Lois & Clark Forums Forums General Discussion Technical Help and How To's NoteBook Question Must Haves?

I'm saving to get a new computer my parents have let me know that they might add to this if I can find one now that's on sale that's good.

What I need to know is just what are must have's?

I know I need wireless.

How many GB and Ram do I need?

I just surf the web and shop.

But if I want to get a DVD rom and download movies how much room on my hard drive will I need?

Try CNET\'s Laptop Buying Guide . You can tell it what you're looking for, and it'll help you figure out what you need.

Personally, I like to get comps loaded with just about as much as I can stick into them (in terms of processor speed, RAM, and, to a lesser degree, graphics cards). Not absolutely top-of-the-line (which is very expensive), but not far from it. You pay more than you would for a basic comp, but you get a comp that'll last years longer. The computer I'm using now is 7 years old. It's only recently started to become noticeably slow. I probably should have replaced it last year, but for the usage it gets, it's got another year or two in it, I think. Much better than the 3 or 4 years (if that) I'd have gotten out of a lesser comp.

In any case... As you can see, CNET recommends at least 1GB of RAM now. If you check the Windows Vista Upgrade Advisor , you'll see that it's the minimum suggested for even casual Vista users (Vista is a huge memory hog, especially the fancier versions). Microsoft claims you can get away with less , but the reviews I've seen haven't really agreed. In fact, you'd probably be better off with 2GB.

Hard drive... DVDs usually hold a few gigs each. If you want entire movies, you'll need a lot of space. But that's okay. You don't have to worry about it right now. You can get a high-capacity external hard drive in just about any size you want for about $1/gig. Some will be cheaper than others, some faster than others. I recently got a 250 gig drive on sale from Circuit City (they have weekly specials on external HDDs) for about $70. It's a little on the slow side in terms of access speed, but it works well enough. Much cheaper than buying a huge-capacity laptop drive.

Also, you shouldn't have much trouble getting a DVD burner. If you want to save movies, that might well be a better option for you.

Thanks for the help I'm going to go check out that site recommand tonight when I have more time to give it. I'm heading out the door right now. Thanks again.

This is always an interesting question. Since you are wanting to download movies, you'll need a lot of space if you want to keep them with your laptop at all times.

For a laptop, Paul is right about having that external hard drive. These days you can get a 1TB drive for $300 on sale, a bit more without a sale. Or a 500GB for about $200 or less. The biggest internal notebook drive you can get these days is a 250GB 5400 rpm drive (I'd recommend the Samsung over the Western Digital). But those are pretty pricey. The largest inexpensive laptop drives are 160GB drives. Each movie will probably average around 1-2GB in size, so you can see how space will disappear really quickly at 2GB a pop.

That's where the external comes in handy. You can store all your movies on the external drive and just copy over the ones you want to carry with you all the time or the ones you're most likely to watch in the near future. If you finish one, delete it from the laptop and copy in the next one. It's kinda like having Netflix right in your own home.

The rule of thumb for RAM is always buy as much as you can afford. It's the one thing that can speed up a PC with the most bang for the buck and make old laptops almost feel like new. Most laptops are limited to 2GB while the newest Intel chipsets (you might have heard of Santa Rosa models) can go up to 4GB. With new models sporting Windows Vista, I'd definitely recommend at least 2GB. 1GB can be agonizing with Vista. If you get a used laptop with Windows XP or a Dell that comes with XP built in (they're the only major vendor that still bundles XP on new machines), then you can get by with 1GB if you mostly just web surf.

If you like using Skype or web calling your friends, a built-in or external webcam might be very useful.

For music and movie playback, a decent set of external laptop speakers might be good, too. Having a built-in IR port with remote control would be convenient so you can sit back and control movie playback.

If you ever get the urge to participate in making trailers and such, having a writable DVD drive would be a nice idea. Most laptops have writable DVD support. I find that many people who say they only want to do email and surf the web often find themselves doing a lot more when they actually get their machine.

I've noticed that people asking for advice on buying a PC often ask only about the hardware and don't pay much attention to software. Being a software programmer, that's usually the first thing that comes to my mind. Included applications may make a big difference in what you choose.

If you really like making trailers, movies, or handling photos and such, you might even want to consider an Apple MacBook. The iLife suite of applications that come bundled with every Mac are far superior to the apps that Microsoft installs with Windows. Windows Movie Maker is often considered a buggy, hard-to-use joke (except those who use it are usually grimacing more than laughing) and nowhere near Apple's iMovie, and their photo application doesn't hold a candle to Apple's iPhoto, especially if you've ever seen one of those photo books that iPhoto is capable of creating.

Also included with the iLife apps is iWeb, a simple app for making your own websites using templates, Garage Band, a near professional quality app for making your own music or just recording that little audio file of an L&C story for the archives <G>, iCal, a calendaring program, iChat for those IM sessions so many of us do here, and iDVD for a very simple way to make and burn your own movie DVD that can play back on just about any DVD player.

I won't bother with iTunes, even though it's an iLife application, since it's free for both Mac and Windows.

Some laptop vendors will include software over and above what Microsoft supplies with Windows so take a look at the bundled apps and see what's included. Check out a few reviews online before buying.

Good luck!

Something that's worth considering is power consumption and battery life. High speed for things like games eats a LOT of power, it's often better to go for something a little less flashy that'll run three or four hours between charges.

If this is going to be anywhere near the router on a routine basis, you might want to think about wired networking rather than WiFi. There tend to be problems with very large files and wireless access, and DVD rips are by definition very large files. Most modern notebooks will have both anyway.

Someone suggested using an external hard disk - a USB 2 one is probably OK, but network hard disks are generally formatted in a way that limits the maximum file size to well below the size of a DVD rip.

Hope this helps!