The Urban Shogun’s Guide To Buying a Laptop

If you’re looking at perhaps treating yourself out to some tech goodness or just looking to update the mammoth of a machine that you’ve been using then look no further. Below is a breakdown of some of the key things you should look out for when purchasing a new laptop including a few recommendations at the bottom. For more advanced users, there are plenty of advanced advice at AnandTech which maybe more up your street. Of late I’ve done a bit of laptop shopping myself as well as advising upon a few people, so either a lot of people have been tempted to change round or perhaps they’re gearing up towards the ever busy Winter holiday period. Either way, here are my two cents on buying a new laptop.

 

Contents

 

Classes of Laptops

Key Features

Extras

Recommendations

 

One of the most important factors when it comes to purchasing a new laptop really depends on who you are as a user. Going on from that, what you use your computer for the most will affect what laptop would best suit you. There are generally three classes of laptops out there on the market being:

 

Classes of Laptops

 

Netbooks

These are the little babies of the computer world. Generally between 8 to 13 inches in size, these are small low powered laptops which primarily are good for checking your email, document writing and browsing the web. The average price of a Netbook now in the UK is around £200 - £400 and the more popular models include the Acer Aspire One as well as the ASUS Eee PC. The main positives of this class is that they’re very light at around 1kg and the battery life last anything from a couple of hours to a whole working day. The negatives are however that they’re underpowered, have a small screen estate and usually comes at the sacrifice of ports and optical drives.

 

Notebooks

The mainstay of the all laptops, these are the middle of the range with the most diverse choice and therefore the most options. What we’re talking about here is anything above a netbook at 13” and below a desktop replacement usually at 16” or 17”. Your average notebook can range from anything from a £300 cheap student laptop to a very good entry level Intel i3 processor at £600 which will be explained further down the page. The range of options are vast but your best bet would be to the Toshiba Satellite Series, Acer Aspire, HP Envy Series and the Dell Inspirons. Most of the these laptops will weigh around 2-3kgs, have a battery that last usually 2-3 hours and are usually separated by a few key extras such as DVD/Blu-ray drives, backlit keyboards and extra USB ports for example.

 

Desktop Replacements

Desktop Replacements or Gaming Laptops however you look at them are the mother of all laptops. As the name suggests, they’re primarily designed to pack the power of a big desktop into the relatively small frame of a laptop however that does come at a cost. Your average gaming laptop ranges anything up from the standard 15.4” to the big 17” beasts. Everything that can be achieved on a desktop PC can be achieved on one of these machines and come in at a price of anything between £600 upwards to money no object laptops at £3,000. Your options include the stylish Sony Vaios, the legendary Dell XPS/Alienware series and of course the much underrated MSi range of gaming laptops. The good thing about these laptops is they pretty much run everything under the sun, the downside is that these machines usually weigh upwards of 4kg and you’ll be lucky if the battery survives more than 2 hours on a single charge not to mention of course being the most expensive of all laptops.

 

So those are all the classes for you. Of course there are those tablet PC’s and desktop-all-in ones that you can check out but those I consider more to be novelties. So you know your laptop class now, how do you pick the right laptop with all these complicated specs thrown at you? Below is a breakdown of the main features to look for in your average laptop with of course the netbooks and desktop replacements being accordingly under and over powered versions of these specs.

 

Key Features

 

RAM

The importance of

Random Access Memory or RAM is all too often overlooked. Sometimes all you need to beef up your system in a noticeable way is to up the RAM. On a new laptop the minimum you should be looking for is 3Gb of RAM and with 4Gb being more the standard today. You’ll need a 64-bit processor in order to use anything over 3Gb’s but that I’ll cover in the next part.

 

Processor

The two main brands of processors out there are Intel and AMD. Some people will traditionally stick with one or the other but really there isn’t much of a difference as long as you can compare one to another directly which CPUBenchMark.Net comprehensively does although the list is a little daunting to see at first. For a low end computer you should probably stick with a cheap Core II Duo processor however that technologies quickly going out of fashion. Depending on your price range an entry level Core i3 will set you off at around £500, Core i5 at around £600/£700 and the Core i7 at anything over £800. The AMD equivalents are the AMD Athlon II X4 for the Core i3, AMD Phenom II 955 for the i5 and AMD Phenom II X4 for the Core i7. As the AMD cores are older than those of it’s Intel counterparts, you won’t get as much power from these than the i3, i5 and i7 series. If you want to understand what all the fancy L1/L2/L3 Cache and Front Side Buses etc, you might want to check out this good article in PC World. Also to take advantage of anything above 3Gb of RAM, you’ll need a 64-bit processor. This used to be a problem a few years back with compatibility issues but pretty much most modern programs offer both a 32-bit and 64-bit version of their software.

 

Graphics Card

Unless you simply have no interest in HD video, photoshopping or playing any video games avoid the Integrated Graphics Cards that ship with a lot of modern day laptops like the plague. If you plan on playing anything more than the default games that come on the Windows then a discrete graphics card from Nvidia or ATI is a must have. Look for anything above 512mb of discrete RAM to 2gb for the best gaming performance and personally I’d recommend a 1Gb of discrete memory which should allow you to play pretty much every game out there today. TomsHardware.com gives a very good benchmarking table for comparison for those who want to delve deeper.

 

Hard Drive Capacity

The standard for last year’s computers was 250Gb, now that’s been upped to around 320Gb as standard. As 2011 approaches however, it’s looking increasingly like a 500Gb hard drive has become standard for the industry. When picking out hard drives, you might also want to take a look at the higher speed 7,200 RPM drives compared to the standard 5,400 RPM drives. Further down I’ll address SSD drives that some laptops will have available to them.

 

Screen Size and Resolution

This really is entirely up to you and your preference. Obviously the larger the screen, the heavier it’ll be and the more expensive the laptop so if you want an average sized laptop, you’ll usually find it bringing a 15.4” screen. This year there’ve been a lot more 16” screens which accommodate widescreen modes and so don’t be phased by the resolution being a funny 1366 x 768 as that too is becoming standard. Your higher end graphics cards will support higher resolutions usually up to 1920 x 1200, and why would you need this? Well the higher the resolution, the more things you can pack onto the screen and that includes pixels, giving crisper sharper images. There can be a trade off though as sometimes the screen isn’t large enough to accommodate the high resolutions and you’re found squinting at small text. You’ll also want to look for whether the screen you’re looking at supports HD, and not just 720p but the full 1080p for the best media viewing. Even if you can’t quite dig deep enough into your pockets to fork out on a full HD display, if you have a proper TV that supports HD and a spare £3 then purchase a HD cable and use the TV to view all your HD goodness.

 

Extras

 

3D Laptops

These are a relatively new line in laptops and therefore have quite a hefty price tag. If you’re into 3D gaming or media viewing, I’d recommend a laptop which has NVidia 3D Vision capability. What you get is a display which has a high Hz rate usually around 120Hz compared to the standard 60/70Hz, a pair of NVidia active shutter glasses and a USB-powered IR emitter. You’ll usually find that there’s about a £200 premium on the 3D models over their standard counterparts so it’s really a personal preference of how much you want 3D really.

 

Touchscreen

Touchscreens on a laptop rarely work, and the few experiences I’ve had with them feel more like an out-dated touchscreen mobile from a year or two back. Often the inbuilt software provided is too sluggish to be used naturally and well, the screens are usually a fingerprint magnet so my recommendation is to hold off on the touchscreen at least for now.

 

Backlit Keyboard

You’d be suprised how much of a difference a few LED lights behind the keyboard can make. Aside from the general cool factor, even in dimly lit rooms, the backlight on a lot of newer laptops really come into their own. On that note, you should be careful to try out a lot of laptop keyboards before putting down on the hefty price tag, sometimes the keyboard can make or break a good laptop.

 

Solid State Drives

The term solid state drive or SSD refers to a hard disk without mechanical parts. The benefit of this is simply a ridiculously fast drive and as there aren’t any mechanical parts, it’s a hell of a lot sturdier and resistant to bumps and knocks, something that can be important in a portable device like a laptop. What’s the catch? Well SSD drives can cost you an arm and a leg and for a small capacity. The standard for SSD drives are the 64Gb and 128Gb drives which although fast, will set you back price wise.

 

USB Ports

Your standard laptop should come with a minimum of 2 USB ports but I usually find that when you add a cooler, external hard drives, wireless mouses and the plethora of other computing peripherals that 4 is quite a good base number for USB ports. You’ll also perhaps find the odd laptop sporting one of the newer USB 3.0 standards or a high speed eSata port on some of the newer laptops which’ll enable high speed data transfer. Useful if you do a lot of photography or chunky music library.

 

Multi Touch Track pads

Multi Touch Track pads are a standard on Apple computers and are very quickly being built into the majority of new Windows computers. Even if your track pad doesn’t support multi touch out of the box, there’s a good chance that you’re using a Synaptic branded track pad in which case a manual install of a few of their newer drivers will give you all the multi touching goodness you can handle.

 

Speakers

Look out for Hardman/Kardon or Bose speakers when purchasing a new laptop. Although not usually a deal breaker, it can often help if you watch a lot of movies or listen to a lot of music. On the other hand if you do end up with tinny speakers then hook up an external subwoofer and some stereo speakers and you’re good to go.

 

As with anything, purchasing a laptop is a matter of personal preference and use. The perfect laptop for somebody might be a nightmare for another to use. So what I’ve listed below are some of what I feel are the better laptops in their class.

 

Recommendations

 

Netbooks

 

Samsung N210	ASUS Eee PC 1201N Seashell

 

Standard Notebooks

 

Toshiba Satellite L650-1FW	Dell Inspiron N5010

 

Gaming Laptops/Desktop Replacements

 

Alienware M17x	SONY Vaio VPCZ13V9E/X

 

Of course these are only a few laptops and there are many many more that you should definitely consider but at least now you have somewhere to start looking.

 

EDIT (25/11/10) – The guys over at Gizmodo have just released their best laptops of 2010. It’s a very good list and something you should definitely take a look at here.

 

Related articles

• A Look at the Lineup of ASUS Laptops (brighthub.com)
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• Netbook suggestions (edugeek.net)
• Top 5 Laptops Gamers Can Buy For Black Friday (cinemablend.com)
• The Total Laptop Computer Buying Guide (brighthub.com)