Laptop Buyer's Guide

By Mikal Saturday, 7^th of May 2011

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Are you in the market for a new laptop? Make sure you know what you're looking for so you don't end up getting a laptop that won't do what you need it to. Depending on what type of computer user you are, and what you will use your laptop for, there are different features that you will need to be looking at. The main types of users are broken down as follows:

Students

Typically, students are interested in affordability and portability when it comes to buying a laptop. It needs to be able to be carried around all day with ease, so netbooks have recently been the item of choice in the last few years. The most ideal sized laptop in this situation would be a 12-13 inch laptop. These size laptops provide the light-weight option, but can also be quite powerful at the same time and have an ideal screen size.

Generally 2GB of RAM would be a minimum, 250GB of hard drive space is ideal. A CD/DVD drive is not always included in a laptop of this size, so if this feature is important then you may need to do a bit more shopping around as it is becoming more common for laptops of this size not to include an optical drive.

Home User

The home laptop user is generally everyone, they might use it for a bit of gaming, possibly some photo/video editing, but mainly it will be used for very basic tasks. These include email, chatting to friends and family, internet banking, shopping and general browsing. All laptops will cater to this user with ease as the power required for these tasks is low. Most laptops for the home will be in the 14 inch to 17 inch range. 2GB of RAM is generally seen to be at the low end, and 4GB is now considered as standard among laptops of this size. 500GB of hard drive storage is plenty, and will be more than big enough to store all your programs, music, photos, videos and whatever else you have. Most laptops in this category will have a DVD burner as a minimum.

Gamer

Gaming laptops have made large advancements in the last few years, with more and more laptop brands producing machines specifically for gaming. Generally, computer gaming has been the domain of desktop computers, as they are more flexible in terms of updating components when new games come on the market. Quad-core processors, 500GB of hard drive space, and 4GB of RAM should be considered as a bare minimum for a gaming laptop. To get the most out of current and future gaming titles, a 17 inch screen should also be considered a minimum specification. Paired with this, the main feature that should be looked at is the graphics card. 1GB graphics cards are common even in home user laptops, while 1.5GB and even 2GB cards are becoming commonplace in gaming laptops.