Laptops are always a difficult thing to buy because there is
such a wide choice and so many different prices and then there\’s
the technical specifications to get your head around.. nightmare!
So here\’s some ideas from the technical side of things, these
are the main things that you want to think about:
Disk Drive ———– Usually referred to as \’HDD\’ (hard disk
drive). This is where all your stuff is stored – emails, office
documents, photos, music, movies etc and of course all your
software and applications. Their size is always measured in
Gigabytes (or GB). To decide what size you need, you should
consider what sort of stuff you are saving on your computer. If
you use loads of images, movies and lots of music (in itunes, or
as mp3s or in your \’share\’ folders if you\’re into p2p
filesharing), you should consider getting a larger disk say
80-100 GB. If however you just want to use your laptop for
sending and receiving emails, surfing the world wide web,
writing word and excel documents and watching DVD\’s, then the
disk space isn\’t going to be so critical. I usually have 40GB
and find that\’s plenty. You might even be fine with 30GB, but I
vertainly wouldn\’t go any lower than that.
Processor ——— Often referred to as the CPU (central
processing unit). This is the bit which actually processes all
the instructions within the machine and makes things work. It\’s
just a chip about the size of a two pound coin, which sits on
the main board inside the computer. The speed of the chip is
measured in MHz (megahertz, or millions of cycles per second).
Some fall into the \’thousands of megahertz\’ category and are
hence specified in GHz (gigahertz – that\’s one thousand MHz).
The two main chip manufacturers are Intel and AMD. For laptops,
I would recommend an Intel processor, just because they perform
better under hot conditions (laptops do get very hot). Intel
processors these days also come with the added advantage of
\’Centrino\’ technology. This is useful, because it allows you to
connect to wireless networks. I find that\’s really handy,
because I have a wireless network in my house and I can connect
to the internet anywhere in the building from my laptop without
having to use any cables. Another thing to look out for when
choosing a laptop. One other thing to look out for when choosing
the processor is the Pentium \’M\’ range. If you see Pentium M,
that\’s a good thing. It means that Intel have optimised the
processor for \’mobile\’ use, so it remains cool and doesn\’t go
bezurk when you\’re watching your favourite DVD. Aim for 2GHz if
you can. Don\’t go below 1.2 GHz.
RAM (Memory) ———— RAM – that\’s Random Accecss Memory has
a direct effect on the ability of your computer to do it\’s work.
Whenever a program is run, that whole program is loaded into
this area of memory – any documents you have open, any proccess
that you have running – they are all loaded off the Hard disk
into memory and then handled by the CPU. The implication here is
that the less memory you have, the fewer programs and documents
you can have open before the computer keels over. If you have
loads and loads of memory, then your machine can handle loads of
application windows and documents without any performance
degradation. When your machine finally runs out of memory it
starts using swap-space – that\’s a bit of the hard disk which
has been put aside and is used as an extra bit of memory for
when you\’ve rum out of RAM. You can always tell when your
machine has run out of memory, because it slows down to a
snail\’s pace, and your HDD activity light goes mad – that\’s
because it\’s \’swapping\’ between RAM and swap-space on disk. RAM
is measured in MB (megabytes), but sometimes is quoted in GB
(Gigabytes – thousands of MB). So how much ram do you need? The
laptop I\’m using right now has 1GB of RAM. I never require any
more than that. I can watch movies, use the web, edit pictures
and do all the normal stuff I want. 1GB is plenty. You\’ll
probably find that 500MB (or 1/2 GB) is also sufficient. It
really depends on what you can afford.
VIDEO – Graphics —————- Yeah, this bit gets confusing,
because suddenly you find all the above parameters being
described all over again but just in a video context. Video
stuff is handled by a separate piece of hardware called the
\’video card\’. This card usually has it\’s own RAM, it\’s own
processor, sometimes even its own heatsink and fan. The
important thing with video is to ensure that you have enough
Memory (video RAM) to handle your DVD\’s and movies. If your
Video RAM is too low, you will find that it buffers to slowly
when you\’re watching you films and that causes jerkiness and
spoils the picture. So try to aim for as much video RAM as you
can afford. 64MB is usually okay. If you can afford more, then
go for it. One warning – some motherboards have all the video
capability \’on board\’, which isn\’t necessarily a problem, but
sometimes the video hardware borrows from your system RAM, which
means that if you have 64 MB of video RAM, that might impact
directly on your system RAM (to the tune of 64 MB). I once got
caught out by this and ended up with a laptop which was
significantly under-powered especially when it was processing
graphical stuff – even Flash movies killed it horribly.
Other stuff ———– These days a floppy drive isn\’t usually
necessary – we have enough means for transferring files over the
internet for floppy drives to be pretty much obsolete these days.
Most manufacturers offer a 3-year onsite warrenty. This is
definitely a good thing to get. If your computer goes wrong and
you can\’t fix it, you\’ll really wish that a nice man will just
turn up and make everything better again.
Case – is handy if you want to carry your laptop around,
otherwise don\’t worry about it. You might even be able to buy a
second hand laptop case, or even make one of your own.
Power supply – if you use your laptop regularly in two locations
(I use mine at home and at work), it\’s handy to have two power
adaptors – one at each location, so that you don\’t have to carry
it around all the time and also so that you don\’t get caught out
on the days when you forget to take the adaptor with you.
PCMCIA – this is the wide, flat-shaped slot on the side of your
laptop which is used for plugging in extra cards – most commonly
this is used for adding a network card, or a wireless card. If
you have built in wireless capability, then an extra PCMCIA slot
won\’t be so critical. If your laptop doesn\’t have built in
wireless be sure that it does have a PCMCIA slot so that you can
plug a wifi card into the side.
There are loads of other things to consider such as size and
weight, but these are the main things that I can think of for
now.
christo
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