Laptop prices have dropped continuously over the past few years. As such they have become an essential tool of every business environment. They offer several advantages over their desktop counterpart; mainly portability and their small size. However, if you are not fully au fait with laptops (also called notebooks), you are probably inclined to seek as much advice as possible when buying one, and unfortunately, often from people whose advice it is actually better to avoid.
Salespeople will more often try to determine your budget and then ‘advise’ you on how to spend every cent of it, thereby maximizing their commission or meeting a quota. A few months down the line you may realize that you don’t even use half of the bells and whistles for which you paid so dearly. A tech savvy person may recommend to you the latest, fastest and most powerful laptop, which of course is also the most expensive, and you can never ever win at the ‘latest craze’ game, as faster and more powerful portable computers enter the market on a weekly basis.
Others, such as your boss, or spouse, may advise you simply based on cost, and you could end up with a cheap and not very useful machine. Advice from actual users may also not be very useful, as it is often opinion based. The reality is, in the computer industry there are very few part manufacturers, with most being in Asia from where both brand and clone sellers buy alike. This is why among the top laptop brands there isn’t any serious claim that any one is significantly better than the other.
On the issue of brands however, it should be noted that the laptop industry is very competitive, and lesser known brands may go bankrupt, or may not offer sufficient support in terms of drivers and parts. It is therefore advisable that you stick with the big players to be on the safe side. Among the recognised brands are Apple, HP, Acer, Dell, Toshiba, Gateway, Fujitsu, and Sony. If you expect to work with your laptop under rugged conditions then consider any of the Panasonic Toughbook or Dell Latitude ATG models, noting however, that they are significantly more expensive.
To help you in selecting that laptop for your business needs, we’ve put together the main feature considerations you should look for.
1. Size and Weight
One of the main reasons for buying a laptop is portability. You will more than likely be lugging the laptop between home and office, to the boardroom for your presentations and to meetings and seminars that may even take you out of the country. Laptops can range from a few pounds to about fifteen or more pounds. Display sizes vary from about 8 inches to about 19 inches. For business use, look for a laptop around 7 pounds or less and a display size of about 14.1 – 15.4 inches. This will save you the energy of fetching it around and less strain will be on your eyes with a decent display size.
2. Battery Life
If you’re going to be without a power source for extended periods of time such as on business trips and at airports, then purchasing a large capacity battery will give you that extra time to get the job done. On typical laptops battery life ranges from two to about five hours. Batteries come in 4 cell, 6 cell and 9 cell capacities. The larger the number the more hours the battery will last without being plugged in. If extended battery life is vital you may also want to consider acquiring an extra battery.
3. Performance and Storage
Laptops for business should be able to get tasks and operations completed in the shortest possible time. They must be fast and efficient.
For processors we recommend the Intel Core 2 duo or AMD Turion 64 X2 with speeds starting at 2.0GHZ. These processors will deliver faster multitasking performance and greater energy efficiency.
A modern laptop should have at least 2GB of RAM in order to perform decently with Windows Vista and the upcoming Windows 7. However if it is within your budget try to get about 3GB – 4GB at the time of purchase since laptops have limited upgrading capabilities.
The most prevalent hard drives on the market for laptops are SATA drives. Look for a capacity of at least 160GB and not slower than 5400RPM for good performance. Another variant of the SATA drive is the Solid State Drive (SSD). This drive has no moving parts and require a lot less power than standard SATA drives. In addition they are much faster and more reliable. However they are much more expensive and do not reach the storage capacity of a traditional SATA drive.
Laptops come with either integrated or dedicated video cards. For standard office use such as spreadsheet and database operations integrated video will be just fine. However if you are going to be doing graphics or video editing consider a laptop with a dedicated video card that will give you better graphics performance. Keep in mind though that this will significantly increase the cost of the laptop.
4. Connections/Connectivity
Modern laptops come standard with wireless capabilities. Add-ons such as Bluetooth are essential when syncing your Blackberry or smart phone to your PC. Additionally try to get a laptop with a dial-up modem. This sounds outdated but you may go somewhere and it will be the only internet service you will have access to. Look for a minimum of three USB ports to connect all your external peripherals such as your flash drive, printer, scanner etc. Built-in fingerprint readers are a viable option for increased security on your laptop.
Having made your purchase, please note that while your laptop battery functions as a UPS and most power adapters because of their wide input range can function as stabilisers, surge protection is still essential. In that regard we recommend a high-grade surge protector such as the APC Network or Performance model. Take care to ensure that your point’s wiring in terms of polarity and grounding is in order and that any telephone or network cables are routed through your surge protector. Surges through these cables can be catastrophic. Not paying attention to power protection could result in data and software corruption, and premature hardware failure.
