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Understanding notebook specs made easy!!Feb 26 '01 Write an essay on this topic.
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The Bottom Line Understanding notebook specs has never been this easy! Just take a look and get yourself ready for the laptop computing world!
Background Since desktop computers have been the mainstream in the computing industry for a long long time, most PC users would not think of getting their hands on notebook computers. However, this situation has been changing as the prices of notebook computers have been going downhill in recent years. Since this is not an article about whether or not to buy a laptop, I would like to focus only on the specs on notebooks instead of discussing what goodies do notebook have. Form factor Most notebooks fall into three categories, which include the Ultrathin, regular, and all-in-one. To begin with, let's take a look at those ultrathin notebooks. A very good example of this categories is the TravelMate 350 Series, which is from Acer. It is just 0.83" thick! It is really hard to believe a computer can be that thin, small, and light(it is about 4.0Lbs). However, notebooks in this category always only feature one bay, which most people call "one-spindle" systems. Needless to say, hard disk is the only drive integrated, meaning that both optical and floppy drives are external. Frequent travelers may not always need those drives, so they are probably the most suitable users for the computers in this category. Regular notebooks usually weight around 5-6.5Lbs. Two very good examples would be the Acer TravelMate 600 Series and the Dell Inspiron 4000 Series. Both of them are about 5.5Lbs and about 1.5" thick. Although this is not really comparable to the spec(form-factor) of ultrathin notebooks, they are not really targeted to the traveler market. Indeed, they are very suitable to be your small office with little mobility! Since they usually feature a hot-swappable media bay, both a hard disk and either an optical drive or a floppy drive can be had on a single machine. This is what we call "two-spindle". Finally, we come to the All-In-One ones. They are almost always quite heavy and little big. Good examples include the Dell Inspiron 8000 and the Toshiba Satellite Series. They have a weight of around 7-9Lbs. Don't plan on bringing any of them to school, office, or airport frequently, because they will just give you a backache. However, most users would love to have this kind of system as their desktop replacement unit, which give them all necessary drives (HDD, CD-ROM, and Floppy Drive) since they are "three-spindle". Screen Choosing a good size screen with good technology can mean paying more! There are a few types of LCD screens out there. They include Active-Matrix, Passive-Matrix, HPA(High Performance Addressing) with the Active Matrix as the best. They greatly differ in the areas of viewing angles, color contrast, and brightness. Make sure you get the active-matrix if you are going to watch movies on your laptop and you won't be disappointed! CPU Needless to say, CPU is almost the most important part of any computers. And this is why you should pay serious attention it. Intel Mobile P!!! is the most popular CPU for the notebook market with Celeron working as a lower-end brother. I would recommend P!!! over Celeron not only because P!!! is much more powerful but also due to the fact that they have a feature called "SpeedStep". SpeedStep is actually a software that controls the speed of your CPU. When you need power, it gives you the max. performance mode. When you need battery life, it gives you the battery-optimized modem. All these are just one click away(or it will do it for you, depending if you are using a battery or are plugged)! Unless AMD is able to release their mobile Duron or Tbird with a good battery management scheme, I would not recommend them at this moment. RAM Modern notebooks take only SODIMM instead of the old-fashioned EDO RAM. They come in the sizes of 32, 64, 128, and 256MB. Since most notebooks have 2 RAM slots with 1 one them occupied for the preloaded RAM stick, most users will find it very easy to upgrade the RAM. Although the prices of RAM are going down drastically, SODIMM is still generally more expensive than its desktop counterpart. Display card Nowadays, most notebooks have ATi's video chipset installed. They usually come with 8MB of SGRAM, which is quite enough for general daily use. If you are a gamer wanting to put your games on your laptop, wait for the ATi mobile Radeon, which is far more better than the current chipsets. If you just can't wait, you can spend a little more on the Satellite Series from Toshiba, since one of the models has a Geforce Go video chipset integrated! Optical Devices I assume most of you here know what a optical device is. Examples of it are DVD-ROM, CD-RW, and CD-ROM. They come with a variety of speeds. The larger the numbers (e.g. 32X), the faster the drives. Since most vendors are including CD-RW with their systems, make sure you really need it before you waste your money on something that you don't really need. Same thing goes for the DVD Drive. Buy it only you need it! Pointing Device Generally, there are two types of pointing devices that you can find on most notebooks. They are touchpad and eraserhead. Both of them have their own advantages and disadvantanges. When using the eraserhead one, you don't have to move your hands up and down to type and move your cursor. But using the touchpad usually requires less time to get used to it. You decide! Modem and Ethernet Card 56K modem is a must for manufacturers to put on their notebook systems. Don't be surprised that you will be finding most notebooks always feature a 10/100 Ethernet port. "10/100" means it is compatible with both 10Mbps and 100Mbps networking environment. If you have a network at your home or your work place, don't forget this part as you will need to buy a PCMCIA version one if you don't have it integrated. PCMCIA PCMCIA stands for "Personal Computer Memory Card International Association". This is the most common expansion slots that you can find on notebooks. While new notebooks generally give you one of these slots, go for one that comes with 2 slots as you might find that useful when you need to upgrade. Ports Finally we come to the section about "Ports". Most notebook have the following ports: USB, P/S 2, Serial, Parallel, Infared, Audio In/Out, Mic In, VGA Out, S-Video, etc. With USB becoming the mainstream of interface of difference devices, I would recommend getting a notebook with 2 of them. P/S 2 is still useful if you still use old style mouses. Although USB is replacing Serial and Parallel ports, you can certainly still fina quite a lot of external devices using these interfaces. Infared port is used when you need to beam data between your laptop and PDA(this is one of the many examples). Just make sure the notebook you are getting have the ports that you need or you will be in trouble finding solutions to connect your devices. Thanks I know this Epinion is very long, but I do hope it helps some people get their first steps into the laptop computing world. While you are at it, don't forget you are gonna need some cash for your new notebook(if it comes with all the good features and spec that I mentioned)! :)  |
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by seakins5100
