What is more important when purchasing a computer?

Answer 1

What is most important in buying a laptop depends on the way you use your laptop. There is no single advice that fits all users.

If you are travelling a lot weight and power consumption are more important than when you laptop is standing on your desk at home most of the time.

Also, the applications you use on your laptop determine the amount of memory, the processor speed and the speed of your hard drive that is suitable for you.

Below are some of the things you should generally pay attention to when buying a laptop.

Weight and power consumption

If you travel a lot you probably want a smaller (12, 13, 14, 15 inch), lighter laptop that doesn't consume too much power and that doesn't need a big adapter.

Performance (processor and ram)

The processor (cpu) and the amount of memory (ram) determine how well your laptops performs. A power user that runs a lot of programs at the same time should be looking for a laptop with a fast processor and sufficient RAM, while someone that uses his or her laptop for occasional emailing and web Surfing might be just as happy with a less powerful processor and less RAM. In current (2012) laptop 2 gigabytes of RAM is "ok", 4 is "average" and 8 is "nice".

Solid State Drives or regular hard drive?

Solid State Drives have entered the market about 10 years ago, but they have only recently become cheap and reliable enough to be really worthwhile. SSDs still cost more than a normal, magnetic hard drive, but they are significantly faster and make working with your laptop a more pleasurable experience.

Screen quality and resolution

Screen quality is not so noticeable when you have only one laptop. When you have more than one laptop, you can see there are big quality differences between the displays of different laptops. The best you can do is have a look in the store (or try searching YouTube) and compare the brightness and sharpness of different displays.

Build quality

Some laptops are better built than others. Brands that offer a lot for a small price can have a poorer build quality, like laptop screen hinges that become too loose after a couple of years.

Warranty and repair cost

This is often overlooked. If your laptop fails after one and a half years, what will happen? Do you have to send it of for repair yourself and wait for weeks for it to return or does the manufacturer has a replacement or repair service that will be on your doorstep the next morning at little or no cost? Don't underestimate the annoyance of having to wait weeks for your laptop to get repaired!

Answer 2

Things to consider are:

• Computer Case
• Computer Power Supply (more important than you think)
• CPU (the higher and faster it is, the better it gets)
• Graphics Card (the higher and faster it is, the better it gets)
• Memory (RAM/DDR SDRAM, not hard drive space, do not confuse the two)
• Motherboard (very important, it is like the base of the computer)
• Hard Drive (this is your storage, not to be confused with RAM. Again, the higher and faster it is, the better it gets)
• Sound Card (not too important, you can either get a dedicated, or just stick with the on board)
• Keyboard
• Mouse
• CD/DVD drive