Laptop Buying Guide on ShoppingSoLow.com

Sponsored Links more Laptop resources

What is a Laptop?
The laptop of your dreams, whether it's for back to school, your home office, or weekly flights across the country, is within your reach. We've put together a simple buying guide to help you navigate the sometimes tricky terrain of buying a new laptop. Which vendor should you choose? There's a laptop out there for everybody, no matter what you're looking for. In each of the following categories, we define the laptop type, user profile, what to expect, and key features that make up the system. We also have a comparison table that shows four of the more popular systems in each category, so you can get an even better idea about what each system has in store for you.

There's a laptop out there for everybody, no matter what you're looking for. In each of the following categories, we define the laptop type, user profile, what to expect, and key features that make up the system. We also have a comparison table that shows four of the more popular systems in each category, so you can get an even better idea about what each system has in store for you.

What are the types of Drive in Laptop? Key Features!

Hard Drive:- This magnetic disk provides you with space to save programs and files indefinitely--or at least for the life of the drive. Notebook hard drives can provide up to 120GB of storage, but these giant drives cost hundreds of dollars more than the default 60GB to 80GB notebook drives. The 60GB to 80GB drive should be sufficient, unless you store lots of music and movies or tons of pictures. Be warned that capacity alone does not make a good hard drive.

CD and DVD Drive:- This magnetic disk provides you with space to save programs and files indefinitely--or at least for the life of the drive. Notebook hard drives can provide up to 120GB of storage, but these giant drives cost hundreds of dollars more than the default 60GB to 80GB notebook drives. The 60GB to 80GB drive should be sufficient, unless you store lots of music and movies or tons of pictures. Be warned that capacity alone does not make a good hard drive.

Swappable vs. Fixed:- The least expensive notebooks come with fixed (built-in) drives. In other words, if you buy your notebook with a fixed DVD-ROM, you're stuck with that drive. A swappable drive bay, on the other hand, gives you optimum flexibility. For instance, you can pull out the DVD-ROM drive and swap in a combo DVD/CD-RW drive or even a second battery. We recommend going with a swappable bay if you can afford it. Keep in mind, however, that the smallest and lightest ultraportable notebooks may include neither fixed nor swappable optical drives, relying instead on external USB drives.

External Drive:-External drives--storage and media-burning options that hook up to your notebook via cable--come in many shapes and sizes. Most of these drives connect to your notebook via a USB or FireWire cable. Drive choices include external floppy, CD-ROM, combo DVD/CD-RW, DVD-ROM, DVD-RW, hard drive, and others. There are also smaller external drives, called thumbdrives that plug directly into your USB connector sans cable.

Key Features:-

Laptop Ram: - Random Access Memory (RAM) is where the computer stores applications that are running and data. Most laptops come with a standard 256MB of Random Access Memory. Moving up to 512 MB installed RAM is a must if you are intending to use the laptop for digital video or downloading music.
Graphics Card: - Graphics cards, also called video adapters, plug into a computer to give it display capabilities. Some laptops have a universal or shared memory function for display, but a graphics card containing 32 or 64MB of dedicated memory should be your target if you are going to be doing a lot of presentation work or are into gaming.
Removable medias:- Some laptops now include slots for a variety of removable media like CompactFlash, Secure Digital or Memory Stick. These can be especially useful if you are using the laptop with other digital devices like cameras, camcorders and PDAs.