How to choose a laptop?

HOW TO CHOOSE A LAPTOP

This article is to help those to know what kind of notebook that they need/want or just to enforce what they have already decided.

These days with just RM3,000 for budget of a new laptop, you can get a decent mobility system for document editing, minor imaging, database reference, and definitely capable of watching VCD's and DVD's. And then for those with budget of RM5'000 could probably get a good (better than average) multimedia system, it probably appeals to gamers or those who need a performance to handle their graphics programs. But it is not just about the bargain & stuff, there are a lot of things you need to know about a laptop before you can truly be fully utilizing it.

To Give You An Idea of Mobility:
Mobility, a word that is growing & ever expanding on the horizon of the 21st century. It is without doubt that more & more people are switching from cumbersome desktop to PDA to notebook. This is especially true when more people are using notebooks as a desktop replacement.

Why Not Last Time?
Ages ago, notebooks are expensives and probably heavy and with performance that users would probably better just using it for business applications like documents editing & database referencing. There was no general WiFi or bluetooth available at that time.

Why Now?
With the advancement of technology, notebooks are equiped with better performance that allows user to do multitude of things without straining their 2.0kg +/- mobile unit. Another plus side is notebooks are getting cheaper due to competiition in the market and the plce of technology advancement. With the ever growing WiFi, 3G, Bluetooth, and GPS, more people are opting for mobility as the advantages are mountainous. Data transfer are an ease, one touch gateway to the mega-information-highway, a mobile messaging & email center, video conferencing system, and as many people prefers: a multimedia station on the move. Multiumedia Station means music, games, videos at your fingertips wherever whenever you are. Even CEO's would enjoy games once in awhile.

Why Should You Choose A Laptop?
Should you choose a laptop or notebook as your next computer system to replace the non-mobile, and aging platform desktop? you should and here's why...

* with wireless connectivity poping up here and there, you can be connected at almost anywhere & anytime, stay connected with friends from anywhere.
* your personal mobile business center.
* your movable gaming rig.
* being mobile means you can transport your data / collection / media files / photos / to anywhere & can be viewed anytime at your convenience.
you don't have to suffer viewing any files or sites using a small and tiny screen.
the technology in laptop and notebook has almost catch up desktop PC, therefore it won't be lacking in performance in many aspect.
* it is cool to have a laptop, you are part of the future.
* basically, it is an "all-in-one" station. it is a mobile HDD, DVD player, speakers, webcam, and a LCD screen. Definitely won't trouble you with jungle of wires.

What Should Be Consider First?
Budget and Need, these should be yuour first concern & priority. As many in the world of IT, price usually reflects the performance of a notebook and compromization of your need as well. There are notebooks which range from RM2,500 to RM15,000.

Budget of:
RM2,500 to RM3,500 : low performance, good for & as a business tool.
RM3,500 to RM6,000 : probably can get you a decent medium class notebook that can utilize for business to entertainment to gaming without much compromise. Even good for those who are doing graphics or arts or imaging.
RM6,000 and Above : If it were based on cars, example would be like having a Mitsubishi Evo or Toyota Supra and eve more expensives ones like, Ferrari. Pretty High End, probably for someone who intended to have a desktop replacement notebook with the "OmpHH!".

Notebook are not as easy upgradable as a desktop unit so when you are choosing one, don't just choose/grade/based on your current need but as well as the need in the coming future. Surely you wanted to have a notebook that can last for your need at least 2 years or more (if you are a high performance user), right?

A medium to high performer would most probably to have specifications like below:
- Intel Core2 Duo 2.0Ghz , 667Mhz FSB , 4MB L2 Cache
- 1GB DDR2 Ram
- ATI Mobility Radeon X1600 , 256MB Ram
- 80GB SATA Hard Disk

Specifications of a Laptop:
01.0 - CPU (Central Processing Unit)
02.0 - GPU (Graphic Processing Unit)
03.0 - Screen Type
03.1 - Panel Type
03.2 - Color Depth
03.3
03.4
03.5
03.6
03.7
04.0 - Size & Weight
05.0 - RAM
06.0 - HDD (Hard Disk Drive)
07.0 - Optical Drive
08.0 - Battery & Charger
09.0 - Warranty & Service
10.0 - Misc
11.0 - Laptop Brands

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01.0 - CPU (Central Processing Unit)
This is the heart of the laptop. Currently at the time of writting, the best processor to choose from would be the new Intel Core2 Duo as it boast to have lower power consumption & better performance due to 64bit & a dual processor capability.

Intel motherboard usually comes in two type, the Intel 945GM & Intel 945PM. The 945GM is for laptop that uses integrated graphics while the 945PM uses dedicated graphics.

02.0 - GPU (Graphic Processing Unit)
Please visit this page for more details on GPU: click here

An important note, that is Microsoft's forthcoming Windows Vista operating systems draws heavily on the graphics subsystem in a computer. Without an adequate graphics card, you won't get the some of the fanciest new features of the interface. Your graphics card should have at least 128MB of dedicated memory - of course 256MB would be the best.

03.0 - Screen Type
The screen size usually comes in a few standard types such as 12", 14", 15", and 17" inches. The bigger is of course better but it also entails a heavy laptop & higher power consumption. But the difference is, consider that a person who used to a PC who have a 17" screen confortably at 1280 x 720 resolution & decided to get a 12" laptop because of weight & size. Now that person who enjoy a 1280x720 resolution have use the same resolution on a smaller screen unless he reduce the resolution which means lesser desktop space for open windows.

Sometimes, you see the laptop being offered with the LCD screen are like Dell Truelife, Acer GridVista, Toshiba TruBright, Compaq BrightView, Sony XBRITE or as most other laptop brands would offer but yet all same from one technology. These few technologies has one much praise with its high-gloss, sharp contrast finish. It is believe that once you have seen this technology with your own eyes, you will not believe the difference it makes. It is even more impressive for DVD and gaming uses.

These technology is recently introduced anti-reflective LCD screen technology (anti-reflective technology). It was initially introduced to the Japanese market in Fujitsu notebook computers in the beginning of 2003 and later brought to the mainstream via Sony’s marketing of its own XBRITE™ brand. This technology was an instant success because of its super crisp images and its vibrant colors. This new anti-reflective technology has sharper contrast (the difference between the deepest black and lightest white pixels), produces clearer and more colorful images, absorbs most external ambient light and has wider viewing angles than traditional notebook screens. All laptop screens have a polarizer which is a thin sheet of film laminated to the outside layer of glass of the laptop screen used to filter light waves produced by the LCD screen to create an image. The difference between a traditional notebook screen and an anti-reflective notebook screen is the type of polarizer film.

The polarizer of a traditional notebook screen has a rough matte finish. This rough matte finish is not visible to the naked eye. The matte finish causes outer ambient light to disperse or reflect off of the traditional polarizer at different angles which reduces the intensity of the glare reflected directly back to the observer’s eye. This ambient light reflection is reduced in intensity due to the diffusion of light, however, the drawback is the reflection shows up as a large hazy object which obstructs the images on the screen. Other side effects include distorted images, a lower contrast ratio, inferior viewing angles, less vibrant colors and eye fatigue.

The polarizer of an anti-reflective screen has a smooth high-gloss finish which has been chemically-treated. The chemically-treated finish of the polarizer reduces the reflection of external ambient light by absorbing much of the external light instead of dispersing it at different angles. Since the external light is mostly absorbed instead of being reflected at different angles, the polarizer does not need a rough matte finish and therefore a smooth finish can provide crisp, brilliant-colored images with the most direct internally derived light from the LCD.

In general, the observer sees light from two light sources: 1) light produced by the LCD itself and 2) external ambient light which is reflected off the surface of the LCD. The objective of an anti-reflective polarizer is to improve the image quality generated by the LCD while minimizing the reflection of external ambient light.

Benefits of such technology:
- Wider viewing angles
- Reduced eye fatigue
- Crisper images
- Sharp contrast
- Brilliant colors

03.1 - Panel Type
Without other than browsing and research on brands and OEM of the LCD panel, you won't know what type they are using to make the LCD panel. There are a few reknowned LCD panel maker, such as:
LP Display (formerly LG.Philips) famous for their S-IPS
AU Optronics (belongs to Acer)
Chimei Vision (CMV, mostly on low cost LCD Panel)
Samsung (Samsung also the OEM for Dell)

The best of all panel class would be for LP Display S-IPS (Super In Plane Switching) for wide viewing angle and 8-bit color depth. Samsung now do produce 8-bit panel as well but using different technology which is just as good as S-IPS.
The hierarchy goes lower with other brand like AU Optronics and so forth...

03.2 - Color Depth
There's something that most people never realized that despite that you can set your graphic card to reproduce 32-bit True Color, your LCD display might not be displaying the complete set of dynamic range. One of the main reason is the HARDWARE LIMITITION; the LCD panel weren't capable at doing that.

LP Display had produced panel with pixels producing 8-bit of color depth, for a long time. Samsung started to do that a few years back for their high-contrast series panel but uses 6-bit for other higher response rate and smaller panel size for budget range (cut edges). Perhaps you might not notice it when u are on ONE panel at a time, if u walk around IT center displaying a myriads of LCD panel that display one single image using monitor splitter would shows you the different in color depth; 8-bit panel looks much more realistic. But mine you, some crappy monitor spillter or loose cable connection leads to bad output on other LCD panel could be a reason why it looks crappy on an 8-bit panel as well...

03.3 - Response Rate, GtG and T,on-T,
'Ghosting' is the type of UNWANTED motion blur you won't want for your LCD during fast paced action gaming or movies. It's more obvious on a moving bright object over a dark background. You may even test it with your mouse cursor in wide over a desktop in pure black and all icons hidden. To counter this product, the LCD panel TFT (thin film transistor, or small switches) that switches the plane of the LCD pixel must perform a good job in switching fast enough (from ON to OFF or partially at an angle for different tone depth).

Basically, the faster it gets, the lesser ghosting will appear but beware, there are some new marketing ploy and standard to benchmark this. In fact, ghosting itself is more than just about switching time. For this, you really should drop by Tomshardware for an indepth review on LCD panel tech on what truly governs ghosting elimination on LCD panel. Say, if the response rate is 12ms, it means 8ms to turn ON, 4ms to turn OFF. Some provides 6ms/6ms ratio. Depends on which brand, panel and setup, it varies from manufacturer to manufacturer. However, the best rule of thumb is to test it out at the shop running a battery test like DVD test, gaming test and dead-pixel test. Now there's something new in gauging this panel is Gray-to-Gray. Their notion is that most pixels on the screen will switches from Gray-to-Gray more often than from Pure White to Pure Black. This specification seems to makes their LCD spec looks more nicer, say like GtG at 2ms !!! Wow... that's quick, again, it's different than Black-to-White ways of gauging, but now they show both spec on the box to avoid or to FURTHER confuse customer.

03.4 - Contrast Ratio
This is the part where a nice display and bad display truly outshines. If you are a CRT user prior to this, you would realized that display on the CRT is much more realistic than LCD. This is partially due to the Contrast Ratio of the panel itself. You may percept Contrast Ratio as part of the color depth as well as how much Colors can your panel reproduce to provide equivalent tone of the Real World. At moment, the ACTUAL contrast ratio is governs by the panel bit-depth. but this can be further boosted with smart backlighting and software tweaking which can boost a panel contrast ratio all the way to 2000:1 (LP Display). Well, it definitely looks pleasing to our eyes but mine you, you can't tell the difference until u test it with some LCD calibrator which most of us won't do unless u are a digital photography manipulator where true to life color reproduction is a must. Some latest technology HDTV LCD TV comes with close to 10,000:1 contrast ratio for wide color gamut. A small contrast ratio display gives you flaky, water color-like image output, which will makes u want to change back to CRT.

03.5 - Native Resolution
Unlike CRT, each LCD got its native resolution, say like for an XGA Panel, it comes standard at 1024x768 resolution but this type of spec is too old to be available in the market this days except for 15" panel. If you like a more modern example, take a 15.4" WSXGA, it has a native resolution of 1680x1080. This can pose an issue/problem to buyers whose graphic card are onboard or low performance GPU where outputting 3D graphics at that resolution will gives serious lag and choppy output.

Then when you are thinking of scaling down to 800x600? the image will go small in the middle like a special edition collector stamps in the middle of an LCD screen. Stretching it to the screen size will also make the image becomes so blocky and pixellated. It is a lot worse that CRT. The best alternative is probably to get a decent screen size like 14" or 15" , not burdening your weight but not too small that you need to squint your eyes everytime.

03.6 - Output Ports: D-SUB (VGA), DVI (DVI-D, DVI-A, DVI-I) or HDMI
Now this part is the type of connectors u use to connect your LCD to your GPU. I believe most GPU comes with a DVI connection and a D-Sub output. But take note on the LCD monitor instead. Most comes standard with a D-Sub cable and a D-Sub port but those that comes with both D-Sub and DVI port might not comes with a DVI cable. The cable you might have to provide it yourself.

More so, with DVI cable, you have to option of tweaking the screen settings from the PC rather than pressing the small function button on the monitor panel UI. Also, some LCD though comes with DVI port, it might be a DVI-A (DVI Analog) port, which means it comes in DVI port format but it's still the same old Analog u get from D-Sub. And they don't give you a cable either. Some better brands or latest design now comes with a DVI-I port which is DVI Integrated where both the pins that responsible for Analog output and Digital output both available to the TMDS controller in the LCD panel. Some bigger and wider LCD panel comes with HDMI port that works with GPU with HDMI output to display HDCP content, say from a BluRay or HD-DVD titles. It's marketing gimmick anyway as there are some successful story of those who were able to playback HDCP content with just D-Sub and CRT.

03.7 - Screen Ratio: Widescreen 16:9/16:10 or Normal Aspect Ratio 4:3
This is a question of choice and tradeoffs. Some say Widescreen is SMALLER than NA ratio. That would depends on where you look and how you measure it. Assume that you are having both a 19" NA and 19"WXGA panel at hand. The WXGA at 16:9 or some 16:10 offers more viewable area than the NA counterpart while viewing 16:9 contents by more than 25% area. Turn it back to view NA content, you find that a WXGA panel is capable of displaying content in a PILLAR-BOXED mode where the content is less than NA panel where the area viewable reduced by more than 30%.

Of course, with a widescreen, you may display 2 A4 size document at the same time but at 19" WXGA, the letters might not be legible. If you are viewing a single page at the display width, you find that the number of lines viewable is a lot less and scrolling is more often though the size of the text increases. A normal CRT user will not get use to this scenario. But a widescreen movie experience would be far more enriching than on a 4:3 screen, because more movies comes in that format, no more letter-boxing. For a worthy widescreen upgrade, gets 22" inches and beyond. For comparison, a 22" WXGA panel HEIGHT (panel height) is same as the 19" NA panel HEIGHT. So there's no loss in the vertical plane but an increase in horizontal plane, good for VISTA with lots of Widgets and SideBar.

03.8 - Dead Pixel Policy
This is the part where you weight the laptop on the brand reputation and sales after service. Though most comes with a Zero Dead Pixel warranty, there are those who implement a minimum of 3 dead pixels (Dell, 5 dead pixels policy) to be accountable for a defect and qualifies for warranty exhange in a certain period of time. So you rate it among brands prior to purchase to have a clear understanding on how the policy works in case the LCD that you've tested finally shows it dead pixel later on.

Dead pixel are those pixel which are not able to reproduce color on the panel, which is a defect and makes your nice screen, well, defect. At least a 1 years minimum warranty period is needed for a reputable brand or more. But user feedback is important too. A 3-year warranted brand might not necessary means that they are more inferior to a 5-year warranted brand, the 5-year part might broke down/dead pixel earlier/more often than the 3-year counterpart.

04.0 - Size & Weight
This section is still under construction.

05.0 - RAM
This section is still under construction.

06.0 - HDD (Hard Disk Drive)
This section is still under construction.

07.0 - Optical Drive
Nowdays, most laptop comes with a COMBO drive standard which is a compliments as a CD burner, CD reader, as well as a DVD reader.

It depends on what you really wanted & how will you utilize your data. If you are those who download tons of stuff & fill up your HDD in a flash, then having a DVD Dual Layer Burner will definitely benefit you as you can store 4.5GB of data on a DVD-R that just cost you less than RM2 per DVD-R. It would also help those who use for business that they would like to store data of their daily or monthly sales.

Burning out your data into a DVD-R or CD-R could be said as much more permanent that storing in the HDD asit is known that the HDD has a limited lifespan.

08.0 - Battery & Charger
Laptop battery comes in two forms, the six-cell and nine-cell. The six-cell on normal usage mode can usually last a person 2-3 hours. Normal usage like wifi-on, listening to songs, chatting through the internet. While a nine-cell will probably give you 3-5 hours.

09.0 - Warranty & Service
Warranty is very important, it sort of gives your laptop an insurance cover just in case anything happens. Most brands offer their warranty 1-2 years but the best warranty available is from Dell with its "3 years complete cover" which covers all except fire, theft, loss, and lightning. It is important to read what the laptop brand warranty covers before you make a purchase so you know what it doesn't cover.

Source: MobilityX