The Price Tag
This is the most basic and important step of choosing your first dear laptop. This marketing world is very vast and with rapid increase in the companies selling laptops, the parameters have been changed. Hence you have to decide your budget with a little liquidity in it. Means you should not be dead straight on your price tag. You must wobble it from few +$10s to +$100s.
For example :- You may wish to choose $1000 Toshiba Qosmio X305 but the model with $1500 price is more suitable for many of us.
It is true that $500 is a great difference, but you will not regret the purchase.
The Brand Name
Are you sure, that you will never buy an Acer laptop or a Compaq one or never touch a laptop with Dell label on it? Think it twice. This fact is not just the brand name only. It is the technology they prefer. The hardware may be the same, like you want to have 2gb ram, 250 GB hard disk, 15.4/14.1′ screen, a processor of Intel core2 or AMD one etc., but the arrangement inside that very laptop varies quite considerably, a single shift of processor and fan can change the heat effect inside your laptop and the simple bit of heat effect can change the overall performance of your laptop.
You will have to agree with me that not every laptop of different brand and with same specs has the same performance. Hence the brand name does matters, just because they use the latest suitable arrangement of hardware in your precious laptop for the maximum performance.
Here is the quick list of top ten preferable brands:
1. Sony Vaio
2. Apple Mac
3. HP Pavilion
4. Toshiba
5. Lenovo
6. Dell
7. Compaq
8. Acer
Choose the Processor carefully!!
It is well known that many of us have a little aura of the hardware we want in our laptop. But we always confuse ourselves when selecting them. Is AMD better than Intel? What is the performance difference between them? Why there is too much price difference between them? And many more. Here is a quick comparison between them for your ease.
Intel
Weight: particularly less in comparison, laptop fitted with Intel’s processor is appreciably lighter by 0.245gm, approx.
Heat: Intel’s processors are very well known for this quality. There is little to no heat generation in these processors. Specifically Core 2 Duo processors are best if you work day and night and are afraid of overheating of laptop.
Performance : In this case AMD beats Intel to some extent and to consider that you’ll not buy a laptop with Intel Core Quadra (like Intel core 2 extreme) in it, which is appreciably faster than any of AMD’s in class processors, I must say that AMD’s output for lesser price is nice in comparison to Intel.
Talking specifically, Intel Core2 Duo T5800 2.0 GHz performs slower than AMD R70 2.0 GHz processor. Data transfer of a 1gb file is 12mb/s for AMD and 6-9mb/s for Intel. So here AMD is faster than Intel.
But friends, don’t get your head bald with scratching, AMD stands no chance against Intel’s new ‘Phenom’ i.e. Core I7 family. But they are not for laptops yet 
Price: This is a sensitive one, isn’t it? You will never want to go for a higher budget just for a processor and a few MB of transfer rate. And since I told you about the two processors listed above, then I must tell you the price as well. Here we have Rs.4000/- or $80 approx. difference between these two processors.
The story tells itself clearly.
If you get an Intel processor, you’ll have: less weight, less heat production, slightly less performance than AMD (not too significant that you consider it heavily), but more price.
AMD
Weight: heavier than Intel, like +25% of Intel’s weight.
Heat: AMD processors generate too much heat and sometimes the heat is too much to bear. Once my friend said to me, “what a laptop is which can’t be on top of the lap!” This quote suited well for AMD because HP Pavilion 1002 AU fitted with AMD Turion X2 R70 2.0 GHz used to produce a lot of heat, but as said above it performed faster than a Dell Inspiron 1525 laptop fitted with Intel Core 2 Duo T5800 2.0 GHz.
Performance: In one line – In league of cheaper processors, AMD performs faster than Intel. But if you go for more expensive processor, then Intel Core 2 Extreme beats the hell out of AMD’s processor.
RAM
RAM is an important factor, because it carries your operations to processor and motherboard and helps you work faster. The most important thing is that, you should choose your Ram type and speed according to your necessity.
Currently DDR3 is the latest ram available in the market with the bus speed of 1333 MHz and 1600 MHz, but make this clear. You will have to change the old motherboard which supports DDR2 Ram, with X58 technology based motherboard, which costs quite a much, e.g. Gigabyte X58 motherboard ranges from Rs.12000/- to Rs.19,000/- i.e. $250 to $395. And this range varies from brand to brand.
But should you consider buying a Ram which is not even needed for you. If you are not a gamer, animator, game designer, or never use any demanding software then DDR3 Ram will be just waste of money.
You should still go for DDR2 Ram for simple work, like documents, Photoshop, even Maya and demanding 3ds Max, and you must know this fact that apart from Games like gears of war 2, gta iv, crysis and few more, no program can ever utilize a memory bandwidth more than 1gb. That means, you can go for just Transcend or Kingston, 2 GB, 1066 MHz ram and still see very fine results and great performance.
These DDR3 Ram cost great, OCZ gold ram, 2 GB, ddr3, 1333 MHz can cost between, Rs.6000/- onwards i.e. $125 and more, Corsair brand which is the topmost Ram developer, cost even more.
But if you consider them with DDR2 then the budget is suitable for many of us, Transcend 2 GB, 1066 MHz Ram costs just Rs.2850/- i.e. $60. Now, isn’t it worth spending, of course it is. The speed and performance will satisfy you to its extent.
Why? Because, DDR3 made for X58 motherboard. This is then made for Core i7, which is then made for great stunning games, and memory eating software. So unless, you are looking for a perfect gaming pc or laptop, you should go for DDR2 Ram.
It all links together and then, it becomes a bugging situation with a lot of confusion of what to get and what not, and nobody want to raise their budget to that great amount and it is just obvious because when you don’t need the thing, then why buy it?
So, be cool configure your work and environment needs and choose the suitable ram type for you.
Motherboard
As I always say, it is also another useful hardware for the pc or laptop. As a matter of fact, motherboard is the key to access anything in your computer. Because after all, everything listed above connects to motherboard via ports and sockets.
But there is a bit of relief because you don’t really have to worry about the motherboards, because choosing the right motherboard is easier than processor, ram, graphics card etc.
We have to keep in mind about the need and every other thing will go smoothly, but it is not the same with other things. But, well we are talking about the motherboard here, so let’s not track a different route.
Your motherboard must be latest, but according to the processor. Why? Because every DDR2 ram supports each and every developed motherboard till now (except X58) and graphics cards are just universal. They are given PCI-E X16 slot and all of them support the slot completely, even the latest Nvidia GTX 295 and ATI Radeon 4870 X2 can be fitted in the older motherboard (older than X58). So you need not to worry about them.
Worry about the processors only! The motherboard should be quick enough to respond the processor’s mechanism and work load. It should support the heat effect and try to minimize it (the fans do a lot of help here but motherboard’s architecture can be a good hand too) and it should be compatible with the voltage requirement of processor.
In case of motherboards, you don’t have to worry about the prices because prices of motherboards are dropping quite appreciably and even X58 isn’t quite a big deal. For a low end rider, who wants to run the latest games and do graphical work and wants to buy Core I7 with 2gb DDR3 Ram clocked at 1333MHz, the motherboard will cost just Rs.11000/- or $230 and you bet, you’ll get that thing for even lesser price.
Motherboard aren’t big deal because they all are great in every sense, Intel, AMD and Nvidia, so here, go and get whatever impresses you. You’ll get great performance with any of them.
There are other important things too, like graphics card, SMPS (or PSU – power supply unit), disk drives etc. But there is no need to worry about them because the three most important things are listed above and all that rests is just common knowledge.
Like if you want to get Nvidia 9800 GTX then 550 Watt PSU of any company (prefer Corsair) is best, 9800 GTX+ demands 650 Watt and likewise. If you want to go for SLI or Crossfire then a 1000 Watt PSU will be just what you need.
I wrote this article, not just for telling you about the hardware and types and something like that. I know that I have missed several parts and features. Because I wanted to convey just one thing.
Panicky decision of yours will take you to regrets which you’ll never forget. If you are darn rich then no problem, but if you saved a lot to buy just one pc or laptop for yourself or someone special, then you should be calm and choose what you want to choose.
Because still, if you want to enjoy GTA IV in great FPS then Nvidia GTX 9800 GTX and ATI Radeon 4870 holds good and worthy for many of us. Because not everyone enjoys the silver spoon in his mouth.
So choose wisely and you’ll never regret your first purchase.
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