My clients often ask me to advise them what to buy when they are going to purchase a new laptop. This is not an easy task – the deals offered by hundreds of retailers on any given day will differ from any other day.
When shopping for anything, you want value for money, functionality and longevity (or I do anyway).
With laptops, all manufacturers will offer different models at different pricepoints. The sweetspot at the moment seems to be around $1000 or less which will get you a very good machine for what people these days want their computers for – web browsing which includes social networking, shopping, banking etc; emails and simple productivity tasks involving word documents and PDFs etc; as well as organising music, photos and videos either into personal consumable form or more complicated home movies and blogs.
In this price range you will notice that there are similar specifications: processor, system memory (RAM) and storage (Hard Drive) are the three main selling points. For instance, to get an i7 processor, 4GB ram and a 500GB hard drive is fairly common. What the differences are, and therefore what you are shopping for are how robust and functional the device is. Check keyboard action, rigidity of case and lid, number of USB ports (USB 3.0 is a must) and an ethernet port and DVD drive if you need it. Touch screen and gaming quality Video capabilities are a luxury in this range and there will be some trade-off it they’re offered. You’d also be hard pressed to find a solid state drive offered in this range but if you do you’d also have to ask yourself what sacrifices are being made in other areas.
Some models are well made and some are flimsy. Read reviews.
Don’t get sucked into purchasing additional antivirus software – every laptop will have a trial version similar to what you’re offered already installed. Take your time and make an informed choice.
When comparing deals, make sure you compare apples with apples (sorry 😉 ). You rarely get something for nothing.
