Summer 2007 Laptop and Notebook Buyers Guide

Thin and light or mobile workstation, basic budget or high-powered business features, Macs or tablet PCs; today we’re going to tell you how to choose the right notebook for whatever you need. We’re going to go through business, general-use, budget, gaming, ultra-portable, tablet and Mac laptops to show you what to look for and offer some suggestions.

Whatever kind of notebook you need, you don’t have to pay over the odds anymore; portable PCs are hardly more expensive than desktops and hardly less powerful for all but the highest end gaming and professional shunting work. Four years after Centrino made notebooks more than desktop systems crammed into a portable case, laptops come in every size from ultra slim to multimedia monsters. Intel’s Santa Rosa platform puts dual core processors and 802.11n WiFi into the latest laptops. And if you want to take advantage of everything Vista has to offer on the move, you’ll need the other new hardware - like DirectX 10 graphics for Aero and Turbo Memory for ReadyBoost. There are AMD notebooks on the market, especially budget Mobile Sempron models, but AMD’s dual core Turion X2 is no match for Intel Core 2 Duo for mainstream and high performance notebooks.

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The spec of a notebook matters as much as with a PC and more, because upgrading anything apart from the memory or hard drive means major surgery. Watch out for the memory too; you’ll only get one extra memory slot in a notebook so make sure a 512 MB stick on a 1 GB notebook doesn’t take it up. If what you want isn’t built in, you’ll probably be able to plug it in by USB, FireWire, PC Card or ExpressCard, but remember that will use more power – and if it sticks out the side or hangs on the end of a cable it makes your system less portable. Screen size – and whether you have a widescreen TFT or a standard ratio – determines the overall size of a notebook and most of the weight. An optical drive usually adds to the bulk, and DVD burners aren’t as ubiquitous as they are on desktops.

At the high end of the market what matters is the extras in a laptop: DVD burners, Webcams, fingerprint swipes, built-in 3G antennae and touch screens. For mobile gaming it’s screen size and sheer power. For ultraportables it’s how much gets left out to make a small, light, sleek and usually pricey system. But a good keyboard, plenty of ports, screen quality and battery life matter whatever size and shape of notebook you’re after.