Buying a Laptop part 2: the hardware

     Every computer site has recommendations for what specs you want depending on what you want to do with your laptop.  Some are great assets, and others are nothing but gimmicks to upsell you to higher features.  I, by no means, am the foremost authority on minimum requirements for any software at all.  When I write this article, don't only take my word, but verify.  My aim is to point you in the right direction and stay away from too little computing ability or way too much money spending.  Buying any componants individually I find the best prices usually at NewEgg.com, Amazon.com and TigerDirect.com.  Regardless of any affiliation I have, or will make with any of those sites in the future, it is the truth that they beat any prices I've found for any hardware I've looked for.

     The Processor.  This, in my opinion, is the easiest place to break your computer or your budget.  Got too little memory?  too small of a hard drive? need longer battery?  Any of those things can be upgraded later, but the CPU (central processing unit) is fixed on the mother board (the actual guts of a computer).  Unless you are a modding computer fanatic, you aren't changing this anytime soon.  Here's a list of all the things that will confuse you:  dual core, core 2 duo, triple or quad core, hyperthreading, energy consumption, heat, Gigahertz (Ghz), among many others. 
     There are sites dedicated to testing each variation of processors in consistant conditions to find actual performance data, I highly recommend checking out whatever version you are looking at, because a 2.4 Ghz intel pentium 4, won't perform as well as a 2.4 Ghz intel icore cpu.  When it comes down to generalizations, however, if you plan on doing anything beyond business software, and checking email, I wouldn't be enthusiastic about anything below 1.8 Ghz.  That is a minimum, not a recommended number.  Anything 3 Ghz or over, and you are entering into a gaming, and video editing laptop.  AMD and Intel are the 2 primary competitors, and if you go with either of those, I wouldn't worry about brand name as long as you refer to the aforementioned performance tests.  As far as electricity goes, the new icore processors and low voltage processors will probably eat the least batteries and produce less heat.

     Memory is much less complicated than it appears.  DDR3 can only be used with certain cpus, but manufacturers know that and won't allow you to get the wrong memory on their laptop.  Buying a laptop today, the primary concern is Gigabites (Gb).  The minimum Gbs you can have are determined by your operating system, and the maximum, by your mother board's capacity.  3Gbs is okay for common users, 4 is quickly becoming the standard, and any more you can get will help if you're doing anything that is resource demanding.  Another thing they throw at you is Front Side Bus (Fsb).  Again, higher is better, but it will be very hard to tell the difference from 666 to 887, or a similar sized jump.  In any of these specs, when you start getting "knit-picky" you can get caught up in details and spend way too much for a laptop,  Look at your current machine, or of someone else's laptop that is a few years old.  You want your numbers to be higher than the standards of a few years ago, but the rest is time insurance against becoming obsolete later.

     Hard drives are where companies really try to get your attention and push for HUGE quantities and make you feel like you are skimping if you go with a medium sized drive.  I like the idea of a boot drive, with your operating system, and essential software, and then an external or secondary drive that holds data like music, videos, pictures, and other files.  This will allow faster access times, and if you have to reformat your boot drive and start over, all of your files are intact.  It's also handy because you can plug an external hard drive in any computer and get your data.  A boot drive should range anywhere from 40-120 Gb, where your storage drive would have whatever storage you may need.  This works out nicely, because you can buy a smaller drive from the manufacturer and save money, and buy your secondary drive aftermarket, which is usually cheaper.
     Solid state drives (SSDs), work differently than hard drives, but accomplish the same thing.  The main reasons they are becoming popular is that they CAN function much faster, and use less electricity doing so.
     I'll be honest, I LOVE solid state drives.  I recommend them.  They are an easy way to jump start any computer to get a little faster with one purchase.  I don't, however, at this time recommend buying one that comes in any laptop.  Right now, the market is such, that any stock SSD will be overpriced and not the highest performance.  There are numerous brands that make good quality solid state drives, like intel, or OCZ.  Remember that almost any laptop will have a 2.5 hard drive slot.

     Batteries are an important part of the purchase, but every laptop consumes different amounts of power.  Because every battery is proprietary to the manufacturer of a laptop, it is usually a pretty good buy upgrading it at the time of purchase, rather than buying another later.  I will add that you typically cannot count on getting close to suggested battery life times. 

     Most video processors that are equiped on new laptops are going to be sufficient in what you are doing unless you are a video editor or a gamer.  Let me also address what it means if you are a gamer.  It does not mean that you play addictinggames.com or flash based games, or simple games.  This is referring to people streaming against other real players, where a hundredth of a second could be the difference between victory and defeat.  Other features to consider: bluetooth, wireless-N, webcam, back-lit keyboards (to see the keys in the dark), facial recognition, thumb print scanner, and tons of others.  None of these features are necessary to make your computer work well, but have benefits that you can weight for yourself. 
     Here's a link to one site's Performance comparison of CPUs.  Be sure to read part 1 of this article, where you can find help deciding what operating system you need, and part 3, where we'll take the laptop specs you've chosen, and try to find the best deal.
     If you have any questions please ask.  Let me add to your information collecting.