What are the factors to consider in buying a laptop? The article below
offers a great overview.
kelly
The Wall Street Journal
October 26, 2000
Mossberg's Mailbox
Choosing a Laptop PC
Is a Complex Decision
By WALTER S. MOSSBERG
There's no other major item most of us own that is as confusing,
unpredictable and unreliable as our personal computer. Everybody has
questions about them, and we aim to help. Here are a few questions
about computers I've received recently from people like you, and my
answers. I have edited and restated the questions a bit, for
readability.
This week's installment of Mossberg's Mailbox is a special edition
devoted to the question of buying a laptop PC, a topic many readers
have raised via e-mail during the past week.
_________________________________________________________________
Q. Thanks for last week's buyer's guide to desktop PCs, but I'm
thinking of buying a Windows laptop. What should I be looking for that
would be different from, or go beyond, the suggestions you made for
desktops?
A. Buying a laptop computer is a much more subjective decision than
buying a desktop PC, because laptops vary much more. Things people
take for granted in a desktop, like size and weight, the keyboard and
screen quality, matter vastly more in a laptop.
Also, because of their smaller size, which demands costlier
miniaturized components, many laptops lack the same capacity and speed
of the better desktops, or cost much more for comparable specs.
If you are considering a Macintosh laptop, your choices are fairly
straightforward. There are only two models, the colorful iBook,
starting at $1,499; and the costlier PowerBook, available only in
black and starting at $2,499. Each comes in various configurations.
Windows laptops, however, come in a bewildering variety of sizes and
types, brands and models. So here's a general guide to buying a
Windows laptop.
Size and Weight: The first thing you need to decide is the general
size and weight of the laptop you need.
At the small end is a group of machines weighing just three to four
pounds. These models, which include the Sony Vaio Z505 series, the IBM
ThinkPad X20, and the Toshiba Portege 3480CT, are designed for sheer
mobility. They lack internal disk drives and some standard ports,
which reside on an external module. In this group, I prefer the
ThinkPad and the Portege, because in my view they have superior
keyboards, pointing devices, and batteries.
At the other end are machines weighing twice as much -- seven pounds
or more. They tend to include huge screens and DVD drives. Such
machines are essentially desktop replacements, meant mainly to stay in
one place.
These two types are the costliest. The lightweights cost between
$2,000 and $3,000 and the big ones can easily top $3,000.
But there's a group of laptops in the middle, in most cases weighing
around six or seven pounds and selling for between $1,200 and $2,400.
These machines are pretty well equipped, with a full complement of
disk drives and ports, but they have somewhat less power than the true
heavyweights. They include the Toshiba Satellite series, the IBM
ThinkPad "i" series, the Compaq Presarios and Hewlett-Packard's
Pavilion laptops.
Like the high-end boxes, they are mainly desktop-replacement machines,
though they can also be carried by people with strong backs who travel
and need the built-in CD-ROMs and other bells and whistles missing
from the real lightweights.
Screen: The best screens are made with a technology called TFT, and
most laptops today have them. A few low-priced models, like Toshiba's
$1,199 Satellite 2250XCDS and Compaq's $1,499 low-end Presario
14XL244, have a cheaper, less vivid screen technology called
dual-scan, or HPA.
On high-end, high-priced laptops, you can get up to a 15-inch screen,
comparable to a small desktop monitor. But in most cases, I think
12-inch screens are fine, and much cheaper. If mobility and light
weight are important, you can do quite well with an 11-inch screen.
Whatever the size, make sure the screen is capable of a resolution of
at least 800 x 600, also called SVGA. This is a figure that governs
how much material can fit on the screen, whatever its physical size.
Power users will prefer a resolution of 1024 x 768, also called XGA.
High resolution can often compensate for a smaller screen.
Keyboard: This is a personal choice, but in general I prefer IBM's
laptop keyboard to everybody else's. I also prefer the pointing stick,
used by IBM and Toshiba to emulate a mouse, to the touch pad used by
many others.
Battery Life: On a heavy desktop-replacement machine, which will spend
most of its life plugged in, this isn't a key factor. But travelers
will want the battery to last at least three hours.
The very lightest machines tend to have the least battery life,
because their size and weight require the use of smaller batteries.
However, the Toshiba Portege 3480, which gets about 3 hours out of the
box, can be enhanced with a large, high-capacity battery that fits
under the machine and nearly triples the battery life. It adds weight,
and cost, but is a godsend on long flights.
Speed and Capacity: If you're using a laptop as a desktop replacement,
then I suggest you try and get as close as possible to the same basic
specs I recommend on a desktop: 128 megabytes of memory, a 15-gigabyte
hard disk, a CD-RW drive, built-in modem and network connection, and a
processor running at 600 MHz or higher. A brand-name laptop like this
will likely cost at least $2,500, and often over $3,000 -- much more
than a comparably equipped desktop.
If you're using a laptop as a secondary machine, you can settle for
less -- a slower processor, a regular CD-ROM, and a much smaller hard
disk. However, I don't recommend using less than 64 megabytes of
memory in any computer.
These specifications are only part of the process of buying a laptop.
The shape and feel of the machine, the clarity of the screen, touch of
the keyboard, even the size of the electrical adapter, matter greatly
in these purchases. So don't buy a laptop blind.
_________________________________________________________________
Attention, non-techies: Don't be embarrassed by your problems with
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and I may select it to be answered here in Mossberg's Mailbox. Just
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claim. The real dummies are the people who, though technically expert,
couldn't design hardware and software that's usable by normal
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