by Bob Pritchard

Created on: October 03, 2010

When buying a new laptop computer there are several factors that must be considered in order to make a wise decision. The biggest mistake a lot of people make is purchasing solely on price. While price certainly is an important consideration you need to be sure your comparing apples to apples. If one computer is $1000 and another is $800 you can't assume the higher priced computer is superior. All we really know is one computer is priced more than the other which tells us nothing at all about the quality of either. There are numerous options to consider before buying a laptop computer.

Screen size and type

Laptop screens range from 12” standard 4x3 aspect ratio all the way to 17” wide screen 16x9 ratio. Choosing a screen size is personal preference. While the wider screens do give you more space to work on they do make the laptop larger and bulkier which may not be an asset if you have to carry it with you all the time.

Hardware

As with any computer, hardware is a very important factor when choosing a laptop. Just because the laptop is small doesn't mean you can't have faster processors and lots of ram. Some laptops even have dedicated video cards to take advantage of higher graphics processing rates. In today's video world graphics processing is more important them it was even a few years ago.

Connectivity

Most all laptops today come with wifi cards to connect wirelessly to a satellite, home router or other wireless network. You should still make sure the laptop includes an ethernet port for those times when you must connect using a wired connection.

Optical drive

Some of the very small laptops do not have internal DVD or CD drives because of space requirements. With these small computers you need to buy and carry an external usb DVD or CD drive. Having a built in optical drive is probably worth a little more weight and size.

Software

Don't buy a laptop based solely on the installed software. Any software can be added at any time to most any operating system. You need to ask yourself what software your really going to be using. Extra software only uses up system resources.

The best way to purchase a laptop computer is to go to a store that has many different models on display. Comparing them is easier if you can see exactly what your buying.

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