5 Questions to Ask Yourself Before Buying a New Laptop
Shopping for a new laptop computer can be a very daunting task for new shoppers and previous laptop owners alike. Follow this five question jog-list to choose which laptop features, models, brands or price is right for the new laptop of your dreams.
1. What's will you do with your laptop?
2. Do you travel a lot or will you be homebound?
3. What's your budget?
4. What are others saying?
5. Who has the best price?
Choosing a laptop computer can depend on whether you’re looking for a cheap computer or if you’re looking for the best performance. I will focus on looking for the best computer according to its performance without taking into account its price. There are many factors that can be considered when choosing a laptop, but the most important features to pay attention to are processor speed and amount of RAM, CD-ROM, USB and floppy drives, and hard disk space.
The most important feature in any computer is its speed. It can be really annoying when you even have to wait while your laptop begins to process the text you are typing into the word processor. A good option should be around a Pentium Centrino Mobile processor with a clock speed of 2.26 GHz. This model is better than the rest, like Pentium 4, because they can work better with lower speed, which hep them to maintain much more cooler (heat is a computer’s worst enemy). This will help you handle “heavy applications” like multimedia players, because the more speed it has, the faster it will process the data it receives.
Another important thing to improve speed is the RAM (Random Access Memory), which will determine how many things you can do at once with your computer. A fast computer should have from 512 – 1024 MB RAM. This is important because the more RAM you have, the more thingks you can do at the same time. It is much better to be able to hear music without stops and use demanding tasks like graphic design programs or games with high quality graphics at the same time, while you are burning a CD-ROM with your favorite videos and printing your class homework. If you have a low amount of RAM, doing this will just leave your computer dead after it begins to get stuck.
In order to be able to exchange data, watch movies, and install programs, you will need a good set of CD drives, floppy disk drives and USB drives. As to the floppy, any drive will be enough, for you do not have to pay attention to many things about it. Having it will let you exchange data in a fast, but not reliable way (but anyway you may need it). As to the other type of drive, it will be best if you get a DVD-RW drive, so you can watch DVD movies and burn DVD discs. You should check the drive has a speed of 24X preferably. This shows you the speed at which the drive can read the DVD, and in this way you will not see jumps while seeing a movie. By have a DVD-RW you also have the possibility of burning CD’s and DVD’s, and in this way burn you important files to make a backup, make you audio CD, or burn your favorite movies or photos for seeing them in your Home Movie Theater. And besides, make sure your computer has USB drives, which let you connect ANY type of device: printers, external drives, game devices, cameras, palms, externals keyboards and mousse, portable USB disk drives for saving files in a totally practical way, and many other things.
As to the hard disk, the more files you will save, the more you need. Once Bill Gates dared to say that “10 KB should be enough for anyone”, but in that time when computers started he was far from reality. The top capacity some hard disks have is 100 GB as a normal level. The maximum you can find actually is about 400 GB in a hard disk. You should also check its speed is around 7200 rpm, so that it can save files fast, and you don’t have to wait a long time while you install a program or you copy files from a CD, Internet, or another computer. By having a good hard disk, you not have to worry for a long time about erasing files or programs because your disk space is full.
As you can see, to choose a laptop you should check on several things like processor speed and RAM, the DVD drive, and hard disk space. There are many other aspects which you should check, but these are the ones you should begin with, because they cover the basic functions of a computer, which are processing data, saving data, and transferring data. Remember that the characteristics described here will not make your computer cheap at all, but will help you make miracles with your computer. There are other devices which you consider, like speakers, type of screen, printers, scanners, graphics cards, etc., but with the ones mentioned in this essay you should be fine for a long time.
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