How to Buy a Laptop

Go online or walk into any store's electronics section to find a laptop and chances are you will feel paralyzed at the sheer variety of laptops available. Most shoppers have a general idea of what their laptop should look like and what they want in terms of features, but are often intimidated by their sheer number and baffling complexities of the laptops available, which have grown to include terms such as netbooks, and Ultrabooks, and small business (as opposed to enterprise) laptops.
But don't lose heart. This buying guide will point you in the right direction, whether you're shopping for an ultraportableor something massive to replace your desktop, because your decision to buy what you thought was the perfectly configured laptop can suddenly be affected by unknown forces, such as a price changes. We're here to help you get back into the right mind-set, immediately spot the trends, and finally, bring home that perfect laptop for you.

Laptop Design is a Key Differentiator
Plastic is still the most commonly used material in laptop frames, and while inexpensive, manufacturers have managed to turn them into art forms. The most common technique is a process called In-Mold Decoration (IMD)—a process made popular by HP, Toshiba, and Acer—in which decorative patterns are infused between plastic layers. This process has evolved into textures and etched imprints, where the patterns can be felt by running your fingers over them.
In the end, though, plastics are often associated with cheap laptops. What you should be on the lookout for are designs that employ metal. The most common of those is aluminum, found in laptops such as the Apple MacBook Pro 13-inch (Thunderbolt), Dell XPS 15z, and HP Envy 14 (Sandy Bridge. They have a more luxurious look and can fashinioned into a thinner chassis than plastic. In fact, a PC manufacturer would find it difficult to compete in this market without using this material in many of its laptops. Magnesium alloy is more commonly found in business laptops that place a strong emphasis on durability (check out our business laptop buying guide). Carbon fiber, which was used on the lid of the Sony VAIO VPC-Z214GX, is yet another attractive material, but is less used than aluminum and magnesium, as it is expensive to make.

Bigger Screen, Heavier Weight
Weight and screen size are directly correlated to one other. The cutoff point between a laptop that should stay permanently on your desk and one that can be a commuting companion is a 14-inch widescreen. There are exceptions, of course. The Apple MacBook Pro 15-inch (Thunderbolt) and Samsung RC512-S02 are two of the lightest 15-inch laptops—lighter, in fact, than some of the 14-inch ones in the market. A 13- or 14-inch widescreen means that you can still be productive without sacrificing portability. The Toshiba Portege R835-P50X and Sony VAIO VPC-SA2FGX/BI are prime examples of superb 13-inch laptops. Fourteen-inch models like the Asus U46E-BAL5, Samsung QX411-W01, and HP Pavilion dm4-2070us offer a terrific blend of features and components, but they won't weigh you down. Smaller than that, you'll be venturing into netbook territory, which is an entirely different category of laptops.
Get a screen larger than 14 inches and you'll have to contend with deeper and wider dimensions, which your laptop bag may not have room for. Screen sizes that range between 16 and 18 inches are usually reserved for media centers, gaming rigs, and desktop replacements, such as the Acer Aspire AS8950G-9839 (18 inches) and Alienware M17X (Sandy Bridge) . These massive systems often have luxuries like high resolutions, hardcore gaming graphics, and a wealth of state of the art features