Computer geek question: What specs & features should a new laptop have if I want it to work well for 3+ years?
Question by philasophos01: Computer geek question: What specs & features should a new laptop have if I want it to work well for 3+ years?
Background: My laptop is on its last legs (to the point that fixing the keyboard & DVD drive would cost more than a new laptop) & it’s CPU & RAM are too low to support many things, like hulu & iTunes videos. It’s a Sony Vaio ultra-portable from 2004. So….
____________
So I am going to buy a new computer. I know that basically any computer I buy today will be sufficient for the next year or so, but I don’t know what resource demands will be in a few years.
Also, I wonder if there are certain features I should wait for, like USB 3.0 or 4G service & reception being standard? (There’s probably lots of other features too, but I haven’t been keeping up lately! – I need to go hang out at CES 2011!)
Best answer:
Answer by Zelkathz
Any computers will work fine for 3 years long (mine is 4 years now) you also have the warranty from your computer store. So don’t be too worried about what you’re getting. Just try to do some research and you could ask questions on cnet.com too.
Hope this helps.
What do you think? Answer below!
No related posts.
Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.
Category: How To Fix A Laptop
1. Wait for Sandy Bridge laptops to come out (a month or two). They offer a reasonable performance boost over current-gen notebooks.
2. If you want it to last a long time, look at build quality (i.e. how well constructed the laptop is). Business laptops are usually the best in this regard, as they’re usually designed to take abuse and use high quality materials like magnesium alloy and carbon fiber, and use solid stainless steel hinges. A cheap plastic notebook will not fare well.
3. Look at support. A 3-year warranty might be useful if that’s how long you want to use.
You need to think about what you want to do with your laptop. Then you need to find out what the requirements are for doing what you want to do. Say you want to edit videos, then look up the requirements of the video editing program you are planning to use.
You want a laptop that has higher specs then what you need. That way you can upgrade the software if you need to.
You really got your money’s worth out of that 6 year old Vaio though. And whatever laptop you will get is going to be such a huge improvement that you’re gonna really like it. :)
If your looking at gaming, buying the best of graphics card ever in the present will be good for years, but it will just be challenged more and more by new games.
same for the best processor, and high ram.
However, Intel’s processor 4 is now a low requirement for many new applications that’s like 5 years old, so they never got so demanding of the old hardware that they dumped it. So if your not aiming at hard demanding applications, or gaming, then your only need mid range hardware.
I believe there isn’t going to be any super new stuff without having to pay 100′s extra for it unless you wait half a year for to get cheap. The best you can do is get a wireless card (which a lot of stuff tend to revolt around now) with 10/100/1000 connection stuff which is really fast but a worthy standard. Maybe touch screen if you need it, 3d screen if your urges need it, blue-ray disc drive, TV/digital tuner, blue-tooth 2.1 +edr, etc.
I bought a acer aspire 5741g with 1gb graphics (mid-range), 4gb ram, (which I’m ganna max to 8gb) and only i3 processor 2.13ghz (might upgrade). But it works well with demanding games such as black ops with high settings.
I bought this laptop to last me a few years, play games, and use every application out there (and so far, no software (not games) needs no-where more than a quarter of my stats yet , I have a feeling it will last me a long while (maybe the 3 years your looking for). It has the 10/100/1000 b/g/n wireless which is great. nothing was wrong with it but blue-tooth, which they fixed. I wanted an inbuilt tv tuner, but ended up buying a usb one, which works fine.
You also can upgrade anything on your computer in nowadays with everything becoming more adjustable like what im doing to my laptop just as long as (I understand) your motherboard/ computer supports it like blue ray disc drive, ram, graphics, processor + more. I also suggest a 64bit windows system so you can have high amount of speed power.
In short don’t expect much great stuff without paying 100s for it all. just for convenience make sure you get a good internet card (like the 10/100/1000 b/g/n wireless) etc good processor (at least 2ghz with intel i5), good graphics (1gb), good ram (personally 4gb+). Get a windows 64bit, so you can add stuff without your comp rejecting hardware.
Just do not get:
*integrated/ intel graphics (more like nvidia/ati 1gb) or your computer will be eaten by it.
* Don’t look for hyper memory, its a new thing they invented which is crap!!!! for your computer
Your want “dedicated”, not “shared/hyper” graphics.