laptop

Table of Contents [show]

Keywords

notebook

Copyright Information

This article is licensed under GNU Public License. Contact webmasters for more information on copyright issues.

This is a laptop (or notebook) buying guide.

1 Configurations

When eveluating laptops, basically you need to consider the following aspects:

1.1 Battery

The more cells, the better. For example, a 6-cell battery might last 3 hours at regular workload(browing, etc), and a 12-cell battery might last 6 hours. Beware that the battery might stick out if it has more than 6 cells depending on laptops. Some people like that though because it makes it easier to type on the keyboard.

1.2 CPU

CPU, or the central processing unit. CPU is like the brain of a laptop, it handles most of the computation. CPU is extremely important especially if you are gonna use the laptop for computationally-intensive tasks such as algorithms or image processing. Two major factors affect performance of the architecture of the CPU, and frequency. For example, when you see "CPU: Pentium IV, 1.6G", this is a pentium IV CPU (architecture) with 1.6 giga herz frequence. The higher the frequency, the faster the CPU is.

1.3 Monitor

size: is it 12in, 14in, 15in, or 17in? Monitor size is meansured by the length of the diagonal of the screen, in inches.
resolutions and colors
- CGA(Color Graphics Adapter), resolution 640 x 200 or 160 x200, 16 colors
- EGA(Enhanced Graphics Adapter), resolution 640 x 350, 16 from 64 colors
- VGA(Video Graphics Array), resolution 640 x 480, 320 x 200, 256 color
- XGA(Extended Graphics Array), resolution 1024 x 768, 16.7 million colors
- SXGA(Super Extended Graphics), resolution 1280 x 1024, 16.7 million colors
- UXGA(Ultra Extended Graphics), resolution 1600 x 1200, 16.7 million colors
- WXGA(Wide Extended Graphics), resolution 1366 x 768, 16.7 million
- WSXGA(Wide Super Extended Graphics), resolution 1680 x 1050
- WUXGA(Wide Ultra Extended Graphics), 1920 x 1200

1.4 Harddisk

Two major measurements: capacity (the bigger, the better), and speed (the faster, the better)

1.5 Wifi

Is it intgrated or you might need a wifi card. Does it support 802.11 a/b/g?

2 Major Manufactors

3 Major retailers

4 Laptop Deals

5 Compaq v2000z

5.1 Battery life

keep the ATI PowerPlay enables and performance only on AC power

6 On receiving your order of laptop

Check the following:

is the system configured as you ordered? screen size, CPU brand-model-clock, video card, memory size, ...
check the battery life
CHECK THE SCREEN FOR DEAD SPOTS: dead pixel buddy (download) and online, do not need downoad

7 Wireless Setup

For Compaq Presario V2000 series, follow the following steps:

Make sure you pushed the little wireless button above your keyboard, right on the left side of the Presario logo. This is a ping-pong button, push until it is lit.
Set up you wireless router as instructed by the router manual. Use a network cable to connect your laptop to the router if necessary.
If you router DHCP is enabled, configure your network card as "Obtain network address automatically" in Start->Control Panel->Network connections->Wireless card->right click->Properties->TCP/IP->Properties. If your router DHCP is disabled, set up a fixed IP address.
In my case, after I am done with setting up the wireless network, I could not ping my gateway (192.168.2.1). It turned out that I enabled authentication for my wireless network, however, I forgot to setup the password on my laptop (an what's funny is the laptop showed that the wireless card was connected and the signal was execelent :-) After I reconnected to the wireless network (and of course I was prompted to input my password), everything worked fine. [E]

8 Laptop Accesories

8.1 Hard drive enclosures

Things to consider before buying a hard drive enclosure

is it 2.5in or 3.5in
does it have a fan? (some people say that aluminum ones donot need fans, the cover itself serve as heat disipater, but that also depends on how the hard drive is bolted on the aluminum cover. So it might be safer to go with one with a fan.
does it support firewire? which is supposed to be faster than usb
what is the chipset inside? cypress is said to be good

9 Software

For student developers, download free visual studio express and sql server express.

Comments

Please drop by http://www.bargainsaddict.com for some great laptop bargains. While you are there, have a great laugh with jib jab's latest video. Please enjoy and have a nice day.

http://www.bargainsaddict.com

References

[E] http://www.experts-exchange.com/Hardware/Notebooks_Wireless/Q_21085931.html