Laptop Buying Guide
- Prioritize Laptop Price, Performance, & Portability
- Find a Laptop to Fit Your Lifestyle
- Pick a Laptop Processor
- Select Standard Laptop Features
- Get Essential Laptop Accessories
- Buy Laptop with Confidence
Laptop to Fit Your Lifestyle
Consider how you plan to use your laptop before you start shopping. It should meet your personal needs as well as the system requirements set by your Internet service provider.
Laptops for home Users
You want a second computer for the house that you can take with you from room to room. You want to email, surf the Internet, and do some basic photo editing. Look for a bargain laptop or desktop replacement with at least 800 MHz processor and 256MB RAM. If you have a wireless home network, make sure it includes built-in Wi-Fi.
Laptops for students
You want a lightweight computer that you can carry from the classroom to the library. As a starting point, find out which platform your school prefers and supports. Some universities don't care what kind of computer you have while others will provide you with a very specific list of system requirements. If your school doesn't have specific recommendations, look for an ultra portable or thin-and-light laptop with a processor in the Pentium-M family, with built-in Wi-Fi, at least 256MB RAM, a burner (either a CD-R, CD-RW, or DVD+RW/-RW drive), and a productivity software package such as Microsoft Office or Microsoft Works.
Laptops for frequent travelers
You want a lightweight computer to use at the airport and in meetings. Look at thin-and-light or ultra portable laptops with processors in the Pentium-M family, built-in Wi-Fi, at least 256MB RAM, and a suite of productivity applications such as Microsoft Office or Microsoft Works.
Laptops for business users
You need to travel, create presentations and spreadsheets, and hook up to a network. Depending on your need for portability, look at thin-and-light and desktop replacement laptops with the productivity software such as Microsoft Office, Wi-Fi (or an included Wi-Fi card), an Ethernet card, at least 256MB RAM, and at least 40GB hard drive space. Frequent business travelers will probably prefer thin-and-lights to desktop replacements. But, if you spend most of your time at a desk, the desktop replacement's superior power and features may be the way to go.
Laptops for multimedia enthusiasts
You want to edit video, audio, or photos with processor-intensive applications such as Photoshop. Look for a desktop replacement with at least 512MB RAM, a 2GHz or faster processor, and at least 80GB hard drive space.
A FireWire (also called IEEE 1394) or USB 2.0 port can also come in handy to transfer data from devices such as your video camera, digital camera, and MP3 player. If you want to burn DVD movies, buy a DVD+R/RW drive. You can also purchase these components separately in the Laptop Parts & Accessories category.
Laptops for gamers
Gamers want speed and amazing graphics. Gaming laptops have fast processors, high-end graphics cards, and slick displays, but you'll usually pay a premium for all the latest goodies. Look for a desktop replacement with a Pentium 4 or AMD Athlon 64 processor in the 2.8 to 3.4 GHz range (or AMD equivalent), at least 1GB RAM, and a 256MB 3D graphics card.
Prioritize Laptop Price, Performance, & Portability
Before looking at system specs, decide whether features or portability matter more to you. Many students and frequent travelers consider portability a deciding factor when buying a laptop. On the other hand, lighter and smaller laptops are generally less powerful than their heavier counterparts.
More expensive laptops either offer more features or greater portability than lower-priced models. For example, "desktop replacements" have all the features you'd want from a full-sized desktop PC, but they weigh a lot, and you wouldn't want to carry one around for long. Similarly, thin-and-light notebooks and bargain notebooks have a lot of the same features, but the thin-and-light models weigh less and often cost more. If your priority is budget and features, more than portability, consider buying a bargain notebook. If you'd rather have less weight to carry, it might make sense to step up to a thin-and-light or ultra portable.
When deciding how much laptop you can carry, consider the laptop's weight as well as the additional weight of a carrying case, an extra battery, any swappable drives you feel like bringing with you, a power cord, and networking cables.
 |
Ultra Portable |
Thin-and-Light |
Bargain |
Desktop Replacement |
Weight: |
Less than 4 lbs |
4-6 lbs |
6-8 lbs |
More than 7 lbs |
Thickness: |
Less than .5 inch |
Less than 1 inch |
More than an inch |
More than an inch |
Display Size: |
12-inch |
12-14.1-inch |
14.1-inch |
15-17-inch |
AMD and Intel make several processors typically found in laptops. Some optimize laptop battery life while others concentrate on performance. Mobile processors, marked by the word "Mobile" or just "M," need less power and generate less heat than processors designed for desktops. Unless you need a powerful desktop replacement, get a mobile processor to extend battery life and prevent overheating. Most people should start with a 2.0GHz Pentium 4-M, 1.7 GHz Celeron-M, or 2200+ Athlon XP Mobile and work their way up.
- Celeron: Intel's budget-oriented chip with speeds up to 2.5GHz. They run slightly slower than Pentiums.
- Celeron-M: This low-cost processor has speeds up to 1.5GHz and slower speeds than Pentium-M. People looking to email, surf the Internet, and use word processing applications will be fine with the Celeron-M. It replaced the Pentium III-M in the low-end laptop processor arena.
- Pentium-M: Buy a battery-efficient Pentium-M, available in speeds up to 2.1GHz. The processor is part of Intel's Centrino Mobile Technology with built-in Wi-Fi.
- Pentium 4: Designed for desktops, Intel's Pentium 4 will appeal to multimedia enthusiasts. With speeds up to 3.33GHz, they tend to get hot and eat up battery life. If you intend to stay plugged in, they offer great performance.
- AMD Athlon 64: Always a favorite of gamers, the Athlon 64 supports 64-bit computing and is usually found in desktop replacements.
- Mobile AMD Athlon 64: Comparable to Pentium-M chips, the Mobile Athlon 64 is compatible with 802.11g wireless networking technology.
Select Standard Laptop Features
Once you've decided on a laptop weight class and processor, look at other components.
- Hard Drive: A computer's hard drive stores all your programs and files. A drive with a higher storage capacity (measured in GB) lets you save more data than a drive with a lower storage capacity. You only need 20GB to 40GB of hard drive space if you only plan to store your operating system, programs, documents, and a few photos. You'll want at least if you plan to save a lot of large files such as high-resolution images, movies, or your entire music collection. Additional external hard drives also work well for data backup purposes and for storing large files.
- Memory (RAM): Programs, including operating systems, need a certain amount of memory (RAM) to run, with more RAM providing better performance. For example, Windows XP requires at least 128MB RAM to run according to Microsoft. Most people find the number closer to 256MB and see even better performance with 512MB RAM, 1GB RAM, or more.
- CD and DVD Drives: When you buy any computer you want a way to back up your work. Some laptops come with fixed internal drives while others have a hot-swap bay where you can insert and remove a CD drive, DVD drive, or combo drive. Combo drives can read or write to two media formats. They may also include a read-only media format such as CD-ROM (to read CDs) or DVD-ROM (to play DVD movies and read CD-RWs). With hot-swap bays you can always upgrade to a different drive (for example, from a CD burner to a DVD burner) later and you can sometimes use an extra battery with the bay.
- Ports: Make sure you have the ability to connect all the peripherals and gadgets you want. Besides a parallel or USB port for your printer, you'll want USB 2.0 or FireWire to connect your MP3 player, digital camera, or camcorder. Many devices also work with USB 1.1.
- Screens: While most folks will love a 14.1-inch display, some people may want to sacrifice size to drop some laptop weight. If you work with a lot of multimedia or play 3D games, go with a larger display.
- Networking and Wi-Fi: If you want to connect to the Internet from more than one location in your home or office, find out if the laptop has built-in Ethernet support, a PCMCIA network interface card, or Wi-Fi (802.11b or 802.11g) support.
- Graphics Card: A graphics card processes video, freeing up memory (RAM) for other system tasks.
Laptop Upgrades
Although a laptop's small size makes it a bit trickier to upgrade than a desktop, even new computer users will feel comfortable:
- Adding memory. Laptop memory upgrades don't cost a lot of money and most people can replace a RAM stick in a couple minutes. In order to run Windows XP Home, Microsoft recommends you have 128MB RAM. However, Windows seems a lot happier with 256MB RAM, 512MB RAM, or more.
- Inserting a new hot swap drive (if your laptop supports them).
- Installing a new PCMCIA card. Some laptops have an Ethernet or modem card in the PCMCIA slot, but if you have an open card slot, you can quickly add USB 2.0, FireWire, an Ethernet port, or Wi-Fi.
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