Laptops and notebooks can be as fast and as versatile as your desktop PC. In fact, I’m typing this on my own 13.3 Asus laptop at home. It’s got a screen, wireless mouse and wireless keyboard attached and there you go: everything I might need.
When I bought mine, I went for a 13.3 inch laptop because I felt that at that size typing was still comfortable. I was right: it is. Anything smaller and typing with ten fingers becomes cramped, at least for my hands.
And, on the go, it’s light enough to not bother my back too much. Sure, it took some getting used to. A lightweight laptop usually still weighs something like three pounds. You would not want to carry three pounds of sugar with you for no reason would you? Remember that joke? What’s lighter, three pounds of feathers or three pounds of lead? Neither – they’re both three pounds.
Think about that when you’re buying your laptop. Lighter is better.
If you are going to buy a laptop, you don’t want to think about the weight only. You also need to think about battery life. Personally I’m very happy to have bought one that came with 12 hours of battery life. Of course it’s less in practice, especially when I am online when using it, or attached to a screen. Still, 12 hours gives you room to maneuver. In fact, those two aspects are probably the most important when you’re buying your laptop.
However, there are a few other considerations.
The newest and best laptops come with dual or even quad core. That is: they’re capable of doing two or even 4 things at the same time. That’s the way processors are made faster today: not by speed (in Hz), but by how much they can do at the same time. The upcoming generation will have more specialization: one part of the chip devoted solely for speeding up the way images are dealt with for instance – should be great for video.
Internal memory is also an issue. Right now 4GB is good enough for most uses (not if you’re gaming of course). More will hardly be used by your laptop anyhow, as the software isn’t equipped to deal with it yet.
When you’re buying your laptop, it will probably come with Windows 7. Mine came with Windows 7 64 bits, despite the shop boy telling me it would come with 32 bit. However, the software of both was included, which is good: some of the older hardware won’t work with 64 bits. However, if you can get everything you need to work, 64 bit will be faster.
If you can afford it, choosing an Mac should be considered. Compatibility issues seem to be a thing of the past, so you’re left with their superior ease of use.
Lightweight Apple Laptops are the Macbook Air laptops. They don’t just look great, they’re also lighter than most other small laptops out there. Their 11 and 13 inch laptops both weigh less than 3 pounds.
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Buying a notebook shouldn’t be as hard as you might think. Usually, what I do is to first consider where or how I am going to use the new laptop. Do I need it to design websites or will I just use it for writing stuff? Next, I also consider how much battery life I need. Usually, I get the 6-cell types. My last priority is the size. I get the laptop that I am most comfortable lugging around. So choose the smaller notebooks if you travel a lot like me. Oh and don’t forget about warranties. Hope that helps.