10 Things to Keep in Mind While Buying a New Laptop

Form Factor

Ultraslim: expensive, full-featured, yet light laptops. Occupying the 11- to 14-inch space, these laptops can now genuinely claim great portability with minimal performance sacrifice, thanks to SSDs and reasonably speedy dual-core CPUs.

Mid-weight: 15.6-inch budget laptops. You can get everything from your basic budget laptop up to a powerful gaming laptop. They're usually bristling with ports and will have a DVD or Blu-ray drive built in. Unlike ultraportables, you'll usually get a dedicated graphics card here (to the benefit of games, but detriment of battery life), lots of ports (including a few legacy ones) and you should be able to get quad-core CPUs with little worry.

Desktop replacement: they vary in sizes, 16- to 18.4-inches, weight as heavy as 6 kilograms and average battery life of less than three hours. Not recommended for people who are on the move. They can accommodate a wide range of performance parts and are just right for power users of all kinds.

 

CPU

Intel Core i7: Core i7 is often paired with a discrete graphics processing unit (GPU). Core i7's are meant for high performance and are generally found in ultraportable laptops, what Intel calls ultrabooks.

Intel Core i5: Available in dual- and quad-core configurations, as well as low-voltage variants, the Core i5 is the workhorse of the industry, filling many a fine mainstream laptop. Laptops featuring this processor will either come with Intel HD graphics or a discrete graphics card from AMD or Nvidia, depending on how large the laptop is.

Intel Core i3: these dual-core processors are almost exclusively paired with Intel HD Graphics, and are for those who only do the basics: word processing, image viewing, music listening and internet browsing. It's a small step above the processors below, and is usually what we consider as being the minimum for hassle-free computing. Also budget-friendly.

Display

Screen Quality: We would recommend getting a IPS display as you would get better colour options along with viewing angles too.

Resolution: A huge majority of laptops ship with a resolution of 1366x768. While this looks fine on 11.6-inch laptops, by the time you get to 15.6-inch, it tends to make everything seem comically large, and images tend to lack detail. There are 11.6-inch laptops that run full HD as well, but things tend to feel a little cramped there.

Touch Screens: Thanks to Windows 8, you'll also have to consider whether you want a laptop with a touchscreen. We can say unequivocally that if you're buying a Windows 8 laptop, get a touchscreen, as it's almost useless without it unless you intend to bypass all the new stuff altogether.

Storage

If you are willing to buy a laptop with high memory you should follow these guidlines as

512MB-1GB: generally fine if you're running a Linux variant on something small like a netbook, but really, this is far too little for today's uses. Web browsing will likely suffer, as will modern apps and operating systems.

2GB: absolute entry level. This will be fine for office work and basic internet browsing, but you may find things occasionally slow down.

4GB: where everybody should start, and is a nice balance for 3D gaming, graphics work and video editing.

8GB or more: recommended! This should ensure that you'll tackle all tasks just fine.

Important: keep in mind that for 4GB RAM or more, you'll need to run a 64-bit operating system to take advantage of all the memory - a 32-bit one won't be able to access it all. Since Windows comes as separate 32- and 64-bit editions, make sure you're getting the right one if you intend to run Microsoft's operating system.

Graphics Card

If you want to play 3D standalone games, though, you'll need a dedicated GPU - try to grab something with at least 512MB to 1GB of video RAM. While larger video memory does tend to be paired with higher performing cards, it's not the thing that's primarily responsible for the performance increase.

USB Port

Make sure that you have enough ports on your laptop - at a minimum, look for two USB ports (three to four is better). USB 3.0 ports would also be preferable, as opposed to the slower USB 2.0 although this won't affect things like keyboards and mice, for storage, it can be a huge benefit. Connecting a monitor will, these days, involve an HDMI or mini DisplayPort output. There's also Thunderbolt to consider; this wonder port can double as DisplayPort, but can also connect to high-speed storage devices, video capture devices or connect to a hub (as in Apple's Thunderbolt Displays) to provide extra ports like USB 3.0, Ethernet and more.

Wi-Fi

Wi-Fi is an indispensable feature, and most laptops ship with a standard called 802.11n. This can operate on two frequencies, with most mainstream laptops supporting 2.4GHz and premium laptops supporting both 2.4GHz and 5GHz. The difference: 2.4GHz has greater range, but lesser speed. It also has more chance of interference, either from your neighbour's Wi-Fi or from other implements that use the 2.4GHz spectrum, like microwaves and cordless phones.

Battery

Two specs to look for in laptop batteries include capacity (measured in milliamp hours, or mAh) and the number of cells. Typical batteries have a mAh rating of between 2000mAh and 6000mAh higher is better. Cells are the actual compartments where power is produced, and can range from four to 12, the more the better. Keep in mind, though, that this may cause the battery pack to stick out from your laptop in potentially awkward positions. While you might have a two- or three-year warranty on your laptop, your battery is generally only covered for one year.

Speakers

Laptops are notorious for having terrible speakers. While a lot of laptops these days are including some version of Dolby, THX, Beats or other sort of "branded" sound, this is usually all done in software, and often paired with such tiny speakers that it doesn't make that much of a difference. On the other hand, if you see a speaker brand like JBL, Bang & Olufsen, Altec Lansing or Harman Kardon, there's a chance you're getting better than the average - the larger your laptop, the more likely you are to get better sound as well.

Hard Drive

Laptop hard drives tend to start at the 64GB point and work their way up to 1TB in size. We'll say it here: don't buy a laptop with only 64GB of storage, you'll be struggling from the moment you start it up. 256GB is a great starting point, although, if you take a lot of digital photos, have an epic iTunes account or download a lot of video, you'll want to invest in as big a hard drive as you can buy.