Your choice in a laptop should be carefully thought out since the laptop you invest in will be the laptop you will want to stay with for a long time, even as technology improves and new laptops hit the market. Choosing a laptop may be difficult, but there are only a few things you really have to be aware of.
Battery Life
If you feel that you will constantly find yourself in a place where there are no outlets and need a laptop that will last you a long time, you should look for a laptop with long battery life. One of the key things people miss when they are making a decision over a laptop to buy is the amount of time it will last without needing to be recharged. A good battery life is somewhere around two to three hours. If you really want a laptop but it has a low battery life, you can extend the amount of time the laptop will remain on by lowering the power settings and purchasing another battery.
Processing Power
For your computer to function properly, it needs the right amount of processing power to handle your applications. If you are planning on using the laptop for highly demanding applications, you should not get a computer with a single-core processor. Try looking for something affordable with multiple cores (two is normally recommended, although you can go for four if you really want a computer with muscle). Remember that the more cores the processor of the laptop has, and the more recent the architecture, the more expensive the laptop will get. The processor is one of the most expensive pieces in any computer.
Capacity
Your laptop's storage capacity essentially tells you how much space you have to stretch your limits. Consider that the hard drive of a laptop is not as easy and inexpensive to upgrade as that of a desktop computer. With this in mind, you might want to spend the extra money in a laptop that has the specifications you want with a higher hard drive capacity. If you ever run out of space, you can always carry around an external hard drive for storage. However, such hard drives just add more bulk to your briefcase. It is better to have a laptop that has everything you want right inside it without needing added help.
Memory
Your laptop's speed not only depends on what processor it has but also on how much strain it has to place on the page file in the hard drive. The more memory you have, the less your computer will have to use the hard drive to store its temporary memory. This is particularly important if you do not want to wait a long time for a program to load when it is needed urgently, such as a program that allows you to enter a conference that is scheduled for a specific hour. The kind of memory the laptop has also plays an important role in how fast your computer operates. For example, laptops with DDR memory will operate slower than those with DDR2 memory.
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