How to Buy the Best Laptop - Making a Difficult Choice Easy

Buying a good portable laptop can be a daunting task if you jump into the venture without doing proper homework. There has been significant drop in price of the laptops noticed in last two years, so much so that at times the prices of two laptop brands almost appear to overlap each other. With so many options today, you can take liberty of having the situation under your control. Slowly, you can zero in your search to the best suited option for you. Read on to know more about bagging the best deals on portable laptops. The cost of laptops has come down rapidly in the recent past and you will come across brands which are neck to neck in terms of pricing. Though this means tough competition for the brands, the user is in an advantageous position as he can now pick one which suits his needs and budget. Give importance to the screen size. The screen size in a portable laptop is the main determinant of its portability and usability. A laptop with a 13" screen will obviously be lighter and much easier to carry than a massive 18" laptop. Hence, you need to decide first the screen size you wish to go for. Here are the broad divisions of portable laptop screen size based on usability. The 8-11" range of ultra portable laptop segment. Perfect for Internet on the go but very little else. The 13" range of laptops that have a good resolution and usability with a lot of portability. Go for it if you need to work on the move all the time. 14" segment is the sweet spot in terms of portability and usability, it offers a good screen size without being extremely cumbersome. The 15" range is good if you do not move about too much and like to watch the occasional movie. It is heavy but viewing is a pleasure with a high definition screen. The 16"-18" range or more are sort of an entertainment system in a portable package. They are not really meant for people on the go. Along with the screen size, it is really important to look at the screen resolution in a portable laptop. A 15" laptop with a low screen resolution such as 1280x800 will generally have a poor quality display. The most important is the basic configuration. Cheap laptops do not necessarily come with poor processors and little memory. For anything above US$700, insist on a latest generation processor such as the Intel Core 2 Duo or the AMD Turion X2. These processors give you the best in terms of both power savings as well as performance and battery life. With the advent of Windows Vista and the impending release of Windows 7, 2GB of system memory is an minimum. A small 9" portable laptop, however, can come with the Intel Atom low powered processor and 1GB of system memory. It is also important to take note of the resolution when you consider buying a laptop. In order to make the viewing experience a truly exceptional one, maintain a balance between the resolution and screen size. Watching HD and playing games on your laptop - A portable laptop is hardly a gaming machine. It is designed with portability and low power in mind. However, a lot of modern laptops now have discrete graphics cards as standard equipment. These allow you to play moderately taxing games and view HD and blu-ray content smoothly. However, a discrete GPU affects battery life. A high end gaming laptop from brands like Alienware offers only an hour worth of battery backup even though it has a massive battery. Making the choice about your portable laptop is important. As stated before, your needs dictate your choice. However, if you are not going really high end, expect a portable laptop with a balance of all features to cost around US$1500-2000.