Tags: electronics sale / gadget / laptop

All about buying laptops

- Tuesday, 4 November 2014 No Comments

 

 Planning to buy a laptop in the age of smartphones and tablets? Well, it is certainly a great idea and in fact, equally essential as well.  Smartphones and tablets provide accessibility to the Internet and your online world but when it comes to working online, laptops and personal computers serve the purpose dutifully.  For choosing between the two, laptop can be carried across anywhere you go while personal computer is apt for those who do not need to travel with their data, frequently or infrequently.

But before you buy, a few guidelines could ensure you land up making the right choice of laptop as per your requirement –

Purpose of the Laptop –   This one is indeed crucial and for zeroing down, you need to ask yourself these questions –

·         Single use or multiple use by other family members

·         Type of work – text, graphics, online video or gaming

·         Likely to carried out of home for travel?

According to the responses you give, you can go for a decent screen sized laptop if it going to be used by the entire family and remain at home. However, if you are the only one using it and likely to carry it around you can go for a small screen sized laptop which is slightly inexpensive too.

 

Battery Life – Yet another important point which you cannot ignore as without a long lasting battery, you work is likely to be hampered quite frequently especially if you like working around the rooms of your house.  Beginning with a minimum battery life requirement of up to 4 hours, you could go out for laptops with battery life of up to 6 – 7 hours to be on the safe side, in case you need to travel with them once in a while too.  Again here, if you love watching audio video content on your laptop then the power is going to be consumed quite fast. For ascertaining the actual battery performance, we suggest you check out user reviews both offline and online along with that mentioned in the manufacturer’s manual.

 

Key Specifications of the Laptop

Though, you could not be a techie person but basic knowledge about the specifications of a laptop could prove helpful in making the right purchase decision relating to your laptop. The specifications – hard drive, RAM, CPU, graphics chip are again linked to your productivity pattern. 

 

CPU – It’s advisable to go for the 4^thgeneration CPU which promises decent performance as well as battery life provided your basic use of the laptop relates to surfing and accessing social media networks but for gaming and multi tasking, you need to opt for a CPU with higher specification.

 

RAM –  Most laptops are fitted with 4GB RAM as a norm but it is safer to opt for 8GB RAM and stay well equipped for multi tasking and high end applications which could be available in the future.

 

Hard Drive – Hard Drives are very much essential to store your data but if you go for one with 5,400-rpm unit with at least 320GB space or more. However, you could go for SSD which perform at faster speeds but are expensive comparatively.

 

Other factors which are equally important include screen size, display, graphics chip, optical drives and more. And of course, if you are based in India then laptop prices in India prove to be of paramount importance when buying them.  Yet another valuable tip which you can bear in mind is to compare prices of laptops both online as well offline before going ahead with the purchase.

Tags: gadget / laptop / Windows 8

With approachable price, recommendation of high popularity Win8 notebooks

- Wednesday, 4 September 2013 No Comments

The price is often the most important factor when purchase a notebook. So, what price range products are most welcome in the market? let's take a look. For high popularity notebooks, they often have stylish look and main current configuration, and they should be able to meet the consumers' general demands.

1. Samsung ATIV Book 9 Lite

Samsung ATIV Book 9 Lite is targeted at the mass consumer groups, and the high-end market. Through high-end exquisite appearance, sharp and smooth body design, it perfectly innovates the PC forms. The model uses metal wire drawing process, which is not only scratch-resistant, but also highlights calm and elegance. The edge of the frame has reached 16.9mm, and the opening and closing angle is 180°, which has truly integrates ultrathin and artistic.

Samsung 905S3G uses a 13-inch matte display. The glossy display looks very lovable, but it's prone to reflections and contaminated with fingerprints. The matte display can produce diffuse reflection, so there won't have strong reflection, and also the fingerprint hazard is much lighter.

As to the performance, Samsung 905S3G-K01 uses Samsung's customized version quad-core processor, X86 architecture 4GB RAM and 128GB SSD hard drive. It can perfectly run Photoshop, Word, Excel, Fireworks and other common office software.

2. ThinkPad E531

ThinkPad E531 (68854TC) laptop is an upgraded product of the previous generation E530 series, and also it's much thinner. It adds four shortcut keys, a key to calculate, a key to lock, a key to open the browser and a key to open My Computer, so the operation is more convenient.

As a business book, Lenovo ThinkPad E531 68854TC is equipped with a 15.6-inch LED display, Intel Core i5-3230M dual-core processor, built-in 4G DDR3 1600 RAM, 1000GB 5400 rpm mechanical hard drive, 2G video memory NVIDIA GeForce GT 635M independent graphics and a 720P HD camera. And also it's pre-installed Windows8 operating system.

3. Acer V5-471PG

Acer V5-471PG notebook is compact and thin, the top cover uses drawing process design which makes the A side more metallic, and also is not easy to leave fingerprints. It weighs 1.345kg, and travel weight is 1.529kg, which is very portable.

Acer V5-471PG doesn't use the Acer unique duckweed keyboard, but the popular chocolate keyboard which is easier to clean compared to the duckweed keyboard and dust-proof. It has a 14-inch wide screen, the highest resolution is 1366 × 768. This screen can be purchased from http://www.batterycentury.com.

Acer V5-471PG is with Intel i5-3317U dual-core processor, 2GB memory NVIDIA GeForce GT 620M discrete graphics that supports smart graphics switching and DirectX 11, 4GB memory and 500GB hard drive.

4. Lenovo IdeaPad Yoga 11

Lenovo IdeaPad Yoga 11 is equipped with a full-size keyboard, and it has a 11.6-inch AHVA wide viewing angle screen that supports up to five-point touch at the same time, and also it uses a 16:9 ratio structure, and it's with 1366x768 resolution. Tust above the screen there is a video camera, which has 1 megapixel and can record 720P video, the upper right of the screen is the light sensor.

Lenovo Yoga 11 uses NVIDIA Tegra quad-core processor T30, whose processing capacity is twice than the previous generation Tegra 2, 2GB DDR3L RAM, 32G SSD and NVIDIA Graphics. It has 802.11 BGN wireless LAN card and Bluetooth 4.0 module for networking. And also it has a 42Whr large capacity battery. It's worth mentioning that Lenovo IdeaPad Yoga 11 is also the first tablet notebook without a fan.

5. Sony SVE14A26CCB

Sony VAIO series notebooks are with beautiful appearance and good hardware quality, the folding body design has been loved by the majority, holding hands. The sides highlight the folding design features. It has a 14-inch LED-backlit widescreen with a screen ratio of 16:9 and a resolution of 1366*768. In addition to the black screen border and the border of both sides, Sony E14A26 notebook is with all-white appearance, the surface is coated with skin-like material, which touches comfortable. It's with the chocolate keyboard, and the keyboard top right corner provides four function keys, which are the optical drive ejection, a key recovery system, web browsing and VIAO service program. Sony SVE14A26EC body size is 341 mm x 22.4 mm x 245 mm, the top cover and the bottom are made of magnesium alloy.

In hardware configuration, it's with Intel Core i3-3110M processor, 2GB DDR3 RAM, 500GB 5400 SATA hard drive, built-in DVD burner, Intel 4000 and AMD HD 7670M dual graphics, 10/100/1000Mbps Ethernet card, 802.11a/b/g/n wireless LAN and Bluetooth 4.0.

6. Toshiba S40t

Toshiba S40t-AT01M notebook uses a 14-inch ten-point capacitive touch screen, which is covered with anti-fingerprint coating to bring high-quality touch experience. It's with metal material and drawing texture, the metal-plated edge technology produces large size touchpad and floating keyboard. It's equipped with two USB 3.0 interfaces, also it supports poweroff charging.

In the hardware configuration, the Toshiba Satellite S40t is equipped with third-generation Intel Core i5-3337U dual-core processor, 4GB memory, 500GB hard drive, and 2GB video memory NVIDIA GeForce GT740M discrete graphics.

7. HP 4441s

HP 4441s (D5J74PA) notebook has a very stylish metallic look. It's with a 14-inch LED backlit screen which can be purchased from http://www.batterycentury.com/ with a resolution of 1366*768 and 16:9 the golden ratio, also it has built-in audio chip, the overall sound effect is quite good.

HP 4441s (D5J74PA) uses Intel Core i5-3230M (2.6GHz/L3 3M) processor, 2G memory AMD Radeon HD 7650M graphics card, standard 4G memory and 640G hard drive. It also supports 802.11b/g/n wireless LAN, and it has two USB2.0 and two USB3.0 interfaces.

8. ASUS S550X3317CM

ASUS S550X3317CM uses a 15.6-inch HD screen, Intel Core i5-3317U processor, built-in ultrathin optical drive, Nvidia GT635M discrete graphics, SonicMaster, SSD and even a full-screen video conferencing HD camera, it can be absolutely called as the omnipotent WIN8 touch ultrabook.

ASUS S550X3317CM-SL is equipped with Intel Core i5-3317U (1.7GHz/L3 3M) dual-core processor, Intel HM76 motherboard chipset, with 500GB mechanical hard drive, and 4GB DDR3 1600MHz speed memory that maximumly supports 8GB. It's with Intel HD 4000 graphics card and 2GB NVIDIA GeForce GT 635M graphics card combination, which supports Optimus intelligent graphics switching.

Tags: laptop / mackbook air / ultrabook

Should you get an Ultrabook or a Macbook Air ?

- Wednesday, 6 March 2013 No Comments

The question of whether to get an ultrabook running Windows 8 or a combination of Apple devices running OS X and iOS has lately become a heated one. As ultrabooks continue to enter the market in increasingly attractive form factors and specifications, it's no longer a no-brainer to pick the Apple devices. In this article, we explore expert takes on the issue from PC Mag and Wired magazine and discuss the ultrabook vs. MacBook Air question.

Early contenders

PC Mag ran a comparison of Apple's 13-inch Macbook Air against an ultrabook from each of the major hardware manufacturers. The magazine observed that when the Macbook Air was introduced, it had a clear advantage over the competition: "For a while there, Apple had no one to compete against but itself," the magazine wrote.

By 2012, however, the Macbook Air was facing serious competition from the ultrabook. Even last year, PC Mag notes, the Macbook Air was no longer the clear leader in the category of ultra-portable laptops. The magazine observes that the Apple machine's trackpad is class-leading, that it is sporting upgraded processors, and that it runs on the OS X operating system – all of which are seen as attractive by many users.

However, as PC Mag pointed out, there's an ultrabook from practically every major hardware manufacturer that can put up a stiff challenge to the Macbook Air. Sony's VAIO T13, for example, is seen as a fast, well-designed ultrabook at a value price. HP's Folio 13-1020US is another highly attractive ultra-portable machine that costs just a bit more than the Sony offering. The Asus Zenbook is described as "the clear leader in the nascent ultrabook category", sporting better battery life and performance than the competition. Although the Lenovo IdeaPad Yoga 13 ultrabook isn't included in the round-up, reviews from media outlets like Wirecutter suggest that it, too, is a strong contender for the top ultrabook crown.

Apps

When choosing between an ultrabook that runs on Windows 8 or an Apple device, one of the key considerations is the availability and range of apps in the respective app stores. On this count, Apple appears to still have the advantage, according to Wired magazine.

Wired notes that, while the Windows 8 operating system is highly attractive and usable, the number of apps available in the app store is "severely lacking". It should be noted, however, that more apps isn’t always better – you want to make sure that you have the apps and programs to deal with your most important tasks. The Lenovo Thinkpad Tablet 2, for example, offers the latest version of the Microsoft Office suite, which is crucial for a business user.

Wired observes that the number of apps available on an app store is a crucial factor for a mobile device like a tablet, whereas for an ultrabook or desktop, it may not be as critical a factor. However, when picking between an ultrabook-tablet hybrid that runs Windows 8 and a Macbook Air, the lines can be blurred, with the scales tipping in favour of a more densely populated app store.

Hardware

In a separate review, Wired compared the hardware aspects of a hybrid ultrabook and a combo comprising an 11.6-inch Macbook Air and a first-generation iPad. In terms of portability, the hybrid ultrabook takes the cake, according to Wired. The built-in convertibility means that the user only has to contend with one device with an ultrabook, instead of two devices and their attendant cases and power adaptors, in the case of the Macbook Air and iPad. However, using a tablet with a digitiser pen for quick handwriting input may remove the need for a keyboard. This would put the tablet and pen combination ahead in terms of portability.

When it comes to battery life, the Wired test found that the Macbook Air-iPad combo lasted longer. In Wired's case, its Toshiba ultrabook hybrid lasted for five hours, which is about comparable to the Macbook Air's longevity. However, the iPad, on a separate battery, had another 10 hours of charge on it. Wired declared the two Apple devices the winner over the ultrabook in this test.

In terms of value, Wired found the hybrid ultrabook to be the better offering. It notes that not only is the price of hybrid ultrabook usually cheaper than buying a Macbook Air and a earlier generation iPad, users are also likely to save on apps with an ultrabook because there's no need to purchase two copies of essential applications. This would be the case with a Lenovo Thinkpad Tablet 2, for example, which is powerful enough to run business apps on the go.

Wired concludes that choosing between a hybrid ultrabook and two Apple devices is a deeply personal decision based on lifestyle choices. The reviewer notes that, since upgrading individual components and battery life are critical factors for him, the combination of two Apple devices works better. However, if users seeking optimum portability, value for money and the ability to quickly switch between a leisure device like a tablet and a work-focused device like an ultrabook, then they may be more in favour of a hybrid ultrabook running Windows 8.