Laptops are an integral part of running a modern business
and are most useful for their portability. However, there are still many
different types of laptops; what you need for your line of work will greatly
influence what type of laptop you will need to select. Some have more power,
some have more features and some are designed for maximum portability without
taking up too much space.
Power & Graphics
Some laptops are designed with power in mind for those who
work with video and image editing, graphics and photography. These laptops need
the power to render and edit high-quality images and video. If your business
needs laptops to perform a variety of tasks, an i5 or i7 processor is of high
quality and performance without being too expensive. You'll also want a decent
graphics card, such as the NVIDIA GeForce GT 525M or the AMD Radeon HD 7690M
XT. However, if you're looking for basic tasks, such as word processing and
data sheets, a normal integrated graphics card will perform just fine.
Portability
All laptops are portable to some extent, but while some are
big and bulky, others are thin and light. If you're constantly on the go, an
ultralight laptop or netbook may fit your needs; these laptops are very thin,
and often weigh as little as three to four pounds. By contrast, the bulkier
laptops with larger screens can weigh as much as seven or eight pounds. What
ultralight laptops offer in portability, however, they lack in function: They
have fewer ports, such as USB, and some lack CD/DVD drives for the purpose of
keeping the laptop small. They are also much more fragile; the durability of
any laptop is important if you're constantly moving it around. If you're
considering a laptop to be used on the go, also consider whether the laptop has
Bluetooth and WiFi capability, or even laptops with 3G/4G access built in.
Storage
With the expanding availability of cloud storage services,
computer storage isn't as much of an issue it used to be. But if your business
deals with any work that involves very large files, you'll need as much hard
disk space as you can get. Text files don't take up too much space, but photos,
graphics and videos take up a lot of hard drive capacity very quickly. If you
have a lot of files to store, a 750GB hard drive should give you plenty of room
without a high price tag, though you can also go higher and get a terabyte or
more. For basic use, 250GB should be more than adequate. If you are running out
of room but don't want to swap hard drives, a cheap external USB hard drive can
be purchased to supplement your hard drive space.
Ports
The ports on any laptop are important if you need to connect
your computer to any peripherals. For example, if you need to plug in a mouse,
a printer and a USB drive at the same time, a laptop with only one USB port
won't do you much good. Likewise, if you need to use a special hookup, like
FireWire, HDMI or eSATA, you want to make sure the laptop you get has the ports
you need. These can be found in the product's specs pages.
Battery Life
One of the essential features of a laptop is the ability to
run it anywhere on battery power, so good battery life is a must. Naturally,
computers that have more power will suck more energy more quickly, but some
laptops with similar specs are designed better than others. A good battery
should power your computer for about seven hours, providing you aren't running
a number of heavy processes with the screen fully lit. When you're looking at
different types of batteries, lithium ion (Li-Ion) is the best type to use; its
predecessor, nickel metal hydride (NiMH) batteries, have a "memory
effect" that can reduce your battery life over time if you don't discharge
them completely.
Consumer Reviews
Specs pages give a lot of details about computers, but they
don't give you the details about performance during everyday use. Read the
customer reviews on each page to see how well a laptop performs for different
people and in different circumstances. Also check out publications like cnet
and Consumer Reports, where the reviews are more unbiased and in-depth, often
with ratings and comparisons against other, similar laptops.
