by Kyle Getson

Created on: March 16, 2009   Last Updated: March 17, 2009

Picking a laptop shouldn't be difficult. Ask yourself 2 quick and easy questions:

1. What is my price range? (under $750, $751-$1,300, over $1,301)

2. What am I using it for? (Internet only, Work, Games)

That's it. If you know the answer to those questions, that's all you really need to know. Choosing a laptop should be relatively simple. Unless you're a hardcore gamer or geek, as long as you go with what you are planning to use the laptop for, you should be ok.

If you have picked a price range, that's the first step. I gave 3 segments, the first is laptops under $750. For this price range you are going to be looking at a more simple laptop. It won't have the latest processor, or the biggest hard drive, and it will probably weigh more than others, but it still may be a good choice for you. This type of laptop have small hard drives usually under 80GB and a small amount of ram, usually only 1GB or RAM. Do not expect this type of laptop to be used for any processor intense program like games or photoshop. Though it will be good for people who just need to use Microsoft office, browse the web, and send emails. If you want more out of a laptop, you'll have to spend more money. For this price range, I would suggest Acer I've always had good results with Acer. But other brands like Gateway, HP (Compaq) or Dell offer a few models in this price range. If you're an iPod or iPhone user and want a Mac, you're out of luck if this is your price range. In this price range you may not have the option of going with a Dual Core processor, but if you do, it will make things a little faster. But if you're using this for more of a 'netbook' then a faster processor really won't make much of a difference.

If your price range was $751 to $1,300 then you will get some additional choices. You'll need to decide a few more specifics, like which is more important, hard drive space, RAM, or Processing speed. This is where the question #2 comes in. If you just plan on using this at home for pictures, videos, the internet and maybe Microsoft office then pretty much anything in this price range should do it. But to be sure, take a look at a computer you use currently. Notice the files you use, how much hard drive space is there, how much is available, and what type of files you use. If you take a lot of digital photos, or download a lot of music, you'll want as much hard drive space as you can get. It should be easy to find something in this price range that has 250GB or more. You may want to

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