Laptop Buying Guide – Part 4

Ah shows the capacity of amp movement in an hour. Level of this unit determines use time of laptop with battery. Of course power requirements of your laptop affect life of the battery. This is while some laptops (heavy configured multimedia laptops) have 2-3 hours of life during some other laptops (especially ones with small screen or SSD) can have battery usage time up to 8 hours even though they all use the same battery. Also most of the laptop brands offer an extra accessory option named Double battery that provides twice amps per hour when compared to normal ones.

Graphics Processor:

This issue is more for High Definition film watchers, video editors, graphics designers, photograph editors in professional levels and of course for gamers.

There two main graphics card chip producers; ATI and Nvidia. Whichever you choose, if you want to have high graphics process capacity and speed you need to know how much memory your graphics card have. Most of the laptops use graphics card with shared memory (uses from RAM as much as it needs, mostly up to 2 GB) which can not serve as a gamers’ purposes, integrated graphics card are not for gamers. They can not run most of the 3D games, even if they run them the game will run slow.

And also there are different random access memory types within graphics card like DDR3 or VRAM. If your laptops graphics card have a high level memory then you can do most of the things you want to do. Of course the kind of this configuration will be up to your budget and needs.

Optic drivers (DVD, Blu-Ray readers):

When it’s about optic drivers, the most important thing is knowing what you need. Do you want to play DVD, HD DVD or Blu-Ray DVD? Writing and reading speeds don’t matter that much in laptops, most of the laptop has optic drivers slower than the desktop computers, keep that in mind.

USB Ports and Extra Connection Points:

Be careful about the number of your laptops USB ports and versions. It’s ideal to have at least three USB ports, more is welcome. USB 2.0 is the latest version, check if your laptop has this fast data transfer standard. In some laptops, only one of the three USB ports is 2.0 version, the others are old type, pay attention to this.

Considering demand of external hard drives, it’s seen that even USB 2.0 data transfer speed is not satisfying. If your hard drive is eSata supported and you can not use it, it’s a big loss for you. Because eSata connection speed is way faster than USB. This is why you should prefer laptops with USB 2.0 / eSata convertible ports or independent eSata ports. HDMI output allows connection to an external display device. HDMI is the latest video connection technology, transfers display data in a digital way. Another feature of HDMI is it also transfers audio data. Like USB there are different versions of HDMI. Be careful while buying a laptop with HDMI port, 1.3 is the latest version.