Laptops

The good news is any new laptop you buy these days will be fast enough and have enough room for RAM to do email, web, and Word. The bad news is there’s many new things to consider before buying a laptop.

Size
Even though a 17” screen is preferable to watch a movie on, whether it’s trains or planes, no seat back is far enough away to allow you to open your 17” laptop comfortably.*

Weight
You’ll have to dig through the stats to find it, but when “weighing” the options on which laptop to buy, weight is just as important as any criterium if you’re planning on commuting with your computer.**

Video Out
If you envision yourself hooking your laptop up to your TV or external monitor, make sure to get one with a digital video out. This will limit your laptop choice dramatically, as most manufacturers still don’t offer this, but the difference is very noticeable.

DVD burner?
With the advent of YouTube the need for this has decreased, but you may consider it if you need to share large amounts of data with friends.

Used? Refurbished?
I’ve never tried the refurbished route, but I would never buy a used laptop. You don’t really know what kind of abuse the laptop has suffered, and any repair needed to the body or the screen will be very expensive.

Netbooks?
I am currently writing this on my 10” netbook running the Ubuntu flavor of Linux. Coming in at just over $220 it’s a great travel laptop. I got mine running Linux because it starts up faster, it came pre-installed with Open Office and a web browser, and Linux is free. If you want to pay more you can get the same model running Windows.

The Bottom Line
Figure out what you need and don’t pay more for things you don’t. Always buy trusted brand names. Shop around. There are a bunch of deal sights out there that are always offering coupons and deals on products, like this one : Deal News

* I’m sure this isn’t true if you’re sitting in first class, but this website is for the average computer uer.
**Pun intended.