Have you ever been in a state of dilemma regarding the decision-factors pertaining to the selection of the right mobile PC device. Be it a laptop, a notebook PC or a tablet; there are hundreds of factors to be taken into consideration while planning to buy a laptop or its counter-parts. The first and foremost question to ask yourself is “Why not a Desktop?”. The answer to this may vary from person to person. Although, the most common answer would be that you might be a frequent traveller. Or some may even say that the price of a laptop has dropped dramatically thats why going for a desktop is not necessary whilst they want portabily too.Or some funny answers could be that “i want to work at my own comfort”; like in the bed, then jumping into a sofa or sometimes even jumping into the bathtub (just kidding)!! You can still think of other arguments.
If the answer to your first question is that you travel a lot, then its time for yourself to ask how much your pocket can support for that.This question is sometimes a hindering factor. Some people might be least bothered about the budget while some people wouldn’t afford to cross a certain limit.
The next factor is the hunt for a laptop with maximum number of features. Is it not true? Its the human tendency to demand more and more. But the fact is quite obvious, every individual would demand more features for cheaper price. In other words, they opt for a desktop replacement of a laptop.
Another countable factor is the wireless mobility. You may want to log into any type of network.
Last but not the least, the most important factor that you should not forget to consider and re-consider again and again is the weight of your mobile PC device. If its very heavy then whats the point in calling it a mobile PC?
All the other decision factors are directly or inderectly the counter-part of the above said factors. Now lets make the thumb rules for planning to buy a mobile PC. Alright, here we go!
Identifying your need and usage
Your intension for buying a new mobile PC device should be identified. Mostly, you’d be buying a laptop to help you out in your professional life. Or second possibility is that you would be using it for your personal purpose. Yet another possibility is that you’d want to use it for both, your professional life as well as personal life.
Majority of the professional individual using would be a businessman or a software engineer. Both of these professions require a lot of traveling. This is the most important factor that should be considered before considering anything. Frequent flyer would prefer light-weight systems. But one thing should be noted that the weight is inversely proportional to the price of the laptop. Obviously, if you are into business, you can definitely afford it.
Chances are that if you are a software engineer with sound experience, then you can afford one. If you are new into your software profession, then you can make a choice of your own, i.e, either you can postpone your plan to buying a dream laptop or get a basic model.
Lets start with a question. Are you brand conscious? If yes its a bring problem. No, I don’t mean that you shouldn’t be brand conscious. It happens that some might end up with confusion whether to go for brand X or brand Y. Well, no worries, I’ll help you out in filtering out your needs. Its good if you are brand conscious. And for the people out there who is less worried about brand; guys, take it for granted from me, “brands do play crucial role!”
First things first, do a research on the internet on the most favored laptops and laptops brands that stay in the top 10 or 15 if you want to make a selection from a wider choice. Be cautious, when I say brand, i mean it!! I want to explicitly say that I’m not talking about models. Note down the top brands in the Market.
Next try to figure out and filter out the brands based on the budget you can afford. Keep a tolerance of at least 10% for the budget so that you still can change your mind later if it fulfills your criteria. Now that your scope has narrowed down, the selection choice has also narrowed down. And If you don’t care about budget, skip this step.
Next, decide on the Operating System you are going to work on. Are you going to use Windows or Linux or Mac or Something else. There maybe some people who are looking for dual Operating Systems or Multiple Boot-ability. If you are looking for multiple boot-ability, Check for the Laptops which allows you to partition and add your secondary OS. For more information on a particular product, contact the customer service. But this decision maker is only for advanced Users, of you are familiar on installing the Operating Systems. Most Common Choice would be a laptop that supports Windows and Linux. I have only One straight forward solution for those who want to Run Windows and Mac, just checkout the Apple site for the latest Macs that supports “bootcamp”. Again, keep in mind that you have to pay for both the Operating Systems.
If you have in mind of buying a tablet PC, make sure that you make use of its tablet features. Tablet PCs are useful for college students, Nurses, news reporters, Journalists, 3D Animation artist, DTP Engineers and Tax Officers. If you do not fall under any of these categories, I personally advice you to drop the plan of purchasing a tablet PC. There is another line of PCs called as the convertibles. These line contains the power of a laptop and flexibility of a tablet PC. That means you can turn around or twist the display screen and change it back and forth between a laptop and a tablet. A convertible is useful for a person who has multiple designation. I own a convertible, because I’m an Electronic Engineer working as a Software cum Wireless Engineer. Moreover, I’m an Animation enthusiast.
Now, what next? Screen Size. Well, when I say screen size I’m emphasizing on the diagonal length of the screen and not the resolution or supported resolution. Wide screen displays are suited for movie addicts. For a good movie experience you should have at least 14.1″ screen (diagonal). Regular screens are best suited for businessman and IT professionals.
High resolution displays are best suited for Digital Photography Editor, Videography Editor and Animation Artists. People have a wrong notion that higher the resolution, higher the video quality which is totally misguiding. For movie entertainment 640×480 is more than sufficient. This is the least resolution required for a CD quality. For aDVD print, you might require 1024×768. And for Blu-Ray/HD-DVD you would require still higher. If you are just bothered about the story of the movie, display that supports max of 1024×768 is sufficient. For a widescreen experience I recommend you to move to WXGA resolution (1280×960) or higher.
XGA (1024×768) screens are nominal nowadays. The best resource for learning more about resolution can be found here. I insist you to go through this link.
Displays are available as TFT, LCD, Plasma and so on. Most of the laptop comes with TFT displays. Some companies promote their own technology like X-brite (Sony) and so on. Please make sure to understand what are the plus points of any display before you decide. Let me help you to decide. The brightness of screen is an important factor for individuals working in different external lighting conditions. For ex: Brighter screens are required if you would like to view your screen in sunlight. The more brighter, the more better! Bright screens are even healthy for your eyes. All the laptop manufacturers limit their brightness in their product to avoid harm radiations. But one major drawback is, if the display is brighter, more power will be drawn, which may give you a poor battery life. So always set your display to a nominal level depending on the surrounding condition.
Next… Battery! Yes Battery life as well as battery weight is an important decision factor. If you are least worried about the battery, that means that you do not require much portability in your laptop. Battery is drawn more by graphics card. If you have an external graphics card, then dead!! Hey, don’t panic!!! I have a solution for that. Stay tuned and check out my section on graphics card. Graphics card and bright screen eats a lot of power and can drain the battery. One important aspect which I shouldn’t be missing is about the chemicals used in laptop batteries.
If you would like to know more about batteries read the following green texts otherwise you still can skip, if chemistry is a boring subject for you.
What’s the best battery for laptops? (Green Area Copyright: Isidor Buchmann, BatteryUniversity)
Batteries for laptops have a unique challenge – they must be small and lightweight. In fact, the laptop battery should be invisible to the user and deliver enough power to endure a five-hour flight from Toronto to Vancouver. In reality, a typical laptop battery provides only about 90 minutes of service. Many users complain of much shorter runtimes.
The energy density of modern batteries improves by about 10% per year. However, the benefit of better battery performance is eaten up by higher power requirements of laptops. This results in the same runtime but more powerful laptops.
Net runtime.
The energy density of modern batteries increases by about 10% per year. This gain is compensated by the demand for better laptop performance. The runtime remains the same. (Source: BatteryUniversity)
During the last few years, batteries have improved in terms of energy density. But any benefit in better battery performance is being eaten up by the higher power requirements of the laptops. This trend is continuing and the net effect will be the same runtimes but more powerful laptops.
Most laptops are powered by lithium-ion. This chemistry has a high energy density and is lightweight. There is no immediate breakthrough on the horizon of a miracle battery that would provide more power than the current electro-chemical battery.
Fuel cells, when available, will offer a continued stream of power by allowing the exchange of fuel cartridges when empty. Unfortunately, commercial fuel cells for laptops and other portable devices are still several years away. Power handling, size and cost remain the biggest hurdles. The early fuel cells will function more like a portable charger than a battery replacement. The fuel cells currently in use have the difficulty in providing spontaneous high power on demand.
The runtime of a laptop battery is based on the activity of the computer. The basic housekeeping, which the computer needs to stay alive, draws less power than, for example, reading, writing, computations and searching for files. Manufacturers prefer using idle time when specifying runtime.
A battery in a laptop ages more quickly than in other applications because of heat. During use, the inside temperature of a laptop rises to 45°C (113°F). The combination of high temperature and full state-of-charge promotes cell oxidation, a condition that cannot be reversedonce present. The battery’s life expectancy when operating at high temperature is half compared to running at a more moderate 20°C (68°F) or lower. Leaving the laptop in a parked car under the hot sun will also aggravate the situation. All batteries suffer permanent capacity loss as part of elevated temperatures but lithium-ion is affected more than other batteries.
Some Japanese computer manufacturers have introduced a number of sub-notebooks in which the battery is mounted externally, forming part of the housing. This design improves battery life because the battery is kept at room temperature. Some models carry several different battery sizes to accommodate a range of user demands.
Lithium-ion is well suited for laptop users who continually switch from fixed power to battery use. This user pattern is typical for those in the sales, service and medical field. Here is the reason why:
With nickel-based batteries, the charger applies a full charge each time the portable device is connected to fixed power. The battery is put on charge until a signal is received indicating that the battery is full. This signal is in form of a voltage change or rising temperature. Because of the sluggish response, permanent capacity loss occurs caused by overcharge and elevated temperature. Lithium-ion only receives charge if the voltage is low.
Now that you are smart at batteries let us move to the next topic. The weight!Yes!! Weight is the ultimate factor that decides the price of a mobile PC. Price is inversely proportional to the weight of the laptop. I used to think in my earlier days that if the weight is reduced considerably, the electronics inside it would become delicate enough and breakable. But the real truth is that the external body of a modern laptop is strong enough to avoid any mis-handling. That doesn’t mean you should use your laptop very harshly.
If you are a frequent flyer, you must definitely go for a light weight laptop because limitation of the carry-in baggage would add your laptops weight. Though some flights consider laptop as a separate entity, its always good to be at the safer side. Moreover, carrying a heavy weight device with you around while traveling would be sometimes frustrate your journey. All the major brands have business class models. Though the price would be higher, check the configuration for your need.
Now lets talk about the keyboard of the laptop. Well, you may ask, “whats there in keyboard?, Keyboard is after all keyboard!!”……. No you are wrong, you should always think about the comfortability of usage. We have something called as the key stroke depth. Some offer 2mm and some are 3mm and some brands never mention about it. Though, I don’t advice you to dig deep into this issue. You still can skip this.
As screen sizes increase, more and more laptops offer “full-sized” keyboards on their units. This implies that the spacing between keys is the same as on a full-sized keyboard on a desktop PC, which is better for your wrists, but not as good as an ergonomic keyboard.
You may want to pay attention to the layout of the keys if you’re used to one particular layout, but then again, does it really matter? You can adapt, or just get your favorite keyboard to connect to when you are home or in the office and use the laptop keyboard only for traveling.
Looking into mouse pads, various level of softness are available. Needless to say the manufacturers would not speak how comfortable is the mouse pad, it might be worth getting inputs from User reviews about the mouse pad. Some mouse pad comes with sticky scroll, which I consider is very useful in many scenarios. Some high end models like Toshiba, you might see more functionality added into the mouse pad like the media controllers. Every individual would have their own opinions regarding this because this is a matter of each and everyone’s personal taste. Some laptops might provide trackpad, which will not be useful for a first timer. I never consider this feature as important.
Lets go into the first thing that comes into our mind, when we plan to buy any computer. Well, what is that?? Guess… Yes… you guessed it right! The Processor….
The laptop processor is typically a lower-powered processor than those found in similar desktop machines, although some laptop makers have used desktop processors in their laptops to get a performance edge. Processors designed for mobile computing generally consume less power, and thus run cooler than desktop processors. This is important because you want your battery to last a long time and you also don’t want to burn a hole through your lap. Desktop PCs typically have massive heat-sinks and fans to cool them down, but it’s hard to fit that stuff into a tiny laptop, and fans drain laptop batteries quickly.
A useful term to understand is Thermal Design Power, or TDP. This indicates the maximum amount of wattage that the cooling solution for that processor will need to dissipate. It’s not like it will always dissipate that amount of wattage, but, generally, if you want a cooler processor, go for the lowest TDP you can get.
Performance characteristics that differentiate laptop CPUs include the amount of cores they contain, the cache memory, and bus speed–as well as the speed of the chip itself. Mainstream processors are moving toward containing dual cores. You can still get single core CPUs today, but there are performance benefits to dual-core, even if they are not huge. Cache memory is speedy local memory that allows the CPU to keep from accessing slower main memory as often, and bus speed determines how fast the processor talks to the rest of the computer. In addition to the raw processor performance characteristics, different cores have different abilities. To get a true understanding of performance you will have to look at specialized comparisons or benchmarks among different laptop models. This is often hard to do with laptops as it is not as easy to equalize other components in a test setup.
Words on Recommendations
If you want the best performance, Intel currently rules things with its Core 2 Duo processors; AMD is just not up to par. With that said, if you want a bargain, you may have to buy a laptop with an older Intel chip or an AMD chip. For laptop users performance usually isn’t the top concern. The CPU choice, however confusing (and it will be, certainly if you are looking to save some cash) may not really matter all that much unless you will be using your laptop as your primary machine and you are doing some multimedia or gaming on it. If so, stick with Intel’s Core 2 Due and go for the T7xxx series.
If you are looking to cheap out, or, to put it nicely, are more fiscally conservative, you will be faced with the prospect of going with AMD processors and/or outdated Intel chips that are not on Intel’s roadmap anymore. All of them will work fine, but you may not get the top-end performance that a Geek craves.
(to be continued…)
