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Tuesday, January 27, 2009

Laptop buying regime ....

Hey All,

I've been thinking of buying a laptop for a long time and was looking for a good machine to own. The hunt started with requirements like Internet, Office Applicationds and mails. So started the hunt for the laptop with some of the options. Here is the process I followed let me define it as "Laptop Buying Process" you can treat it as Laptop buying guide [;)]

Laptop Buying Process

- Decide your budget

I decided mine upto 500 £ maximum

- Decide your applications and usage.

Mine was as mentioned earlier; internet, office applications and mails.

- Decide if you want more portabiltiy or features. Is it going to be a replacement to your desktop or is it going to be completely mobile applications.

I was a little confused for this point, as if I want a light weight then I wont get features and if I go for features I will get heavy weight so ...

Pause: Laptop Buying process

At this point you pretty much have a baseline of what you should start looking for. Depending on your location you should look out for avaialble options online.

Here is what I used:

- www.ebuyer.co.uk
- www.pcworld.co.uk
- www.amazon.co.uk
- www.currys.co.uk
- www.laptopsdirect.co.uk
- www.dixons.co.uk
- www.dell.co.uk
- www.comet.co.uk

and many more ... but I am sure www.google.com wold be the best way to start if you are now aware abouy the vendors in your country.

So, what do we do after going to these sites ??? here is what should be done

- go to Laptop Category
- Filter the price range first I used 350£ - 550£, now here is where your budget is a little shaken because you tend to filter it a little higher then your budget to make sure you do not missout a good deal. Be careful though
- Filter Screen size you would like depending on your decision if you want mobility or desktop replacement
- Now its time to use your instincts, what brand have you heard / experianced in past ? and what do you prefer out of the list ? filter it. I was quite clear on what I wanted so I filter it to HP / Compaq and Dell home use


After all this, you should pretty much have 15 - 20 options. Now its time to go to Level 2 for filtering.

Option 1: Go to individual Vendor's site and view detailed specifications of the model you find online. These sites are pretty much easy to understand and navigate hence it will be easier for you to choose them according to the description given by vendor about it's capabilities and applications. Or go to advance way of doing it

Options 2:

- Filter it using processor type.

Now how do you decide which processor you want in your laptops, this is like deciding the heart of processor or engine in the car.

First note down the avaialble options Eg: Intel pentium / Dual core / Core 2 duo / Amd Athlon / opteron / Tuerion / ARM Processor etc.

To continue this, you need to go back to your decision about your applications. After referring back to your decisions and applications its time to use www.google.com

User search tags such as Intel Dual core 5800 VS AMD Tuerion X6400

You will get number of sites, and you need to look out for comparison charts. These charts give you mostly all the options that are listed in your applications. After referring to the results you can filter them as per your preferences.

So now its time to filter them using processors.

After filtering it you will be down to Memory and Hard drive preferences.

Remember, memory can be easily upgraded so dont bother about it much, choose it as per your hard drive preferences.

Thats it, job done.

End of Laptop Buying process

After all these I filtered down to few models and then was final on Dell Inspiron 1525 with all the features I wanted.

Boom......

Some thing triggered andthen I thought I should have a little better options for my Graphic card in order to play games and do video editing and photo editing. This made me get into detailed specs more and more. I wanted all ... Nvidia Graphic card, HDMI port, eSATA port and many more features.

After all that, I found the right machine I wanted. Dammn it was way expensive so now I was in a terrible situation ... what to do ... what to buy .. what not to buy ...AAARRRGGGHHHHH

Hmm .. .so no one but myself had to decide waht to do.

Here is what I did

Bought a Sony Play station 3 for a bargain price from a colleague which was almost like new.
Decided to buy Dell Inspiron 1525 for about 450 £

But guess what, still changed my decision on laptop a while back. I bagged a great deal by Dell. A Dell XPS 1530 Gaming machine with great specs. Awaiting delivery within 7 days......

Will soon post more details on PS3 and Dell both.

cheers!!

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