Notebook & Laptop consumer buying guide

Notebook & laptop computer buying guide for consumers

My blog attempts to evaluate previous, current, and upcoming notebook and laptop computer technology. My expertise in consumer electronics comes from 4 years experience of selling computers and peripherals at a popular computer retailer.

Use my blog as more of a teaching guide to the variety of different options available to you in today’s world of the personal portable computer. I will do my best to define all of the technical terms you will encounter in plain ordinary English, which will hopefully aid in your next computer purchase.

The first and most important step in buying any personal computer is to define exactly how and where you plan to use your machine throughout it's life. Some of the questions you should ask yourself are, what programs will I be running? Operating system, games, Microsoft office (other office software), Internet, GPS, etc. Where am I primarily going to be using my machine? at home, in the office, cars, planes, internet cafes, etc. How do I want to connect to my notebook to the Internet? Dial up, high speed wired, high-speed wireless, not sure. What peripherals will I need to connect to my laptop? monitor, TV, projector, flash drives, memory cards, etc.

Processors
After these questions have been answered the next step is to determine what processor or CPU (Central Processing Unit) will handle everything you can foresee wanting to do with your machine over the expected life you have for it. The processor is essentially the brain of your machine and is a major determinant on what the final price of your laptop will be. The processor is not something that I recommend saving a few bucks on. Processors are not something that can be easily upgraded by the average consumer and this is especially true with notebook computers.

Intel
The most popular brand name in processors right now would have to be Intel. Traditionally Intel has sold the Pentium and Celeron processors for personal computers. The name Pentium and Celeron are nothing more then names associated with what amounts to speed, a good analogy for this would be Ford’s Cobra Mustang vs The Ford LX Mustang. Both are Mustang cars built by Ford, but one is much faster then the other. The Pentium class processor can be compared to the Cobra Mustang while the Celeron class processor would be more like the LX. Don’t be fooled by GHz numbers and other specs, the Celeron processors are slower.

AMD
Intel’s largest competitor in the personal computer processor industry is AMD who produces a processor known as the Athlon. Right now there are 2 different classes of Athlon processors you will see in notebooks, one is the Athlon XP, the other, their newer chip is know as the Athlon 64. Both classes of processors are fast for today standards and known for being a better graphics processor then the Intels. The 64 in Athlon 64, stands for 64 bit processing. Currently there are very few programs that operate at 64 bits, so if you do decide to purchase a computer running a 64-bit processor, know that although it has more capabilities, those capabilities will not be realized until software to run on them is produced.

Processors Continued
Now that I have given you a basic breakdown of the names of processors you will encounter, lets move on to the GHz or the clock speed of the processor. GHz is short for Giga Hertz per second or one billion Hertz per second. This actually refers to the time it takes your processor to make one computation; Therefore a 1 GHz machine will make roughly one billion computations in a second. This number can be very deceptive and is not the end all be all of the actual speed of a computer. While this something want to look at, don’t forget that it goes along with the class of processor also. Just to reiterate a 2.5 GHz Pentium processor is much faster then a 2.5GHz Celeron processor, this will also reflect in the price.

Now that you have a basic understanding of the processors you will encounter when buying your new laptop we need to talk about processors specific to notebooks. In recent years processors have been developed specifically for increasing the overall performance in these computers. Intel makes a processor known as the Centrino, which is a Pentium class processor with technology for laptops. The Centrino laptops produce the higher performance laptop speeds while dramatically conserving battery life. Other notebooks not running Centrino processors have what is known as speed step technology, which actually allows the processor to slow down when running on the battery if the maximum performance of the machine is not needed. If you are planning on buying a laptop for use primarily on the road (running on the battery) I would definitely recommend that you buy a machine with these power saving technologies.

Turion 64
AMD has just released the Turion 64 which is a version of their 64-bit processors specially designed for laptops. The AMD Turion 64 is much like the Centrino processor, but also offers improved security features and the ability to operate 64 bit programs. The AMD Turion 64 also features an ultra thin design which aids in keeping the machine that houses it thin and light.

Screens
In today’s world everyone seems to think that the smaller the better, until you have had to work for eight hours on a 12 inch screen. I’m not here to say that having a small compact laptop is not a good thing, but when you’re looking at these machines, think about the practicality of what you’re buying. Normally I recommend a 15-inch screen. If you are buying you laptop to primarily use at home and on the road occasionally then you probably want something bigger. The notebooks with the smaller are great for travel, watching movies, surfing the internet, and other recreational activities, for those of you looking for a work machine professionals, college students, etc, I would not recommend this type of machine.

You will most likely see the term Active Matrix display when looking at screen specs. Every new machine for sometime now has had this type of screen, basically Active Matrix allows you to view the screen from all angles. Laptops with out Active Matrix screens can only be viewed if you are right in front of it. Again I would not worry about this unless you are purchasing a used or refurbished notebook. The three most common types of screens you will encounter are

• XGA (Standard screen resolution for a laptop)


• SXGA (Super-XGA, Higher screen resolution and better image quality)


• UXGA (Ultra-XGA, Highest screen resolution and the best image quality)

You will mostly likely encounter many wide screens displays, which are great for watching movies and fine for working on, but they do tend to get a bit bulky as they increase in size.

Memory
There are two main types of memory that someone who isn’t very computer savvy should concern themselves with, RAM (Random Access Memory) and the hard drive storage space.

Hard drive storage storage is exactly as it sounds. This memory pertains to how much data your machine has the ability to hold (how much stuff you can put on it). The hard drives you will encounter when buying a new laptop will be measured in Giga bytes, a Giga byte being 1 billion bytes. The larger this number the better. In today’s standards I would not buy anything with less then a 40 Giga byte hard drive.

RAM is working memory, which allows you to change the data on the hard drive. It will never hurt to have too much ram, but you may not always be use the full amount on your machine. Windows XP, the operating system found on most new retail laptops excluding Macs, requires a minimum of 128 Mega bytes or RAM. I recommend that newer computers have a minimum of 512 Mega bytes of RAM.

In my next post I will explain the difference types of RAM you will in encounter when buying your next laptop or notebook computer.

Visit some of the popular retailers and manufacturers listed on the right hand side for more information.

This blog is currently a work in progress that I plan to update and complete in the near future. Please check back for more interesting information about buying consumer laptops

posted by Paul @ 11:14 PM