10 Things You Need To Know Before Buying A New Laptop Discussion

The holiday season is right around the corner, and many people will be shopping for new laptop computers with Black Friday and Christmas sales just a few weeks away. Our editors are here to help you sort out the holiday hoopla and find the best notebook for you or your loved ones. We compiled a list of the 10 best things to remember when you go shopping for a new laptop.

Whether you're looking for a new computer from an online retailer or standing in line at a brick and mortar electronics store the day after Thanksgiving, these 10 tips are exactly what you'll need to know while sorting through the dozens (or hundreds) of available laptop PCs.

Read the full content of this Article: 10 Things You Need To Know Before Buying A New Laptop

 

Generally good points, but I actually strongly disagree with one points in this article:

4.- The Sandy Bridge Pentium B940/950/960 CPUs offer far more performance than 90% of the consumer population will need, and has the same great power savings as well. There's no reason to upgrade to a Core i_ when the extra processing power would go to waste anyway.

 

Who exactly are the target demographic if you don't mind me asking? I initially assumed it was for the average person but there's mention of pretty obscure concepts to the average Joe such as HDD speeds and upgrading their laptop which the average Joe will probably never encounter

I also think the order of the points (if they are made to be in order of importance) to be bad. 9 should be the most prevalent one IMO for the average consumer.

And without getting into a Mac vs PC debate I kind of disagree with point 1, and this is coming from a person not very fond of Macs

 

I also disagree with #1. The price difference between some Windows laptops and Apple laptops can be enormous while handling the same basic tasks. Do you really need a ~$1500 15 inch Macbook Pro for Facebook and checking emails? Most likely not. To say it doesn't matter, is just plain wrong IMO.

This isn't to say Apple laptops are bad. Depending on your needs/usage, an Apple product may not justify the cost for your usage....

 

100% agreed with you there. Even in the past, Pentium would have been more than enough. My last laptop was a Satellite with a Pentium T4200 that was more than enough for my needs back then. Truly, the only reason I got an i7 now is for the extra RAM and I plan on doing multiple VMs, AutoCAD, etc etc, something an average user won't do.

Well, I agree with the article. Both are the same hardware from Foxconn, Intel, etc., and the only real differences are the OS and the brand image. A lot of what a typical user does is surf the internet, perhaps play simple games, and document processing, both of which can easily be done on Windows or OSX (or Linux, but good luck finding that at BestBuy or Walmart). The Mac v PC debate will grow even less relevant once cloud computing (read: dumb terminals connected to Big Iron, v2) takes off even more so than it is now. All I see in the Mac v PC debate is an endless fight between Windows fanboys and Mac cultists (who are willing to spend $1200+ on a laptop for basic needs); most normal users of either system won't bother in the debate in my experience. A computer is only a tool to mean whatever end goal a user has; so long as the job is done, it doesn't matter what system is used (the ends justify the means).

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I'm happy that the article addressed the issue of minor performance gains vs user interfaces in #6 since this is what Average Joe will notice the most. I'm disappointed that screen resolution wasn't addressed (can we please get rid of 1366*768 on 15" systems? ), but at least glossy screens are pointed out to be a relatively bad choice in #7.

I disagree with #8 since most gaming is still performed on local hardware. For gaming paradigms like OnLive to really work, it has to be assumed that most of the users have fast broadband connections (which most of America, sadly, does not). Sending all that data through a 768kbps down connection is a painful thing to experience. Speaking of gaming, why doesn't #9 at least give a suggestion to haggle over the price of the laptop? Treat high-end laptops like car purchases, basically. Could save a few hundred bucks doing this.

 

I don't disagree with you privatejarhead but the article plainly addresses the OS, not the hardware. I disagree on the premise that OSX vs Windows yields no difference. I'm sure if I said Linux vs Windows yielded no difference I'd get slapped by Linux users for my statement . Or if I said Android vs iOS was no different.

It's a very gross generalization to assume all Mac users buy their laptops based purely on form. I don't deny a large portion do (because that is true), but there are some people who genuinely like MacOS over Windows for a variety of reasons.

That's like saying people who buy more expensive cars do it for a minimal gain since we're all bound by the same speed limits. While that is true, the actual USE of the car comes into play not just the basic function of going from A to B for some people (aka they wanna enjoy driving the car, not just knowing the car gets them from one place to another).

The same can be said about the OS/laptop. The actual experience of using it (be it the interface, the GUI, the form factor, everything) can for some people be just as important as the task being performed.

I don't necessarily disagree that maybe it won't change much for the casual user which OS they use, but the way the article is written clearly to me strikes me as a "don't buy OSX" bias.

 

True, but in my mind it doesn't make any practical/economic sense. However, I won't argue against people who find OSX a pleasure to use (same way as I won't argue that an Infiniti G35 isn't more fun to drive than a Camry).

I am against people buying Apple computer simply as fashion statements. Case in point, my current engineering class is full of people using MBPs (why?!?! ). My class is falling behind because they cannot figure out how to make graphs on Excel (even with the help of the professor, who uses a MBP daily as well). Maybe it's just coincidence, but nearly all the Mac users have no idea how to use the computers, whereas the Windows users had a higher ratio of knowledgeable to un-knowledgeable (yes, making up words here) users as far as Excel is concerned. On top of that, the cultists ( not normal OSX users, tend to make incorrect or otherwise invalid claims (OSX never gets malware, it's better hardware, etc.). Had one guy try to claim that his MBP keyboard is of higher quality than my Thinkpad's

 

Meh I don't wanna start a Mac vs PC debate since that wasn't my intention as I said in my first posted... so I'll just leave it at the statement that I disagree that OSX vs Windows is "all the same" the way the article wrote it. In fact, OSX vs Windows IS the main difference between a Mac and a PC.

Btw seems you dislike more the users than the product just saying Pretty sure it's a coincidence though. What tool you have and your ability to use the tool aren't really correlated. Unless you wanna argue people who own a Civic can't drive vs people who own a Corolla.

 

Caught me red-handed

Anyway, back on topic, this was a good article to read, though I'm confused as to why it mentions procedures and guidelines that most Joes won't understand (user-replaced HDD?). As for the hard drives, 5400rpm and 7200rpm don't make much of a practical difference anymore imo due to the much higher densities of current drives (the 640GB 5400rpm drive in my desktop at home feels as fast as the stock 500GB 7200rpm drive in the W520).

 

I might sound absurd but spending on laptop for gaming is useless. You want gaming, get a much higher spec desktop in a price lower than that for laptop. My friend had bought a laptop whose structure melted as he played an intensive game for few hours.

 

You friend probably bought a pretty terrible laptop, as I've never seen one melt like what you describe.

I've hear this "gaming laptops are stupid" argument a few times. I think most people who argue that tend to forget that it's very hard to haul around a gaming desktop wherever they decide to game.

If the laptop in question has a MXM GPU, then the whole argument is invalid since you can easily upgrade the GPU in said systems.

 

I'm curious what laptop actually "melted" (even partially) while gaming. Most of the plastics used in notebook construction have a melting point higher than the temperature where a CPU or GPU would automatically turn off in order to prevent catastrophic failure or fire.

That said, I had an old Toshiba Qosmio notebook years ago that got VERY hot after a few hours of serious gaming and the notebook automatically shut off. The plastics were VERY hot but nothing "melted."

 

I have to disagree on the "glossy screens suck" bit. Some of them do, yes, but that's largely because of how crappy the low 1366x768 resolution is and how washed-out the colors are and how bad the viewing angles are. Yet this article doesn't touch on that at all.

It seems like most manufacturers these days put the screen as the last priority. For me, and for many laptop shoppers, the screen is the #1 priority or at least close to the top. The screen is what you look at all day long. How can you buy a laptop with a crappy faded-looking 1366x768 display on something like a 15.6" inch laptop?

For me, it's not the "glossy" issue that matters, it's the resolution and the colors. I'd advise against 1366x768 screens on the whole and opt for 1600x900 or 1920x1080 where available.

Additionally, matte options generally only occur on business laptops, so if you want a Dell XPS or an HP Envy or another high-end non-business laptop, a matte screen isn't an option.

Just putting in my two cents...

 

Glossy supposedly help with colors by making them appear brighter and "pop out" more. However, the viewing angles have more to do with the display type rather than other factors. Most displays are TN and due to the limitations of that technology, we have problems such as crappy viewing angles. Some TN panels minimize this problem (like my W520), but it's still there. I doubt Average Joe will buy a basic laptop for a few hundred extra to have an IPS panel =/.

1366*768 needs to die in the 14+" segment!

 

I will ask him which model he had. It was hp though

 

Might have been the previous generation 17-inch HP Pavilion dv7. I had figured it would probably be an HP...

They are getting progressively better with the heat issues on their multimedia laptops though, on the upside.