Tips To Buy Perfect Notebook For You (5)

21: What’s it made of?
Most laptop cases are still made from molded plastic, but you can find some encased
in metal, which dissipates heat better. Look for models made from light, strong
metal alloys. If you’re in the market for a desktop replacement, check that the
case has adequate ventilation for the powerful (and hot-running) components inside.

22: Fixed or swappable
Less-expensive notebooks have fixed drives, meaning the optical and hard drives
can’t be removed. Some, though, have a swappable-drive bay, letting you change out
an optical drive for a hard drive or extra battery–or just a spacer module so you
can shed some travel weight.

23: Are you the Tablet type?
Comparable in size and weight to ultraportable notebooks, tablet PCs occupy a
different niche. They’re available in two basic designs: Convertibles, which have
displays that swivel and fold flat facing outwards, and slates, which have no
attached keyboards. (Some slates offer optional wired or wireless keyboards.) All
Tablet PCs use a special version of Windows XP that works in tandem with the
display for navigating and entering data using a stylus. Until recently, these
units were primarily used in specialised fields, such as health care, insurance,
and real estate, but sexier models with new software are slowly reaching a broader
audience.

24: Going for the perfect drive
Optical drives of all kinds are available for laptops–from basic DVD/CD-RW combo
drives to double-layer DVD±RWs. We like DVD writer drives for notebooks; they burn
CDs and play both CDs and DVDs. If you want to splurge, a DVD recorder is handy
for backing up as much as 8.5GB of important files at a time.

25: Don’t forget to shop for Apples
It’s no secret Apple makes some phenomenal notebooks. If you’re considering one,
make sure all the specialty software apps you need to run are available for the
Mac platform. Also, factor in what’s required to incorporate your new Mac into
your home network.

CNets Asia

Tips To Buy Perfect Notebook For You (4)

16: Modern conveniences
Some common desktop features have made their way into notebooks. Quick-launch keys
are a perfect example. You can program these buttons to launch your favourite apps,
turn on your wireless radio, or switch to a power-saving mode. A few of our other
favourite luxuries are built-in TV tuners, and, for photo junkies, multiformat
memory-card readers.

17: Turn on, tune out–instantly
Want to listen to music or watch a DVD without having to wait for your notebook to
power up? An instant-on feature lets you do just that, so you can get right down
to, um, business, without the boot time. Plus, going this route usually helps
extend battery life. Although this isn’t a necessary feature, it can come in handy
on long flights.

18: Connect the docks
A docking station quickly turns your notebook into a desktop. You connect your
peripherals (monitor, keyboard, mouse, and serial devices) to the dock, which
stays at your desk. Simply attach the notebook to the dock, and you instantly get
the conveniences of a desktop without having to unplug everything when it’s time
to go.

Another advantage of a docking station is its inclusion of legacy ports many newer
notebooks leave out, such as parallel, serial, and PS/2 ports. If you don’t need
all the features of a dock, but could still use the extra connectivity, check
whether the notebook maker offers a port replicator, which is basically a
pared-down version of a dock.

19: When good notebooks go bad
Every notebook is susceptible to accidents and system failures. We recommend
paying for a good three-year warranty with express service. If you can afford it,
get coverage for damage caused by spills, drops, electrical surges, or any other
accident.

20: Essential accessories
When pricing a notebook, set aside cash for important extras. These include a
laptop bag, an extra battery, a mouse and keyboard, and software for office work,
Internet security, and system maintenance. You may even want to consider an
external hard drive for backup.

CNets Asia

Tips To Buy Perfect Notebook For You (3)

11: Go wireless
Integrated wireless networking (Wi-Fi) has become an indispensable feature. Most
notebooks ship with a choice of 802.11b/g or 802.11a/b/g. Capable of data
throughput of 11Mbps, 802.11b is fine for ordinary use. Public hotspots typically
use 802.11b or 802.11g. (The latter is backward-compatible with 802.11b.) Unless
you’re in and out of office environments, don’t worry about support for 802.11a.
Santa Rosa-based notebooks have the option of the fastest Wi-Fi standard to date,
the 802.11n radio which is suppose to give ten times more bandwidth than the
previous 802.11g standard.

12: Power without the plug
Lithium-ion batteries have all but replaced nickel-cadmiums because they’re
lighter, have a higher energy density, and don’t suffer from recharge-inhibiting
memory effect. So-called “smart” lithium-ions give feedback to the laptop about
their remaining power, so the computer can conserve as necessary.

Two more specs to look for in laptop batteries are capacity (measured in milliamp
hours, or mAh), and the number of cells. Typical batteries have a mAh rating
between 2,000mAh and 6,000mAh; higher is better. Cells are the actual compartments
where power is produced and can range from four to 12; the more the better.

13: What’s in a name?
Intel loves its code-names. In the mobile arena, the company’s Centrino mobile
technology tops the list. The Centrino platform, which arrived in early 2003,
combines Intel’s Pentium M or Core Duo/Solo CPU, Intel chipset, and Pro/Wireless
Wi-Fi circuitry. A notebook must have all three parts to be a Centrino notebook.

A newer version of Centrino, the Core platform (previously codenamed Santa Rosa),
arrived this year. It features Intel’s 965 chipset and adds support for HDMI and
800MHz dual-channel DDR3 memory to laptops. What does all this mean? Dual-core or
even future quad-core processing, faster graphics and multitasking, plus increased
battery life over older models. The best news: We expect prices on older–but
still excellent–Centrino models to fall a bit.

14: Tiny, tinny sound
Notebooks are notorious for having terrible speakers. Our recommendation: Get a
good set of headphones, or a stereo or three-piece speaker set.

Laptops generally lack the sound-processing abilities to use surround-sound
speakers, but you can add it. Creative’s Sound Blaster Audigy 2 ZS Notebook slides
into a PC Card slot, providing support for up to eight-channel surround sound.

15: It’s not just size that matters
Notebook hard drives start at 80GB. Form factor may restrict your options, but if
possible, go for at least 120GB or 160GB if you’ll be storing lots of image or
music files. Capacity isn’t the only issue. If you have a choice, select a drive
with a rotational speed of at least 5,400rpm. The faster it spins, the faster
you’ll get your files.

From : CNet Asia

Tips To Buy Perfect Notebook For You (2)

6. Finger fitting

As notebooks shrink in size, so do their keyboards. If possible, try some simple
typing exercises before you buy. The smaller the keyboard, the more creative the
vendor may have gotten with key size and placement. Pay particular attention to the
spacebar, Shift, Ctrl, and Backspace/Delete keys. Be sure all are in a good
location for your hand size and typing style.

7: Touchy, touchy
Computing today relies a lot on mousing. With a notebook, all you get is a touch
pad or pointing stick. Unless you plan on traveling with a mouse, test the
notebook’s input device for comfort and responsiveness. Some touch pads include
extra features, such as a dedicated area for scrolling. We’ve never been big fans
of those little pointing sticks tucked in the middle of the keyboard, because
precision is tough and the little nubs wear off, requiring replacement.

8: Vying for video RAM
If you’re not planning on doing much graphics work or playing 3D games, shared
memory should be fine. But if you have a choice, aim for a graphics chipset that
shares at least 384MB of system memory. You may not find it in an ultraportable,
but other notebook types may offer more robust graphics chipsets. In fact, many
high-end notebooks have discrete graphics subsystems with dedicated high-speed
video memory. If gaming or intensive graphics work is on the agenda, look for 512MB
or 1GB of dedicated memory.

9: A slot for all reasons
Like a PCI slot in a desktop, a PC Card (or PCMCIA) slot in a notebook provides
expansion opportunities. Additional USB and FireWire ports, wired and wireless
modems, and wireless LAN radios are all available in PC Card form. PC Cards and
slots come in three sizes: Type I, II, and III. Type I cards are normally used for
memory, Type II for input/output devices, and Type III for mass storage and
firewalls. The very latest notebooks include the ExpressCard slot which is set to
replace the PCMCIA card format in the long run.

10: Get connected
Ports, especially USB and FireWire, are necessities, but on notebooks they’re
usually in short supply. At a minimum, look for two USB ports, and if you have any
legacy devices, such as parallel printers, look for those ports, too. If you’d like
to use a digital camcorder or iPod with your notebook, make sure the notebook has a
FireWire (IEEE 1394) port. Connecting a monitor will require a VGA port. (If you’ll
be giving presentations, a VGA port is also where you’ll connect a projector.) And
if you want to output video to a television, find a notebook with an S-Video out.

From : CNet Asia

Tips For Buy Perfect Notebooks For You

1. Choose Your Form
We divide notebook into 4 form ( thin-light, ultraportable, mainstream, desktop
replacement ). Decide which form is suit for you.
-> Thin-light if you need balance between size, battery and power. This form is
suit with students or bussinessman. Their larger screens (14-15) and it’s
roomier keyboard makes it better for longer usage
-> Ultraportable, if you will use your notebook on the road (mobile). This form has
small size, that’s make it easy to bring. Finally, tiny tech comes with higher
price.
-> Mainstream, if you need laptops for daily usage. Although they don’t have small
size ( 14′ screen or larger, big keyboard, and standard ports ), they still
offer portability. So, this form just like budget desktop’s : they good for
general tasks but won’t win any contests for their performance or features.
-> Desktop Replacement, if you need desktop power. With screen size between 15-17′,
travel weights, and longer battery life (Upto 3 hours). They offer wide range
performance, but decreased a little portability.

2. The CPU
For CPU you should choose the fastest you can afford. You have a lot options.
Intel’s Centrino is good, but if you prefer one which has affordable price you can
choose AMD. But AMD is still behind Intel’s (based on CNet mobilemark test).

3. Screen
Wide screen offers sharper and better image, they are great for watching DVD’s or
you can open two documents side by side. A spacious 17-inch wide-screen laptop is a
nice luxury if you’re not planning on traveling with it.

4. The (not-so) great outdoors
Sunlight is not ideal for computing — specifically, for seeing the screen. If you
want to work outdoors, you have options, but most consumer models have what are
known as transmissive screens. These screens are lit from behind, and despite what
you’ve seen in the commercials, they’re virtually invisible on a bright, sunny day.
Reflective LCDs, which light the screen’s pixels from the front and reflect
polarised light from the environment, are much better for outdoor work, but their
screens look dim indoors. What’s more, they’re mostly reserved for vertical-market
notebook models and are pretty tough to come by.

5. Memory
Having enough memory is vital to system performance, and lots of RAM lets you run
more applications simultaneously. Sufficient RAM is also necessary for graphics
work, image editing, and video editing, and crucial for 3D gaming. This is
especially true in notebooks, because notebook graphics processors frequently have
little or no memory of their own and share the main system RAM.

1GB: Good for basic office apps, running one at a time.

1.5GB: Adequate for running several programs at once, photo editing, and basic 3D
gaming.

2GB or more: Recommended for high-performance 3D gaming, demanding graphics work,
and video editing.

From CNet Asia

MacBook Air

During his Macworld Expo keynote address on Tuesday morning, Apple CEO Steve Jobs introduced their newest products, labelled as the world’s thinnest notebook,MacBook Air (small enough to fit inside an interoffice mailing envelope).

It’s priced starting at $1,799 and will be available within two weeks.

Sporting a silvery finish, the MacBook Air features a 13.3-inch LED-backlit widescreen display that has a 1280 x 800 pixel resolution. The backlighting saves power and provides “instant on” response from the moment you turn it on, according to Jobs. The device has a slightly wedge-shaped profile. It weighs about 3 pounds, and sports a thickness of 0.16-0.76 inches. It’s 12.8 inches wide and 8.95 inches deep.

The MacBook Air also features a built-in iSight webcam and a full sized MacBook-style black keyboard. The keyboard is backlit, similar to MacBook Pros, and has an ambient light sensor that automatically adjusts brightness. The trackpad is also capable of recognizing multi-touch gestures, similar to using an iPhone or iPod touch. As a result, the MacBook Air’s trackpad is disproportionately large, compared to the size of trackpads found on the MacBook or MacBook Pro.

The MacBook Air features a 1.8-inch hard disk drive with 80GB of storage capacity standard. A 64GB solid-state disk (SSD) drive is an option. The hard drive is a Parallel ATA (PATA) model that operates at 4200 RPM.

The laptop is powered by an Intel Core 2 Duo chip running at 1.6GHz, with 1.8GHz available as an option. Jobs noted that Intel was willing to engineer a new version of the Core 2 Duo specifically to Apple’s specifications — it’s 60 percent smaller than others. The chip operates with 4MB of on-chip shared L2 cache running at full processor speed, and uses an 800MHz frontside bus. 2GB of 667MH DDR2 SDRAM is also included.

Like the MacBook and the MacBook Pro, the MacBook Air features a slimmed down MagSafe connector for power. It comes with a 45 watt power adapter. A flip-down door on one side reveals USB 2.0, Micro-DVI (to connect an external display) and a headphone jack. The MacBook Air also includes 802.11n-based wireless networking support and Bluetooth 2.1 + EDR.

Apple estimates that with wireless networking turned on, the MacBook Air can get about 5 hours of battery life.

No internal optical drive is included, but Apple will offer a $99 USB 2.0-based add-on SuperDrive for users who need it. For users that opt not to get the optical drive, Apple is offering a new software feature on this machine called Remote Disk; it enables you to “borrow” the optical drive of another Mac or PC on the same network as the MacBook Air, to use for installing software, for example.

Apple’s frequently been in the crosshairs of environmental group Greenpeace in recent years. Jobs offered information about the environmental goals behind the MacBook Air — it has a fully recyclable aluminum case, and is “the first” to have a mercury-free display with arsenic-free glass. All the circuit boards are BFR-free and PVC-free, and the retail packaging uses 56 percent less material than the MacBook packaging.

Important link :

Apple-MacBook Air