Laptop Deals - Usual Pitfalls

In this article we will try to raise some basic questions that you need to ask yourself and some understanding of the lingo, that you should be aware of before buying a laptop.

Too many laptop deals to select from

If you are saying "There are hundreds of brands out there touting in some hi-tech lingo that makes no sense to me, such as Flat Panel TFT, LCD, wireless and Wi-fi connectivity bla bla"

Its impossible for an average computer literate person to cope with the ever changing computer lingo which makes the task of selecting a machine which could rightly fit the needs quite an impossible task.

Avoid Impulse Buying

Faced with such a situation, in most cases people tend to get everything they could thinking "they don't want to miss out on something useful". This is simply an impulse buying behavior and it does not solve the problem of getting the best deal, but it could actually make the situation complicated. Where you'll endup with something that carries so much unnecessary stuff that you might not ever need.

What could be done?

In most cases people seek help from sales agents, salesmen and store managers, off course they know the technology but in majority of the cases "the quality of advice you get is indirectly proportional to the commission the salesperson is about to make"

Seek help form friends and family

Your can discuss your needs with people you know and most importantly people you trust. There is always someone around you or someone they know who could give you the right advice.

Professional help

And if you think that family advice is not professional enough get yourself a few PC magazines that review the latest technology and buying trends.

Just before you select a computer

Ask yourself some basic questions

1. What are the reasons for me buying a laptop?

2. What is my budget?

3. Where can I buy one? (if you choose to buy online, there is a chance of saving some bucks but you might have to wait for the delivery)

Once you have made the purchase decision you should start collecting some baisc information on the various models and features offered by different brands.

Laptop Brands and Features

You'll find that various different series of laptops are custom built keeping in mind the needs of customers. All major laptop brands do it you need to

Basic Range of Laptops;

One basic hint to spot the basic type of laptop is by checking the processor speeds, usually laptops built with Intel's Celeron Processors or AMD's Duron are the basic ones, capable enough to do the regular tasks like checking emails, watching DVDs, CD/DVD copying and publishing, networking, browsing and music downloading.

Performance Laptops;

you can use the same hint to spot the ones built with Genuine Intel Pentium or AMD Athalon, can deliver a faster processing power to do some advanced tasks like using heavy software and databases, or even graphic rendering due to built in L2 Cache facility.

High End - Gaming and multimedia Laptops;

this particular range of laptops are built with high end processing, sometimes built with dual processors to deliver the top end performance, these laptops are suitable for the advanced users such as, Gamers, Graphic Designers, Programmers, and Networking Professionals.

What to look in a Deal

The price that you pay for a laptop is due to the various built in components and features in it plus the brand name.

The Processor or the CPU

The processor is the main component that performs virtually all of the computation and controls the behaviour of most of the other devices. The most common processors are Intel's Pentium and Celeron family and AMD's Athlon and Duron. Basically a processor's performance is measured with its "clock speed", given in Megahertz (MHz) or Gigahertz (GHz, 1GHz = 1000MHz). These are the figures that will appear in computer deals and all sorts of advertisements. So its all down to the processor mainly, the faster the clock speed, the faster the computer will be.If you would like to save some money when getting a deal try not to buy the most top-end processors which are usually priced very high.

Memory or Ram

RAM is a temporary information storage for a computer which is occupied with the information related to the task you are performing or the software you are currently using. The more Ram your computer has the better it can perform multitasking or run multiple software simultaneously.

Hard Drive or Disk Storage

Whereas the main data center for a computer where the information is stored on a magnetic device which is called the hard disk.The size of a hard drive is measured in Gigabytes (Gb) . Now it would be easy to learn the correlation between the two, the hard drive stores all your software and passes it on to the RAM when you load a software.

Monitor or Display

According to Wikipedia FT-LCD (Thin Film Transistor-Liquid Crystal Display) is a variant of Liquid Crystal Display (LCD) which uses Thin-Film Transistor (TFT) technology to improve image quality. TFT LCD is one type of active matrix LCD, though it is usually synonymous with LCD. It is used in both flat panel displays and projectors. In computing, TFT monitors are rapidly displacing competing CRT technology, and are commonly available in sizes from 12 to 30 inches. As of 2006, they have also made inroads on the television market.

Graphics Card

The purpose of a graphics card is to present information in a visual form on the monitor of the computer. The specification of the graphics card will affect the resolution that can be displayed on the monitor and the "refresh rate" of the display. The refresh rate is the number of times per-second that the screen is re-drawn - a high refresh rate produces a flicker free display.

Conclusion

The steps mentioned in the article are very simple and practical to follow, should only take a few minutes to follow but could help you avoid the usual pitfalls and buying something that fits your needs and save your precious time and money.

Conclusion

The steps mentioned in the article are very simple yet practical to follow, should only take a few minutes to follow but could help you avoid the usual pitfalls in buying something that fits your needs and save your precious time and money.