Cheap Laptop Deals : Usual Pitfalls

In this article we will try to raise some basic questions that you need to ask yourself and some understanding of the lingo, that you should be aware of before buying a laptop.

Too many laptop deals to select from

If you are saying “There are hundreds of brands out there touting in some hi-tech lingo that makes no sense to me, such as Flat Panel TFT, LCD, wireless and Wi-fi connectivity bla bla”

Its impossible for an average computer literate person to cope with the ever changing computer lingo which makes the task of selecting a machine that could rightly fit the needs quite an impossible task.

Avoid Impulse Buying

Faced with such a situation, in most cases people tend to get everything they could thinking “they don’t want to miss out on something useful”. This is simply an impulse buying behavior and it does not solve the problem of getting the best deal, but it could actually make the situation complicated. Where you’ll have something that carries so much unnecessary stuff that you might not ever need.

What could be done?

In most cases people seek help from sales agents, salesmen and store managers, off course they know the technology but in majority of the cases
“the quality of advice you get is indirectly proportional to the commission the salesperson is about to make”

Seek help form friends and family

Your can discuss your needs with people you know and most importantly people you trust. There is always someone around you or someone they know who could give you the right advice.

Professional help

And if you think that family advice is not professional enough get yourself a few PC magazines that review the latest technology and buying trends. Some of them have regular sections with customer ratings even surveys on various up-coming products.

Just before you select a computer

Ask yourelf some basic questions

1. What are the reasons for me buying a laptop?

2. What is my budget?

3. Where can i buy one? (if you choose to buy online, there is a chance of saving some bucks but you might have to wait for the delivery)

Once you have made the purchase decision you should start collecting some baisc information on the various models and features offered by different brands.

Laptop Brands and Features

You’ll find that various different series of laptops are custom built keeping in mind the needs of customers. All major laptop brands do it you need to

Basic Range of Laptops;

One basic hint to spot the basic type of laptop is by checking the processor speeds, usually laptops built with Intel’s Celeron Processors or AMD’s Duron are the basic ones, capable enough to do the regular tasks like checking emails, watching DVDs, CD/DVD copying and publishing, networking, browsing and music downloading.

Performance Laptops;

you can use the same hint to spot the ones built with Genuine Intel Pentium or AMD Athalon, can deliver a faster processing power to do some advanced tasks like using heavy softwares and databases, or even graphic rendering due to built in L2 Cache facility.

High End - Gaming and multimedia Laptops;

this particular range of laptops are built with high end processing, sometimes built with dual processors to deliver the top end performance, these laptops are suitable for the advanced users such as, Gamers, Graphic Designers, Programmers, and Networking Professionals.

What to look in a Deal

The price that you pay for a laptop is due to the various built in components and features in it plus the brand name.

The Processor or the CPU

The processor is the main component that performs virtually all of the computation and controls the behaviour of most of the other devices. The most common processors are Intel’s Pentium and Celeron family and AMD’s Athlon and Duron. Basically a processor’s performance is measured with its “clock speed”, given in Megahertz (MHz) or Gigahertz (GHz, 1GHz = 1000MHz). These are the figures that will appear in computer deals and all sorts of advertisements. So its all down to the processor mainly, the faster the clock speed, the faster the computer will be.If you would like to save some money when getting a deal try not to buy the most top-end processors which are usually priced very high.

Memory or Ram

RAM is a temporary information storage for a computer which is occupied with the information related to the task you are performing or the software you are currently using. The more Ram your computer has the better it can perform multitasking or run multiple softwares simultaneously.

Hard Drive or Disk Storage

Whereas the main data center for a computer where the information is stored on a magnetic device which is called the hard disk.The size of a hard drive is measured in Gigabytes (Gb) . Now it would be easy to learn the correlation between the two, the hard drive stores all your softwares and passes it on to the RAM when you load a software.

Monitor or Display

According to wikipedia FT-LCD (Thin Film Transistor-Liquid Crystal Display) is a variant of Liquid Crystal Display (LCD) which uses Thin-Film Transistor (TFT) technology to improve image quality. TFT LCD is one type of active matrix LCD, though it is usually synonymous with LCD. It is used in both flat panel displays and projectors. In computing, TFT monitors are rapidly displacing competing CRT technology, and are commonly available in sizes from 12 to 30 inches. As of 2006, they have also made inroads on the television market.

Graphics Card

The purpose of a graphics card is to present information in a visual form on the monitor of the computer. The specification of the graphics card will affect the resolution that can be displayed on the monitor and the “refresh rate” of the display. The refresh rate is the number of times per-second that the screen is re-drawn - a high refresh rate produces a flicker free display.

Conclusion

The steps mentioned in the article are very simple and practical to follow, should only take a few minutes to follow but could help you avoid the usual pitfalls and buying something that fits your needs and save your precious time and money.

About the Author
Saher Nasir Free Internet Discount Shopping Advisor Get help on latest deals and bargain offers on http://www.dealgiant.co.uk

Published At: www.Isnare.com

How To Find Cheap Laptop Computers

Ah yes, I want a laptop but I am not going to spend a couple of thousand dollars for one. Well guess what you don't have to. Laptop prices have come down dramatically over the past year alone and they will continue to do so as technology advances. But the trick here is to find good quality laptops that fit your needs at the cheapest prices available today.

I would say that there probably is a store near you right now that has cheap laptop computers. In fact, many stores already have them. The reason being, like any other new product, laptops were once considered the cream of the crop in the computer world which made them very expensive. However, all that has changed now. Laptops are a dime a dozen! The hand held digital assistants, Bluetooth cell phones and tablet pads are the new rage making laptop computers cheap.

Now, don't get me wrong, this does not mean that they are cheaply made. Thanks to the wonders of the technological cycle, laptop computers are decreasing in price as their capabilities rise. Of course, there are the latest and greatest monsters out there that are made for gaming or high powered multimedia applications and these babies still cost a pretty penny.

But for the average user, you can find cheap laptop computers that provide all the power you need and then some. Every major manufacturer out there, like Dell, HP, Compaq, Gateway, and IBM have their lower end and intermediate models that come with more than enough speed and usability.

Now here is the key to finding the right cheap computer laptop for you, and that is to figure out exactly what you need it for.

Are you going to use it mainly for surfing the web or word processing? Do you need it to work from home or mainly to save your MP3s and digital pictures?

Ok, so now you have an idea of what you want to use your laptop for. Now lets go out shopping and compare. You can visit any of the top manufacturers websites or visit your local store and find their low end or intermediate models that may suit your needs. The three top components of a computer you want to look for is the hard drive size, memory, and processor speeds and take notes of each model you find on each component and model.

The hard drive, you can consider this the brain of your computer, this is where all your files, applications and folders are stored. If you plan on using your computer for MP3s and digital pictures your hard drive should be large since these files are usually very large. I personally would look at 80gb as minimum.

Next would be the memory, memory can be considered the thought processes of your computer. As a minimum I would look at 512mb but if you plan on using your laptop for gaming of course this should be much larger, in the area of 1 to 2gb. Now memory is used whenever a program or application is running. So the more memory you have the faster your computer can process the program.

And finally your processor, now your processor is just that it processes all the inner workings of how each program runs. The faster the processor is, the faster the program instructions are processed. Again if your looking for a laptop for gaming uses you want your processor with high speeds 2ghz or more. For other uses you can go less.

Other parts of the computer to also consider are the ports involved that can connect your computer to your digital camera or your mp3 player for example. You also want to check that your laptop has wireless and broadband connectivity. Many cheap computer laptops today already come with this but you want to make sure or you will have to pay additional, for example, a wireless card to install in your laptop to have this capability.

About the Author
For more free computer and laptop news, tips and reviews visit http://www.best-rated-laptops-and-computers.info

Published At: www.Isnare.com