Laptops

The perfect laptop does not exist, because each user has different needs and budget. But you can find the best laptop for you. The most important factors to choose a laptop are 3:

• What is the laptop for? Internet, office work, multimedia and gaming are typical uses.
• How big or small should it be? Maybe you need an light laptop to move it a lot, a standard-size laptop, or one with a big screen.
• What's your budget? Quality, performance and extras cost money. Keep this in mind: you get what you pay for.

I'm trying to cover the most common kinds of laptops, here you have the first ones (the rest are coming later). In case you cannot find what you are looking for, you can always ask in the forums.

Featured article: laptops with AMD processors (comparison with Intel processors and recommended models; it's getting a bit old).

Kind of laptop	Description	Pricing
Netbook	Very small and light (usually 1-1.5 kg), low performance, but good for surfing the Net, checking your e-mail and writing notes.	Very cheap to Average
Ultraportable	Also very light (usually 1-1.5 kg), but with better performance (they usually sport dual-core processors and at least 2 GB of RAM) and more features (depending on the model, but can include 3G modem, GPS, Bluetooth, big hard drive, DVD-burner...). Bigger screen and keyboard than in netbooks.	Average to Very expensive
Small and fast laptop	Not so light (usually 1.5-2 kg), but can have powerful processors and dedicated graphics cards. Pricing varies greatly depending on the configuration.	Average to Expensive
Cheap laptop	Standard size (15.4", 2.8-3.1 kg), are good for basic tasks (surfing the Net, checking your e-mail and working with text).	Very Cheap
Basic laptop	Also standard size, with enough performace for basic taks under Windows Vista. More up-to-date than cheap laptops, can deal with HD movies and some games. Most users on a budget will be happy with them.	Cheap
Multimedia laptop	Standard size or bigger (16-18"), with good screens and speakers to enjoy movies and music. Pay attention to the graphics card if you want to play games.	Average to expensive
Gaming laptop	Usually big, with powerful graphics cards to get the most frames per second in modern games. A fast processor is important too. Can deliver good performance, but not as good as gaming desktop computers.	Expensive to Very expensive
Professional laptop	Standard size or bigger (15-17"), these high-performance, high-quality laptops are up to (almost) any professional task.	Expensive to Very expensive

Core i7 laptops