How to select and buy the best laptop: Points to consider while purchasing your new Notebook or Laptop

noreply@blogger.com (Ankur Sharma - Anks (cyberGenie)) — Thu, 19 Sep 2013 13:34:00 +0000

Some days back I was tasked to select or suggest a Laptop for my parents and one of my friends. While doing so, when I was searching for the best product suiting the requirements, I was amazed by the huge numbers and wide variety of models of different brands available in the market. Ranging from the legacy or old models to the latest in technology, there was just so much of them, that I myself almost got lost among them. So, I decided to think objectively and as on need basis. This confusing situations led me to understand that so many of the people, who want to buy Laptops and PCs will be facing a very similar kind of situation and realized how difficult it is to find the right product, best-suited to our requirements, needs and desires, that also fits into the budget.

I decided to write the advantages and disadvantages or the thinks that were lacking in each of the models, that seemed good to me and decide accordingly. As I realized that these few quick points might also help others, select the best and help in clearing the confusion, I am trying my hand to write a small article on how to select the best laptop. Here I want draw your attention to a few important points or the Things to look for while buying a laptop:

Note: it might be noticed that the list is not exhaustive and also can be applied to Smart Phones, Tablets, Phablets and so on. However, I will also try to write a separate write up for mobiles later on.

There a few basic things that we need to keep in mind before setting out to buy a laptop. The most important thing is to identify what is the exact purpose you want to buy a laptop for, weather its for programming, giving presentations, auditing/accounting, gaming, multimedia and entertainment, designing, architecture applications, emails and business, watching movies and programs or just surfing the net (internet, the www or world wide web). So, identify your need first. The second most important and critical part is deciding your budget. Yes, its very important that you decided how much you can or you would like to spend to buy a new laptop, because there is just so many of them available in various ranges in the market, that its mindboggling and you will just get crazy with the variety and the technology available that when the agent or sales executive will explain to you its used and latest features that you will want to buy the most latest, most probally also the most expensive and the latest product available in the market, unless you have made up your mind firmly and strongly to stick to you budget. While It will be helpful to stick to the decided, budget, its often helpful to be a little flexible, depending on the return on investment (RoI) that you are getting from the features and the technology that will get as an add-on, paying that little extra. So, its best to decide a range and buy the best suited product to you within that range, so that you are not extra burdened by the cost. Its also helpful to ask someone you know, within family or friends and take their advice on the latest available technology and its need and uses. Another important fact is to do a market survey before buying or finally making that purchase. I have found the market rates of the laptops/electronic items to be hugely different and varying from one shop to another. Thanks to internet now you can get an idea sitting in the comfort of your homes as well. Infact, you can even buy products online, saving some bucks spend on the retail shops, the sales agents and middle men. The only advice or discretion that you may want to take is to have a look and feel the product physically before ordering it online, because its often the case that picture looks entirely different from the product. Remember those sentences written in very small fonts, stating that the actual product may be different from the one shown in the image or the final product or color will depend on the availability. So, it may be the case that the final delivered product may be no where close to what you may have imagined or thought it to be like. Anyways, to avoid the risk you may also like to take advantage of the modern technology available to us in the form of internet, by reviewing the product online and check its ratings, there are so many people who contribute and tell their personal experience about the product, you may want to take advantage from their experience: good or bad. There are also lot of websites that review a product in terms of its features, newly introduced technology, performance, usability, easy of use, applicability, durability and cost, its advisable to go through a couple of them before finally making up your mind, reading only one is advisable for the simple reason that the opinion may be biased towards a certain technology or vender.

The important considerations: components and factors, mostly in the order of importance that you would want to check and decide on are:

1. Processor: The first and foremost important thing in any PC is its processor, its mind, rest everything almost depends on this. I series is the latest set of CPU/Processors from Intel, AMD is not recommended for us as we had a bad experience. The series is like i3, i5(my office laptop), i7(chikki’s laptop) and in that order. Also important is to note that which generation the chip belongs to. (generation = evolution or newest one) Currently, 4th generation chips have come in the market for Desktops, but laptops I have seen only 3rd generation. So preferably we should buy 3rd generation until we get a significant cost advantage/reduction on the old/previous gen chips/processors.

2. What is the brand image of the company?

3. How many years of Warranty the company is giving. (Present trend is of giving 3 years NBD(next business Day) onsite(home)service)

4. Serviceability and Service Centers: If not the onsite/home service, how many service centers does it have: a.) in your city b.) of its own (the thing to understand is that now a days a lot of laptop manufacturers have outsourced their service and repair to external companies/partners who service the compaints on behalf of the laptop manufacturer. I personally have found the quality of these service centers to be not up to the mark and therefore as far as possible we should avoid them. These are usually not dedicated ones but are like your neighborhood repair shop, servicing many brands at the same time)

5. Display and Screen: How much screen size the laptop has and what is it made up of: current trend is if LED displays with bright HD display (old: LCD/TFT displays)

6. Size of the screen (how much are you comfortable with or what is your optimum requirement? Do you want a large display or small is sufficient?)

7. The overall size of the laptop. Do you want a light, easy to carry machine or you can even carry a light heavier and bulky one as well. Remember the laptop screen is a big contributor to over size and weight of a laptop. Current Tred: Light weight UltraBooks, which are think and light and easy to carry, this is possible by the new innovative chip that has come to market, which dissipates less heat and takes less space, may be requiring less energy consumption too?.

8. The HDD capacity: how much do u need or you think is sufficient for you? Current trend: 500GB/750GB/1TB Hard disks. Now a days many laptops are coming with bundled SSD (Solid State Device) hard discs. Usually they install the OS on these, 64 to 128GB SSD drives is trendy. These are also a new technology that makes the discs more smaller and safer, which was possible by a new methodology to manufacture these, by using the solid state electronics versus the normal Silicon EFT based. Also important is the speed of the hard drive 7200 is preferable, however, usually companies are bundling 5400 rpm discs.

9. The Memory or RAM: this is another factor that is v. important and determines the speed of your machine. The Random Access Memory or RAM is the memory that is used by the PC to store temporary information, and keep the current information for easy and quick use. The PC transfers the file/information from the HDD to Memory first and then displays and vice-versa. Current Trend: the new ultrabook series us coming with 8-16GB RAM which is expandable memory upto32GB. Usually the normal laptops available in the market and which are not too costly are coming with 2-8GB ram with 2 slots (where ram can be put). I think these days one should not buy less than 4GB, if your laptop has less than 3 or 4GB its recommended to upgrade it to atleast 3GB. Its also important to check which technology the RAM is coming, current DDR 3 is the most common and fast technology used for RAMs.

10. USB ports: how many USB ports does your laptop has? Atleast 2 should be there, favorably 4 ports. Current Trend: USB 3.0. So, atleaast one usb 3.0 port is mandatory going forward as in this technology, the transfer is upto 10 times faster, compared to USB 2.0.

11. HDMI Port: to connect directly to your High definition (HD) TV

12. Keyboard: which format are you comfortable with and the type of keys and the layout? Chicklet of normal, helps in easy typing and longer life. Its important to note that not only different countries/regions have keyboards to suit their own regional language needs, but even the english keyboard layouts are different, example: the US and UK keyboard layouts are quite different from each other, and if you are used to one kind, it will be a bit difficult and will take time to get used to the other type of layout of the keys.

13. Camera: now a days laptops are coming with integrated webcams, check the quality of the camera and its pixels, viz. 0.3MP,1.3MP,2MP,5/8MP interpolated or HD.

14. Mic: check if the laptop has a inbuilt mic and also a external mic jack, which can be used while voice/video chatting and recording

15. Speaker: what kind of speakers does it have and of what power. Does it comes with some external company vendor which is famous for sound/speakers like harmon-kardon, JBL, etc. and/or it has some sound enhancement software/driver/codec like Dolby Digital effects, Beats Audio, Surround Sound technology, etc.

16. Ethernet port: even now a days mostly wifi is common, you can’t forget the good old Ethernet/LAN card. Check the max supported speed.

17. Phone modems are getting more and more outclassed, but its still a good feature to have

18. External Connectivity to external display devices such as monitors: serial port

19. Locking hook: to lock the laptop securely while not in use or you are not physically present

20. Architecture: I forgot to talk about the architecture, which is another important feature of modern day machine. Current trend is for supporting 64 bit software like windows 8, etc. Check if the PC supports 64 bit OS (Operating System) as that’s the future in another 5 years or so or may be earlier, who knows. Its to be noted that almost all the older 32-bit softwares and OSes can be run on 64-bit machines.

21. CPU architecture and number of cores/processors: single processor or multiple processor systems: Dual Core or Quad Core: Current trend is for Quad core in Laptops and now even eight or Octa core CPUs have come for mainly Desktops and servers

22. Touch pad: this is another important feature of your laptop that will determine easy of use of the laptop. Focus on the smoothness or test for any sluggishness in moving the mouse pointer. Check the size of the touchpad and the features provided, scroll method, single or multi touch (multiple fingers can be used) enabled etc. palm resistance, etc.. Also, check if an alternative to touch pad is provided. Many laptops have a dot pointer or ball pointer that can be used to move/control the cursor instead of the touchpad. If not then in case your touchpad encounters a problem, either you will need to be expert on how to handle a laptop/OS with only keys or you will be left no options but to use an external mouse

23. Last but not the least: the battery: Its one of those essential parts of the laptop that makes it portable. Check the type of battery, usually the no. of cells a battery has is a good indicator of the kind of backup its going to provide. Market Average is 6-Cell Lithium-Ion Batteries for laptops. Anything above it is good and below is less. Usually battery backup ranges from 3-3.5 hrs of continuous use. Anything between 4-6 hours is really good. You can also buy battery packs with double and triple the no. of cells. Check if your laptops supports it.

24. Good to have: Power management and battery management software.

25. Wireless Connectivity: A good wifi adapter, latest Bluetooth support. Current trend is 802.11a/b/c for wifi and v4.0 for Bluetooth. Infrared ports are becoming obsolete now a days.

26. Its also important to check the external buttons and controls on your laptop: most important of those are: Wireless Switch: to switch on/off the Wi-Fi and Bluetooth, volume controls, mute, presentation, display brightness and contrast, and other shortcut keys.

Hope this helps you making the right choice for you and finding your best fit and increases your knowledge about modern features of laptop PCs.

PS: It’s not important to buy the latest but to buy the best workable solution. My personal thinking is that most of the Pentium/Celeron/AMD APU CPUs and laptops that are still in the market can do a very good job for a average person, they not only run all the normally required software and apps and media applications and tools, but also support modern day operation systems such as windows 8 and are significantly cost effective in a way of being about 30% or more less in price of normally available new laptops with latest or last year’s technology. Old technology is still robust and working, you just need to check it on all vital parameters needed for your specific/personal/business use.

Please let me your comments and suggest improvements that you like me to incorporate to make the article better and more informational.

My First TechBlog Post in Several years...

noreply@blogger.com (Ankur Sharma - Anks (cyberGenie)) — Thu, 19 Sep 2013 13:01:00 +0000

Guys, here I am, back to the tech blogging areana....

Recently, I was surveying and surfing the internet, reading reviews and checking ratings on various websites and visiting online stores to buy and advice on some of the electronic gadgets for myself, my parents and one of my friends. While doing so, when I was searching for the right match and best product for each of us, which will satisfy and address their needs and also falls within budget and at the same time has the current or should I say the latest technology, I suddenly realized that, earlier and, on several occasions I was helped by numerous articles and reviews written by people that enabled to me to know more about the technology and products, their pros and cons and consequently select the best for me. So, I decided its time for me to give back something to online world and increase the knowledge base and awareness among the masses.

RandomTech

How to select and buy the best laptop: Points to consider while purchasing your new Notebook or Laptop

My First TechBlog Post in Several years...

Guys, here I am, back to the tech blogging areana....