Wondering how to buy the right Windows notebook/laptop (sometimes called a PC notebook)? It's easy to get confused by all the options available, which is why we've put together this comprehensive guide.
What do you need?
The first thing you need to figure out when buying a notebook PC is what your main requirements are for it. Models often have features that are targeted at the following groups. Which one do you fit best?
Home user
• Budget of $1500 - $2500
• Average sized laptop
• Basic wired & wireless networking
• Optical drive built-in (CD burner/DVD player combo drive as a minimum for backups and movie playback)
• Reasonably powerful CPU
• Enough memory for adequate performance in office applications and internet
• Ample storage for movies and music (e.g. above 120GB)
• Decent processor speed (e.g. Intel Core 2 Duo, AMD Turion 64 X2)
• Windows Vista Home Premium for its included media center functionality or XP Media Center Edition.
Business user
• Security features such as fingerprint reader
• Business version of operating system with enhanced security such as full-drive encryption (e.g. Windows Vista Business or Windows XP Pro)
• Good processor speed (e.g. Intel Core 2 Duo, AMD Turion 64 X2)
• Medium to large hard drive size (e.g. above 120GB)
• Optical drive built-in (DVD burner for backups, presentations)
• VGA port for connection to projectors
• Inbuilt mobile broadband (HSPA) capability
• Excellent warranty options – fast turnaround, on-site service, courier pickup and return.
Student
• Budget $1000 - $2000
• Small enough to fit in a backpack
• Durable enough to handle some knocks
• Basic wired & wireless networking
• Optical drive built-in (CD burner as a minimum for backups)
• Good battery life for use on campus
• Medium to large hard drive size (e.g. above 80GB)
• Maximum speed less important than other features (e.g. Intel Core 2 Duo, AMD Turion 64)
• Windows Vista Home Basic or Windows XP Home
Traveller / road-warrior
• Lightest weight possible for easy carrying in a briefcase or backpack (e.g. 1 to 1.5KG)
• Small size to fit easily on airline tray tables (e.g. 11 to 13" size screen)
• Basic wired & wireless networking
• Port replicator option to allow instant connection of peripherals at work desk
• Good battery life and/or extended battery options
• Largest possible hard drive – because this machine will be your digital life! (e.g. 160GB and above)
• Excellent warranty options – fast turnaround, on-site service, courier pickup and return.
Gamer
• Big screen: 17" and above
• Fastest graphics processor possible (e.g. latest Nvidia or ATI mobile graphics processor)
• Large (e.g. 160GB and above) and fast hard drive (e.g. a 7200 RPM model)
• Good sound options – surround sound ports, multiple speakers, well-located headphone port
Videographer/photographer
• Fastest processor speed (Intel Core 2 Duo, AMD Turion 64 X2)
• Large, high-res monitor (15" widescreen display and above)
• Discreet graphics card for faster video performance (e.g. NVidia or ATI with 128MB and above non-shared memory)
• Multimedia connectors for easy connection to external displays/TVs (e.g. DVI as a minimum, but S-Video, HDMI desirable)
• Digital audio connectors (S/PDIF or TOSLINK desirable)
Screen type and resolution
While all notebooks use LCD technology on a basic level, there are many different grades of LCD panel, with variation in colour reproduction, brightness, ability to be seen at different angles and performance under bright light such as daylight.
As manufacturers rarely disclose the brand or type of LCD panel they are using, it's worth trying to see the screen in action in a shop environment before buying. One of the biggest complaints about LCD monitors is poor viewing angle – if you're not looking basically dead-on, the colours and brightness will distort. Look at the panel from different angles in the shop to get a sense of this. Some panels perform significantly better than others.
Some panels are specifically designed to work better under bright lighting. These are called transflective panels, because they actually allow the light to come through the screen and then bounce back from a metallic layer behind the screen. They are relatively uncommon and often don't provide very good results anyway as it's a newish technology.
Resolution is an important consideration when buying a notebook. If the screen resolution is too high, you might find operating system controls too small. Windows XP in particular doesn't handle too-high-resolution screens very well – although you can adjust the size of some elements of the operating system, you can't adjust others.
Typically, for a 15" widescreen, a good resolution is 1440×900, while for a 13.3" screen, 1280×800 or thereabouts is a good size. If you are wanting to work with high-definition video, a 17" notebook with a resolution of 1920×1200 is a great benefit, as it allows playback of the video with no downscaling, though most models will use a 1680×1050 display or thereabouts.
Size and weight
The size and weight of a notebook should be one of your most major considerations when buying. After all, portability is the reason you're getting a notebook rather than a desktop PC.
Screen size may be more important than weight, ultimately, though. For example, anything larger than 15" won't be usable on an airline tray table, and it'll be easier to use a 13" or smaller notebook if the person in front decides to recline their seat!
However, if you're planning to use the laptop as a ‘portable' machine rather than something you'll be putting into a backpack or using propped on your knee on the sofa, you can get away with buying a larger and heavier unit, which will provide big cost savings and allow you to get the most powerful components inside.
If you are looking at getting a very small notebook, be aware that some manufacturers economise on weight by having larger power adaptors and externally-connectable CD/DVD drives rather than having them built in. These are perfectly legitimate sacrifices, but make sure they're appropriate for you.
Graphics capabilities
The graphics processor in your computer determines how many frames per second of 3D graphics can be displayed on the screen. While this was once only important for gamers, Windows Vista now makes use of 3D graphics to display the basic on-screen windows and controls, so a better 3D GPU can make a difference to Windows performance as well.
The basic choice you need to make is whether to use an "integrated" graphics chip or a "discreet one". The key difference between the two is that the integrated one shares your system's main memory, which reduces the available memory for running software, and is also slower than a "discreet" chip which has its own memory.
That said the latest integrated graphics chips do have adequate power for running Vista's interface at a good clip. Look for an Intel GMA3100 or better, or
When evaluating which discreet graphics processor to get, it's pretty easy: the higher the number, the better the chip. You can see what the current-release GPUs are by going to the manufacturers' websites (
Welcome to NVIDIA - World Leader in Visual Computing Technologies and ati.amd.com) and looking at the current range of notebook GPUs. The amount of high-speed memory that the GPU has is important as it contributes greatly to the graphics performance of the notebook. You should look for a minimum of 128MB video memory. If you plan to play games, go for a 256MB one if it is available.
Brand
Brand isn't such an important consideration in desktop PCs because they are basically simply-connected collections of parts. However, notebook PCs require considerably more engineering prowess.
Heat management is a particular issue for notebooks – cheaper units from less-well-known manufacturers often have noisy fans or get too hot for comfortable use. Overheating also makes the machine run more slowly as the CPU will switch into a lower speed mode in an attempt to generate less heat, and can reduce the lifespan of components in the PC, like the hard drive.
Another design mistake made by no-name manufacturers is annoying placement of buttons and ports. If you want to use the notebook on a plane without much space in front of you, it can be hideously annoying to have a headphone port at the front of the notebook rather than on the side, and likewise, buttons that turn wireless on and off shouldn't be positioned in a place where you will easily bump them by mistake.
It's impossible, of course, to make generalisations about which brands are better than others – every manufacturer has "dog" products, and within each manufacturers range, some products are given more attention to the engineering of specific models than others. But some well-respected PC makers include Dell, Toshiba, HP, Lenovo (which purchased IBM's notebook division), Sony, Acer, Panasonic and Fujitsu.
Processor
There are two main players in the processor industry: Intel and AMD. Within their product ranges, there two basic categories of chips: low-powered ones that give maximum battery life but operate more slowly, and high-powered ones for maximum performance.
In Intel's range, the lower powered chips are called Intel Core Solo, Intel Core 2 Solo – these have only one processing core. The higher powered chips are called Core 2 Duo, and as the name suggests, have two processing cores but are still very power efficient.
Intel does still manufacture Pentium 4 and Celeron chips, but these use older, much less power-efficient technology, produce more heat, and should generally be avoided unless you're on an extremely tight budget.
AMD's single-core mobile processors are called Turion 64, while the higher-powered and more expensive ones are Turion 64 X2.
At the time this article was written, most notebook manufacturers were using Intel Core 2 Duo CPUs, because they're power efficient but very fast and are part of Intel's overall ‘Centrino' platform, which provides other capabilities like wireless and power management in a standard way.
Battery life
There have been some good advances in battery life in recent years, but one thing stands true: manufacturers wildly overstate the maximum battery life of their notebook PCs. If a manufacturer says a notebook will last for 12 hours, you can expect it to last about four hours. If the claim is six hours, it will probably last for about two.
Nearly all notebooks come with Lithium Ion batteries – yes, the ones that are prone to exploding, though that problem has been brought under control now. You'll find batteries advertised as three, six, or nine cell, which refers to how many cylindrical batteries are lined up together inside your oblong battery pack. The nine cell batteries obviously provide the longest battery life, but weigh more.
Notebook manufacturers often advertise their notebooks with three cell batteries, and have six or nine cell batteries as options at the time you place your order. It's well worth looking at upgrading the standard three cell one to a six or nine cell if you can afford it. Of course, check whether that will change the size of the notebook while you're at it – there's no point having a super-light subnotebook if it has a whopping great chunk of battery clipped on to the back of it.
Memory
Memory's something that you can't really have too much of. That said, for running Windows XP, 512MB will provide adequate performance and 1GB and above good performance. Windows Vista, on the other hand, requires 1GB for adequate and 2GB for good performance.
Most notebooks can accommodate up to 4GB of RAM, but you will only be able to access up to about 3.5GB of memory, due to the some legacy constraints built into 32 bit operating systems. If you want to access more memory than that, you'll need to get a 64-bit operating system (like Windows Vista 64-bit).
Most notebooks use standard notebook-sized DDR2 memory SO-DIMMs, accessible via a flap on the bottom of the notebook, so adding more in later is easy to do. However, there are usually only two memory slots, so what you don't want to do is to order your notebook with, say, 1GB of memory, and find that it has been installed as 2 x 512MB SO-DIMMS. Manufacturers sometimes do this because the lower capacity sticks of memory are cheaper than the higher capacity ones, but it means you don't have a spare slot for future expansion.
Storage
Most notebooks use 2.5" sized hard drives, which are smaller in capacity than desktop hard drives. At the time of writing, the largest 2.5" hard drives just coming onto the market were 320GB. However, for most people, hard drives of 120GB – 160GB are big enough, and these are cheap and plentifully available.
Some notebook manufacturers will also give you a choice of hard drive speeds. The options will generally be 4200RPM, 5400RPM or 7200RPM. For good performance, you'll want 5400RPM, and this is what most notebooks have. 7200RPM drives will give you ripping performance at the expense of some battery life, but you probably won't need this extra speed unless you are doing disk intensive work like video editing or converting large batches of photos.
Some notebooks do squeeze in a vast amount of storage, though – they put two hard drives into the unit. The result is a much larger, heavier notebook, though, and reduced battery life due to the consumption of the two notebooks. If you see a notebook advertised with 400GB of storage, for example, that's how they will have done it. It's a good option for people who want a portable machine but don't really mind about the weight, size and battery life.
One new option coming in to some top-priced notebooks is solid-state storage: hard drives use the same flash memory chip technology that a USB thumb drive or camera memory card uses. They can provide significantly better battery life and reliability than regular hard drives (there is no constantly spinning moving platter, after all) but they are extraordinarily expensive. As a result, if you get a notebook with one of these drives, you'll have to accept a much smaller capacity in the interest of price – usually either 32GB or 64GB.
Optical drive
Optical drives for notebooks come in the following categories:
CD-ROM – read CDs only (very rare these days)
CD-RW – read and write CDs only (also quite rare)
CD-RW/DVD-ROM combo – read and write CDs and play back DVDs (common in cheaper notebooks. Sometimes just called a "combo drive")
DVD-RW – read and write CDs and DVDs (common in most notebook PCs above the "budget" price range)
DVD-RW-DL – read and write CDs and DVDs including 8.5GB DVDs with a double recording layer (relatively rare; only found in more expensive notebooks).
BluRay – read and write CDs and DVDs and also playback BluRay high definition movies (but cannot write to the discs)
HD-DVD – read and write CDs and DVDs and also playback HD-DVD high definition movies (but cannot write to the discs)
The best option for most people is the DVD-RW drive, as it is an affordable component and will provide burning options right up to recordable DVD. Drives capable of burning double layer discs are mostly useful for people wanting to copy movie DVDs without first having to compress them, as the are often larger than the 4.2GB capacity of regular DVDs.
It's a bit questionable whether it's worth the extra money to buy a BluRay or HD-DVD drive in a notebook at the moment. Until the "format war" settles down and it becomes clear which of the two competing high-def formats will prevail, it's a bit of a gamble buying a notebook with the technology built in.
Multimedia features / buttons
Some notebooks have special multimedia features for video and audio playback. For example, larger screens, a remote control, buttons to play, pause, fast forward, etc on the notebook itself, and so on.
Another feature in some notebooks is a mode where the notebook can power up quickly without fully booting into Windows in order to play a CD or DVD, or your digital movies/music on your hard drive.
Some manufacturers really take it all the way. Toshiba, for example, provides HDMI connectivity for connection to plasma and LCD TVs, high-definition audio chipset (with Dolby certification), a 1920×1080 pixel display, Harmon/Kardon inbuilt speakers and more. These notebooks do, on the other hand, come with a pricetag to match the feature set.
Webcam/Internet Telephony features
Don't forget to get an inbuilt webcam with your notebook. It won't cost much to add, but it's so much more convenient than having a clip-on webcam that you have to remember to bring with you. With Skype now supporting webcams, it's so easy to make a video call that you shouldn't miss having the capability in your notebook.
Some notebooks have special features to make internet (VoIP) calling better too. For example, array microphones are a series of microphones built in to different places on the computer along with special signal processing that combines the microphones all at once to provide highly directional recording, eliminating background noise and echo from the computer speakers. It makes internet calling possible without using a separate headset, which is a handy feature.
Occasionally, notebook makers even do interesting things like having a thin VoIP wireless handset built in to the card slot on the PC. It recharges itself in the card slot, and when you take it out, can be used like a very thin phone handset. This is a fairly rare feature, though.
Business features
If you're a business user, you should be thinking about the security of your data on the notebook. Since it's so easy to leave a notebook PC behind on a train or in an airport gatelounge, it's well worth spending a little extra to get better security.
Most business PCs come with a fingerprint reader and software that provides a level of extra protection over passwords alone. It can also provide faster login to Windows, because it can actually remove the password step altogether.
If you get a PC with Windows Vista Business, you'll also be able to have full-disk encryption, whch means that even if someone were to crack open the case of your notebook and physically remove the hard drive, they wouldn't be able to access the data on another computer.
Some business users may also like tablet PCs, where the notebook screen can be swivelled to lie flat on top of the keyboard. This allows you to write directly on to the screen with a stylus. It's a niche technology, though, mostly of interest to people in certain sectors that want a digital replacement for a clipboard – doctors, insurance assessors, and so on.
Wireless
All notebooks now come with wireless so you can connect to a home network without having to plug in a network cable. The basic level of wireless is now 802.11g, which provides about 20Mbit/s of speed which is adequate for accessing most home broadband connections.
Some notebooks come with draft 802.11n – it's called ‘draft' because the official networking standard had not (at the time of writing) been finalised. It's expected that these notebooks will be upgradeable to the final standard when it becomes available. Intel has launched a Centrino branded version of draft 802.11n which is certified compliant with other devices that are also branded with Centrino 802.11n compatibility.
Inbuilt mobile broadband
Business users, students and anyone expecting to use their notebook PC out and about may find inbuilt mobile broadband useful. This is broadband provided over a mobile network. The most common standard for Australian users is HSDPA, which uses 3G mobile networks from Three, Telstra, Optus and Vodafone. In North America, EV-DO capability is also common, which uses the CDMA/EV-DO networks of numerous carriers.
If you are shopping for a notebook with inbuilt wireless broadband, make sure you check what carriers it can work with. Unfortunately most notebook manufacturers do deals with carriers that lock the notebook to working with only one network. Some manufacturers, notably Dell, provide a choice of carriers – but you must let them know which carrier you want to use at the time you order the notebook, so that it comes with the correct settings.
Although not available at the time this article was written, notebooks will soon come with WiMAX capability too, which is a competing wireless broadband standard being developed and promoted by a consortium of technology companies including Intel. This should not be confused with WiFi, which is for in-home wireless networks – WiMAX is for city-wide wireless networks. At present there are few WiMAX networks in commercial operation.
Connectors
Because there's little room for expansion inside a notebook (generally speaking, the only thing people ever upgrade is memory and hard drives), external connectors become very important.
Check how many USB 2.0 connectors each model of notebook has, and where they are located. It's good for them to be spaced a bit apart from each other and located on various sides of the notebook rather than all in one cluster. The reason is that some poorly designed USB accessories such as memory keys have large plugs that block other USB devices from being plugged in.
A Firewire ports may be useful for connection of a video camera, though increasingly video cameras are using USB 2.0 as well.
If your notebook has an eSATA port, that's a big bonus – it allows the connection of an external hard drive (with an eSATA connection) at the fastest possible link speed – essentially, the same speed as if the notebook was installed inside the laptop itself.
Pay attention to the location of ports as well – sometimes it can be really annoying to have speaker or headphone jacks at the front or back of the notebook, for example.
Card slots
Card slots are mainly used for connection of wireless broadband cards if your notebook does not already have it built in. There are two main types of card slot – PCMCIA, which is an old standard and increasingly deprecated, and ExpressCard, which is the latest high-speed standard and now supported by most peripheral manufacturers.
As fewer PCMCIA devices are now being brought onto the market, it's better to get ExpressCard. All the mobile broadband networks in Australia offer an ExpressCard device.
If the notebook you're looking at doesn't have a card slot at all, it's not a big loss – you can always use a USB mobile broadband modem. However, these do either protrude from the notebook, or hang from it on a cord like a soap-on-a-rope, which some people consider a less elegant solution than a card-based modem.
Durability
Some notebooks are designed specifically to resist knocks and wear and tear well. A common feature is shock-proof hard drives, which sense the notebook suddenly moving (e.g. falling off a table) and instantly park the hard drive heads away from the disk platter, so that they don't gouge into the disk's surface, destroying your data.
Another common feature worth looking for is a spill-resistant keyboard. It's easy to drop a slop of coffee or tea into your keyboard, and paying for notebook repairs can be a costly experience.
Others are designed solely to be sleek and beautiful and are not at all knock-resistant.
Look for chassis and case strength. For example, Lenovo offers a "roll cage" on some of its models which is a tough metal frame that makes it just about impossible to crack the LCD panel due to pressure.
Other manufacturers offer super-toughened notebooks, such as the Panasonic Toughbook, which are designed to be taken into factories, combat zones, and other extremely challenging environments.
Operating system
One big choice you'll have to make is whether to order a notebook with Windows XP on it, which is a tried and tested operating system that is pretty reliable and will certainly work with all your existing peripherals, or go with Microsoft's latest OS, Windows Vista, which is likely to have problems with some of your peripherals.
Many people have said that there's not a lot to like in Vista compared to XP, when weighed against the problems it creates. Whether or not that's a fair assessment is arguable, but if you do want to run it, it's certainly advisable to buy a notebook with it pre-installed. This is because although Vista drivers are now available for most hardware that's currently available, there may not be drivers for one or two components in notebooks that were not specifically designed with Vista in mind.
Warranty
When Henry Ford introduced the Model T Ford, he invented a clever business model: sell the basic car cheaply and charge like a wounded bull for replacement parts. This cunning business tactic carries through to razor blades, inkjet printers, and definitely notebook PCs. Replacing a cracked LCD display can cost in the order of $1000 - $1500, so make sure you have some form of insurance on your notebook. Some manufacturers provide an "all inclusive" warranty program that even covers accidental damage.
Also, check the manufacturer's fast turnaround and on-site options. When your notebook fails, the last thing you want is to have to send it away to a repair centre for weeks.
