Finding a Good All-Round Laptop
May 28, 2009 at 01:05:24 PM, by Jesper Berg
If you need a well rounded family PC that is capable of more demanding applications, such as casual gaming or HD video playback, you need a laptop with more processing power than most budget notebooks can provide.
Pay a little more attention to the individual components and make sure that the laptop has a dual-core processor; at least 2GB of RAM memory, a reasonably large hard drive, and a dedicated graphics card from ATI or Nvidia (if you want gaming capability).
Some Thoughts on Windows Vista
Windows Vista has received a lot of bad press, and although most of its initial problems have been fixed it’s still an operating system that requires decent hardware. It still has the largest market share by far on new laptops, so you’ll often be stuck with it whether you want to or not when buying a new laptop.
If the notebook runs Windows Vista you need to make sure that the hardware is powerful enough to run it smoothly. Although Vista will run on a computer with 1GB of RAM, 2GB is preferable. Getting a dual-core processor is also a big step up from basic variants like the Intel Celeron, at a relatively small price premium.
A large hard drive is optional, but will allow you to store more movies, photos, music etc, without resorting to external storage. The largest laptop hard drives at the moment can store 500GB's of data. An increasingly common alternative to hard drives is solid state drives (SSDs); most SSDs offer much better performance at a lower power draw and do not contain potentially sensitive moving parts. However, SSDs are still very expensive compared to hard drives – especially when compared in cost/GB.
Recommended Minimum Specifications:
- CPU: Intel Core 2 Duo, AMD Turion Ultra
- Memory: 2GB RAM
- Hard Drive: 250-500GB
- Screen Size: 14-17 inches
- Operating System: Windows Vista Premium
See all top rated laptops and read our comprehensive reviews, or return to the main Laptop Buying Guide.
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Comments
j at 20:57, June 29, 2010
New laptop info from yourself