What to Consider When Buying a New Laptop

Buying a new laptop is one of the biggest purchases you make. Its sounds crazy but it’s probably true. So before you upgrade, make sure you’re buying exactly what you want.

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I’ll be shopping around for a new laptop in the near future. My current laptop is really good but evolutionary components like screen clarity and speaker quality are beginning to show their age. The following is what I’ve been thinking about as I get ready to pull the trigger. Here’s what you should as well be thinking about:

How You’ll Use It

How do use your current laptop? Work? Video games? Blogging? Editing video? Watching Netflix? Skyping? Furthermore, what do you think you could be using your laptop for? The reason I touch on this is simple. Perhaps with a better screen, you would do more. What possibility may open up once you get a state of the art machine…?

Battery Life

If you’re aware from a wall for any length of time, battery life is important. Laptop Mag has a great piece on which laptops have the longest battery life. It’s crazy. There are a handful of popular laptops that get 14 hours+ per charge! It would be nice to only have to plug in your laptop at night, wouldn’t it?

Screen Size and Clarity

Will your laptop have a pleasant looking screen? Will it make you enjoy staring at it for often 8 hours+ per day? This is also important to consider if you’re using it for any sort of graphic design work, be it video, images, anything. That’s because if you get a low quality laptop screen, you won’t be able to clearly see what you’re working on. For instance, an image may look great on your screen but someone with a retina display may catch its imperfections. Something to consider.

Speed

The faster your machine can process your work, the faster you become. That’s why getting a new laptop can easily be seen as an investment. Make sure your new laptop with run quickly with the software you use on a regular basis. Programs I often use: Chrome, Word, Excel, Windows Movie Maker and a few other programs you’ve probably never heard of. So I need to make sure a computer can handle all of these tasks at once – no problem. TO determine this, you can go to a store like Best Buy and try running all programs simultaneously.

A Budget for Externals

This is important. Few people buy just a laptop. Many buy external speakers for their desk. Nearly everyone gets an external mouse as well. Some even buy one or more external monitors. And if you’re going to have any of that, you probably have an external keyboard as well. Oh, and don’t forget about headphones and a carrying case. Whew. That’s a lot of extras. Make sure to budget for all of this stuff. Have an ‘all-in’ laptop budget.

Reviews

Reading reviews helps keep you from wasting money on a bad product. Read many, many reviews before making your purchase. Then, once you get the produce, you’ll already be familiar with it. Read reviews anywhere from Consumer Reports to Amazon.

And those are the many things to consider when buying a new laptop. I would have included tips about buying a new desktop computer but I don’t even know if anyone still buys them. With a myriad of laptops under $1k, I don’t really see the point of a desktop.

 

Happy shopping!

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