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Question

Hi Gary, great to see you back. I am thinking about buying a new laptop – they seem to be very cheap these days, can you give me your view on what to look out for.

Answer

Buying a new laptop can be as confusing as specifying the options on a new BMW. Except you cannot buy a BMW at Tesco’s. Laptops used to be for senior directors and managers, today laptop and desktop sales battle it out for number one place. Assuming you don’t want it for rendering the next Shrek film, my advice would be to look for a laptop powered by an Intel Core Duo processor.

Yep, laptops now have TWO processors. Not only does this give us better performance, we can actually run them SLOWER and not sacrifice performance or battery life. A minimum of 1GB of RAM and, maybe something you have not thought about before, a quality video controller.

The video controller is responsible for putting the image on the screen, complete with shadows, 3D effects and transparency. The latest generation of Windows, Vista, needs a decent amount of Video Ram, 128mb, to get the WOW factor that featured at the center of Microsoft’s Marketing. Look for brands like Nvidia, ATI and Intel. If the Laptop comes with Windows Vista Home Basic, there is a good change the graphics capabilities are not that great. Always look at the claimed battery life and half it. If that is not long enough, buy a spare battery. (I always book the table seat on Virgin trains, you get a power socket).

Finally, think about connectivity do you need WiFi and BlueTooth. I’d budget around £700.00 for a brand name with 2GB of RAM.

In summary:

• Look for a laptop with:
• Intel Duo Processor
• 1GB of RAM Minimum
• Decent Video chipset – 128MB Video RAM

Then

• Check the claimed battery life
• Check the connectivity
• Check the weight
• Avoid Vista Home Basic
• Buy a decent case




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