HOW TO CHOOSE A BEST LAPTOP FOR ME? 1).I want to surf the web at home:- Even if you’ll only ever surf the web, write emails, and cobble together the occasional Excel spreadsheet, setting a minimum quality standard for your computer ensures it will do those things reliably and painlessly for years to come. You don’t need much, but there are a few essential things you shouldn’t skip or skimp on. The key here is finding a computer that’s inexpensive without being cheap. Determining one from the other is easy, too: just reach out and pick up the computer. Does it feel like a quality piece of hardware, or a cheap heap of junk? Could you see yourself hauling around this chassis, and using this keyboard and this touchpad for several years? The materials and parts are less important than the assembly and design — and they hint at the quality of the components and circuitry inside the machine. Generally, when laptop manufacturers cut corners, they do it everywhere simultaneously. The Acer Aspire is a great example of an inexpensive computer thats not at all cheap. offer solid battery life, and for at-home browsers and emailers may be everything you need. The trade-offs here are raw power, and raw power may not be what you need. Of course, internals do matter, especially if youre investing in a computer rather than buying the cheapest thing you can find. Things change quickly: if you want your laptop to stay snappy for a few years, don’t buy an outdated Intel Celeron, Pentium, or Atom chip when you could get a Core i3 or Core i5. Don’t get an AMD C-series or E-series processor, or even an AMD A4, when you could have an A6 or A8 inside. You don’t need the highest clock speed or model number, but you should have the latest version — Haswell is your friend right now. While you used to have to look for Wi-Fi, USB ports, a webcam, and a video chip capable of HD video playback, you can pretty much take those for granted. Other possibly important features aren’t always included: if you’ll ever need a DVD drive, an SD card slot to import photos from a camera, a VGA port to connect to old projectors, or a removable battery, you’d better triple-check they’re included in your new laptop. Don’t even look at a computer with less than 4GB of RAM, and it’s a really good idea to spend a few Rupees to upgrade to 6GB or 8GB — it’ll keep your computer running running better, longer. So is shelling out for a big hard drive. Some laptops still ship with 320GB hard drives, but filling even 500GB with 1080p movies and games is easier than you think, so shoot for 750GB or 1TB for some breathing room. Even if the perfect configuration’s sitting there on the shelf, spend a minute seeing how long it takes for the machine to open files, open programs, and wake up from sleep. If anything seems sluggish now, with a fresh machine right off the shelf, just wait until it’s full of apps, files, and games. Getting the right laptop for your home office or living room is easy, and shouldn’t cost you more than about 35,000 — we like the Acer Aspire M5 a lot, or the Lenovo ThinkPad T430. But once you’re ready to pack it up and hit the road, finding the right device gets a little harder. 2) I want to travel There’s power, and there’s portability, but whether you’re a globe-trotting executive or just a commuter there’s plenty more to consider as you shop for the perfect get-up-and-go laptop. Look beyond size and weight, because many of the usual comforts are often sacrificed in order to create an ultra-portable computer. Keyboards can be painfully shallow on thin computers, so spend some time typing; maybe even take an online test to see if you can keep up your normal pace. If possible, sit down and type with the notebook in your lap, checking if the palm rests are big enough to comfortably keep the notebook from tipping. Perform a few pinch-to-zooms, two-finger scrolls, and swipes in from the side to test the trackpad’s comfort and accuracy for navigation and gestures — small computers like the Asus Mini often mean small trackpads, and you don’t want that. Poke at the screen, too: thin and light notebooks will often forgo a touchscreen, and if you’re buying a Windows 8 laptop you probably want a touchsc. The Intel Atom line of processors are ultra-low voltage, which helps reduce power consumption and lengthen battery life on devices like the HP Envy X2. But even though they come from Intel, Atom chips are far less powerful than you’ll likely want – if you’re going to sacrifice all the power of a full Core processor, you might as well get a tablet. In the more powerful Intel Core lineup, look for a Y or U at the end of the chip’s model number. Y-series chips are low-voltage and designed to support short bursts of high performance without giving off too much heat, which is perfect for notebooks that are too thin for an internal fan. Likewise, U-series processors were designed for ultra-portable notebooks, so they operate with very low voltage. These all come with power tradeoffs, but we might soon be able to have it all: the first Intel Haswell-powered laptops we’ve tested offer fantastic battery life. Manufacturers will usually list a notebook’s expected battery life, but you should assume that a notebook will only last around 70 percent of the manufacturer’s claim. This isn’t always the case — the newest MacBook Air does even better than its advertised 12 hours — but it’s a good rule of thumb. Many thin and light notebooks like the Toshiba Kirabook trade a traditional hard drive for a solid state drive (SSD), which is much faster and lighter, and has no moving parts. You’ll have to sacrifice some storage space, but you’ll see a dramatic improvement in the amount of time it takes for your notebook to boot and wake from sleep. Some notebooks will offer a combo drive — traditional hard drive for storage plus a small solid-state cache drive — but going full SSD makes your computer both better and more portable. If you know you’re going to need a lot of storage, it might be better to buy an external drive as a permanent home for your photos, music, and movie collection. A backlit keyboard isn’t always a guarantee with new notebooks, but will come in handy when you’re working on a dimly lit plane or hammering away in a dark alley — world traveling is a dangerous game. And since you’re not likely to want to travel with a 17-inch laptop, some sort of standard video-out port will come in handy if you need a second monitor or bigger screen. HDMI is the video port of choice for Windows notebooks, while Apple notebooks generally include a Mini DisplayPort or Thunderbolt connection. Avoid any laptops that use a proprietary display port (or really any proprietary port in general), as the cables are often more expensive and much harder to replace. If you can’t stand not being connected, some notebooks have embedded mobile broadband — but these are both rare and expensive, and tethering to your phone works just as well. LTE laptops are essentially million-miler purchases only. At this point, you’re still just doing the basics — Word documents, Gmail, iPhoto, maybe a little Netflix. All that’s changed is how often you’re near an outlet. What happens next, when you need your laptop to become your stereo, your TV, and your cable box too? 3. I want to watch movies. Sometimes a laptop is more than just a laptop. It can also serve as the center of your digital entertainment life, melding your TV, stereo, and media players into one machine. Here, a high-resolution widescreen display is a must — but not all 1080p screens are created equal. Bright and vivid are good, but take a moment to view the screen from multiple angles; check for image distortion or inverted colors. Make sure it gets bright enough to avoid the glare from your lamps, dim enough to not destroy your eyes in the dark, and that blacks and whites don’t look a little more like yellow and gray. (You’d be surprised how hard it is to find a laptop that shows honest-to-goodness black, and no movie looks as cool without it.) Choosing a glossy or a matte screen is largely personal preference — glossy tends to look brighter and more vibrant, matte works outdoors — but having a laptop you can see? That’s pretty universal. Frankly, the best laptops won’t beat even a decent set of external speakers, but some notebooks definitely sound better than others. The best way to get a sense of audio quality is to turn the volume up to its highest setting, and play a movie trailer followed by a couple songs from different genres. Higher pitches will often sound mechanical or tinny at higher volumes, and weak bass will make an action scene in a movie sound flat. Built-in subwoofers are generally a good thing, but don’t be distracted by meaningless branding: a Bang and Olufsen or Beats Audio sticker does not guarantee good audio performance. Generally, the best quality speakers run along the sides or the top of the notebook and will face slightly toward you. Movie and music collections aren’t getting any smaller, so look for a laptop that will support a few more years of downloads and purchases. A 1TB drive should be plenty of room to get started, but anything smaller may start to feel cramped as your collection grows — 500GB is barely enough space for 10 Blu-ray rips. Unlike the frequent traveler, epic battery life doesn’t need to be high on your priority list, but you’ll want to make sure that the notebook isn’t going to die in the middle of a couch-bound Netflix session. A notebook that claims to get five hours of battery life may only get closer to three during normal use — and with high-res screens and booming speakers, it’s rare to find a media-friendly laptop with great battery life like the Sony VAIO Pro — so don’t expect a movie marathon. We’ve talked about a lot of things so far, but the basic internal requirements haven’t really changed. When you want to switch from watching and listening to creating and editing, though, they do change. Quickly. 4). I want to play games:- Can it play games? is the wrong question. Every laptop can play games. The question is how well, and the answer relies on balancing four different components: the graphics chip, the processor, the screen, and the amount of power and cooling in the laptop. The higher the resolution of your screen, the more detail you can see in a game. That’s why you’ll almost certainly want to look for a 1080p screen like on the Toshiba Qosmio X870. But filling a 1080p screen with Borderlands 2 is a lot more challenging than on a 1366 x 768 display, and only a powerful graphics card can keep up. Here, higher numbers generally mean better products, like picking a GeForce GTX 765M instead of a GeForce GT 750M. (See our chart on the right for how mobile GeForce chips actually stack up — if you think a 720M is more powerful than a 640M, youd be surprised.) But it gets more complicated: the more powerful the graphics chip you buy, the more powerful the processor you’ll want. Of course, once you stick a powerful processor and a powerful graphics chip into a computer, the laptop will need plenty of cooling and plenty of power to actually run those components at full tilt. You need all four parts right, or you’re going to have an even rougher time getting through Dark Souls than you would anyway — the only way to know for sure is to actually play games, so whatever you buy make sure you use your return window wisely. ALMOST EVERY LAPTOP CAN PLAY GAMES — THE QUESTION IS HOW WELL? The highest-profile game titles can take up tremendous amounts of storage space (Max Payne 3 alone consumes 30GB), so you’ll want a 1TB drive or larger inside your laptop. Make sure you have 8GB of RAM at a minimum, but don’t worry about the RAM’s speed. Also don’t pay attention to video memory: manufacturers try to make an extra buck by advertising more video memory than the GPU actually needs. Games include a lot of fast motion and dark environments, so ensure the screen displays relatively deep blacks even when the brightness is turned up, and that even if you quickly move things on screen there’s no ghosting (where you can see afterimages because the screen hasn’t caught up) or tearing, where the on-screen images appear to rip apart. For online gaming, you’ll want high-quality Wi-Fi, or better yet a wired Ethernet port (which is more rare than you might think). For Wi-Fi, look for 802.11 a/b/g/n (not b/g/n) or 802.11ac. Both are sure signs that the laptop can use the faster, typically more reliable 5GHz wireless band. If you do get the chance to test in person, make sure the laptop stays cool and comfortable under its load, particularly around the WASD keys and near where you’ll place your mouse hand. While good gaming graphics are making their way into an increasing number of thin and light computers, you’ll pay a pretty penny for an actual powerhouse like the hefty Alienware 14. But if you’re after world domination, insane scientific calculation, or a second career in Bitcoin, there’s one more step to take. 5). Dont Forget you have purchase a laptop from a genuine Dealer.
Posted on: Tue, 29 Oct 2013 10:03:23 +0000
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