Buying a laptop is a big decision for a lot of people because it can cost a fair amount of money. There are some important specifications that should be considered.

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One is the weight factor. Where will you be taking this notebook pc? There are laptops now that are called netbooks which are meant for lightweight travel. Many people will pack them in their backpacks for college or business. They do not promise a whole lot of power in terms of gaming but are great for simple things such as writing papers and browsing the web which is what most people do. When you go to a store or a website be sure to find out the weight because some laptops are heavy. Generally speaking a light weight laptop does not promise you much processing power but does give you an edge to travel.

I had bought myself an Asus laptop this summer to go to school with but it was meant for some intense video editing and games. I found out that I did not have time for games but needed to carry around a lightweight laptop. Don't get me wrong, the laptop did serve its purpose well and is serving its purpose right now as I type this sentence but it is a good idea to consider the weight factor.

Overall, you should know what purpose you will be using your laptop for. Whether it be gaming or just surfing the web. There are a few factors that are a must in my opinion to have. All computers today should at least have 1 gigabyte of memory (RAM) in order to get around in the PC world. More memory means that you can have more programs open but 1 gigabyte is the minimum. That goes for notebooks PCs and netbook PCs.

The CPU or processor should be a dual core processor if possible because that too is the standard of todays PCs. You decided whether you want an AMD or INTEL processor. I have had good experiences with AMD and video preformance but Intel is a solid CPU today.

The graphics card or video card is another important thing to consider. If you were buying a desktop computer it is always best to get a video card that is NOT integrated but most laptops are integrated because of their need to be compact. When a computer is compact it can generally mean less performance and power. There are too video card brands out there. One is ATI and another is Nvidia. ATI is okay but I would not recommend it to anyone as I have personally had problems with it several times. It could be that I bought one of their cheap video cards. Nvidia is a solid and great brand of video card because it offers great performance. Nvidia video cards tend to be more expensive but are better. Regardless of whether you are a gamer or not, get Nvidia. If you are a gamer you probably want at least a 8800GT/GS. If you are just doing some average stuff you can get at least a 6600GT.

The hard drive just depends on the amount of space you need but if you have some money to spend consider getting a solid state drive (SSD). These drives tend to load up windows vista/xp and programs a lot faster. Also, these types of drive do not fail as often as traditional hard drives because they have no moving parts. The downside is that the solid state drives tend to be more expensive as they are new and the supply and demand is not up. They are popular ammoung those with money.

There are other detains to consider such as whether you need a SD memory card reader and if you need a web cam. I would also recommend getting a laser/optical mouse if the laptop does not come with it but mine did.

This concludes my recommendation for buying a laptop. Happy Shopping and Merry Christmas.