become all the more necessary for you to do some research on the portable laptop before you strike the deal.
Plan your requirements first. At the outset, you need to have a clear picture of what you need. You may use your portable laptop for office use or as an accessory to your desktop. You may be a gamer or someone who works on multimedia. You may need your laptop to be ultraportable and have a long battery life. Whatever your requirement is, it is best to make a checklist at first before diving into the sea of laptops.
Give importance to the screen size. The screen size in a portable laptop is the main determinant of its portability and usability. A laptop with a 13″ screen will obviously be lighter and much easier to carry than a massive 18″ laptop. Hence, you need to decide first the screen size you wish to go for. Here are the broad divisions of portable laptop screen size based on usability.
The 8-11″ range of ultra portable laptop segment. Perfect for Internet on the go but very little else. The 13″ range of laptops that have a good resolution and usability with a lot of portability. Go for it if you need to work on the move all the time. 14″ segment is the sweet spot in terms of portability and usability, it offers a good screen size without being extremely cumbersome. The 15″ range is good if you do not move about too much and like to watch the occasional movie. It is heavy but viewing is a pleasure with a high definition screen. The 16″-18″ range or more are sort of an entertainment system in a portable package. They are not really meant for people on the go.
Along with the screen size, it is really important to look at the screen resolution in a portable laptop. A 15″ laptop with a low screen resolution such as 1280×800 will generally have a poor quality display.
The most important is the basic configuration. Cheap laptops do not necessarily come with poor processors and little memory. For anything above US$700, insist on a latest generation processor such as the Intel Core 2 Duo or the AMD Turion X2. These processors give you the best in terms of both power savings as well as performance and battery life. With the advent of Windows Vista and the impending release of Windows 7, 2GB of system memory is an minimum. A small 9″ portable laptop, however, can come with the Intel Atom low powered processor and 1GB of system memory.
Battery back up is important too. The battery back up of the laptop largely depends upon the hardware installed inside, size of the display as well as the battery. Ideally, you should get over three hours of juice from your laptops. The smaller netbooks will give you a lot more than that as they consume very little power.
Watching HD and playing games on your laptop – A portable laptop is hardly a gaming machine. It is designed with portability and low power in mind. However, a lot of modern laptops now have discrete graphics cards as standard equipment. These allow you to play moderately taxing games and view HD and blu-ray content smoothly. However, a discrete GPU affects battery life. A high end gaming laptop from brands like Alienware offers only an hour worth of battery backup even though it has a massive battery.
Whatever be the case, the final call in choosing the best portable laptop lies with you. You decide which portable laptop will be the best for you according to your needs and budget.
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