Daily Archives: May 25, 2007

If you are buying a laptop or just planning, watch out for these things. This will help you make your decision a bit easier.PriceThis could be the deciding factor for most of us. So first try to decide on a price point that will help you narrow the models you have to look at etc. For example think of a price point and stick to it, only go over 10% of that price point if you can get a better deal.CompaniesDon’t get stuck on them, try to see what get you bang for your buck. If you go for a local company the price could be less. In India for example if you buy a laptop for HCL or SAHARA you will get the same product that is atleast 5000 Rs more if you would have choose the multinationals. Similarly companies like apple and Sony make high end laptops that are very good but you will also be paying extra for those laptops. So stick to local ones for better bang for your buck.ProcessorsThere are two options, INTEL and AMD. Intel is popular and easily available. I prefer AMD because its much cheaper and give you the same performance as the INTEL processors. But they are hard to find, so try to look for them for better value. I have been using AMD processors without any problem for the last seven or eight years.Monitor SizeScreen size is very important, if you are looking for a desktop replacement get a 17 inch or bigger. But if you want portability then go for 12 or 14 inches. Remember as the size of the monitor increases the battery performance decreases.Operating SystemThere is only one really Windows Vista. Vista is the best OS you can get unless you are into Linux or osx. Vista comes preloaded with many laptops there are a lot of versions of vista. Any of them would be fine because they will only install the OS that runs well with your laptop. So which ever you get should be fine. And you will not be missing that much between the versions. You can always upgrade at a later date if you want.RamNow a days 1GB ram seems to be common. So get atleast 1GB and upgrade it further if you have the money.StorageAtleast 120 Gb should be the least you should look for. Anything less would see you uninstalling files within a month. So get atleast 120 Gb and if possible more. Don’t go for a 120 GB single drive go for a 80 GB and a 40 GB drive that way if one fails you don’t lose all your data. There is not much choice you have in deciding this but, if you have to choose between two models with similar capacity go for one with two hard disks. This way you can also upgrade in future without reinstalling the OS or changing your settings.BatteryHere also you don’t have much option. If you are going for the basic laptops the battery will be around 2 hours. If you go for the premium ones the battery level could go up to 6 hours or so. The price difference between them is very big so don’t bring this issue in deciding the laptops.Optical DriveGo for atleast 16x DVD drive other options like lightscrub ( Special drive that can print cd cover onto the cd, you will need special cd’s for this hp makes them ) etc are feature that are nice if they come with the laptop don’t pay extra for them.The above mentioned features are the main issues that you should look for, everything else you can add later. So don’t make big issues if you have don’t have Bluetooth, wifi, etc. All those features can be added with USB dongles. Even camera if it comes with the laptop that’s fine don’t pay extra for it. You can always add it later with USB camera.So good luck with your purchase and hope this has helped you. I bought a HCL Y2001 for 40500 Rs watch out for a review soon.