Laptop is a good investment if it is worth it. If you have enough money, don’t bother and go ahead, but if your money is budgeted, see if you really need a laptop or a desktop will do. Biggest advantage of laptop is mobility. But if you have access to a computer at your work place and need one at home for personal use only, a desktop will do. With all these recent storing devices like CDs or portable hard drives and soon to come DVDs(its there in market but not as common as CDs)which can store upto 8 gigabyte, carrying your work to home is now easy and you can carry even images with ease, no hassles of carrying so many floppy disks and one CD can solve your all problems. So notebook you need if you have to be on move all the time and need to carry your computer with you. Like you have to do a lot many presentations, then a laptop with power point can make it all easy. You dont have to worry about compatibility issues also when you have to run your powerpoint files on somebody’s computer. Notebook is more useful with a docking station, as it becomes almost a desktop with it and it becomes easy to add all you peripheral devices with more ports added by docking station. But agin its your requirement and judge it carefully. All such accessories can be added in future also, as and when you feel the need. Some tips for help in purchase are below. These are just suggestions on my experience.
- Decide the configuration you need. Things of importance are processor speed(1mhz is a good speed, but a 900 mhz is also as good and reduces cost),
RAM is important. 256 Mb ram should be the minimum. Normally people take high speed processor and dont consider RAM and they end up in a slow computer. A good RAM help in fast processing and you can work on more than one Programm at the same time. It helps in optimizing the performance
WIth all these multimedia devices and DVDs, a good video memory is helpful. Go for~16Mb minimum
A hard disk of 20-30Gb is enough to begin with.
CDRW drive is now essential as it helps in backing up files and storing them with easy. You can store almost all the data on a few CDs.
If you need networking at home or office, better go for Windows XP professional, Xp home has problems in this area(although there are ways out, but still its too much pain)
Firewire port is a helpful thing, it can download images from your digital camera veryfast.(check for 6 or 4 pin options, althoug there are adaptors available.)Its speed of data transfer is 400Mbs.
Xp is still with fewer problems in my opinion then millenium or 2000.So better upgrade for XP.
A smaller screen makes your laptop less heavy and easy to carry. It also reduces the cost. I personally prefered a 14 inch screen because a small screen gives me problem in reading.I have TFT-XGA screen. Super or Ultra XGA screens are expensive.