Many people find shopping for a new laptop a bit daunting. Especially when a salesman is talking about gigabytes, megabytes, megahertz, hard drives, memory and so on. So I have composed a list of what you should be getting for your money.

Affordable Laptop price range : €300 –  €500

If your use for the laptop is just for surfing the Internet, checking emails or your Facebook account then this range would be for you. This laptop rage can also be used for the same reasons as the mid-range laptop but you might run into a few problems by installing or running too many programs.

Mid-range Laptop price range: €550 – €900

If you are a user that spends  a lot of time on your laptop for work, college or just pleasure this range would be for you.

High-end Laptop price range: €950 – endless

The type of user that would generally buy a high-end laptop would be Technicians, Engineers, Gamers, Enthusiasts and so on. these would be used to run multiple power hungry programs/games without giving the user problems.

Below will give you a rough idea on what specifications you should be getting for your money. Please note that technology changes every day with something faster and better so this should only be used as a guide line.

Processors:

The processor also known as the Central Processing Unit (CPU) is the brain of the operation, this is where all the programs instructions are executed and carries out all the computers functions. The speed of the processor is measured in Gigahertz which will be seen as GHz. I could go on about how it works but that is not important for now as I do not want to bog you down with information you don’t need. I want to make this as simple as possible. The cache memory is something to keep an eye on for the higher end laptops but usually in PC shops they only advertise the processor speed so we will stick with that for the moment. There are two main companies who design processors out there, AMD and Intel. AMD are the cheapest option but don’t let this fool you, this means you get more bang for your buck but what Intel do they do it well.

Affordable Laptop :

for the affordable laptop I would suggest getting a laptop with an AMD processor. You will get a faster processor for the price of an entry model Intel so keep an eye out for this. I would advise people to stay away from the Intel Celeron range and go for something like an AMD Semphron or even better an AMD Athlon. You should be looking for something like a 1.8GHz to 2.1GHz processor, the higher the better.

Mid-range Laptop :

For this range you should be looking at getting an Intel Core i3 which is around 2.2GHz. For the same price again you could get a laptop with an AMD processor with a 2.7GHz processor such as the Turion II Dual Core. Again it is up to you at the end of the day what you would prefer but both are great processors.

High-End Laptop:

This is where Intel start dominating the market. I would advise on going for an Intel processor for this kind of money. They are powerful and reliable. the processor comes in Dual Core and Quad Core versions which means 2 or 4 processors in one. The new type of Intel chips are now Intel Core i5 and i7. As explained earlier go for a higher cache memory which should be around 4mb or higher.

Next week we will be looking memory …..