Laptop FAQs

If anyone has anything to add to this or any comments,i will be glad to hear it

Well its not a stupid thing to do, i have seen some people saying that they only want to buy from the shop they want.
thanks for the help though

So it's not so much a FAQ as "Things to Consider and Provide, Before Asking for Advice", here's the things I would tweak;

That would be my tweaks to the existing list.

edit:

Hello all THG members Hope you are all fine,well i though it would be good to write a FAQ for people to fill it before posting in the laptop section,and it will help others to answer more accurately and better.
So please copy and paste this questions and in the thread that you want to start and answer them there.

1_What is your budget?

2_What is the size of the notebook that you are considering?

3_What screen resolution do you want?

4_Do you need a portable or desktop replacement laptop?

5_How much battery life do you need?

6_Do you want to play games with your laptop? If so then please list the games that you want to with the settings that you want for these games.(Low,Medium or High)?

7_What other tasks do you want to do with your laptop?(Photo/Video editing,surfing the web,playing music,watching movies Etc)

8_How much storage(H.D.D Capacity)do you need?

9_If you are considering specific sites to buy from, please post the link to them.

10_How long do you want to keep your laptop?

11_If you like to mention some other things about purchasing your ideal laptop,post it.

12_Please tell us about the brands that you prefer to buy and the brands that you don't like and explain the reasons behind those preferences.

13_What country do you live in?

I hope this can help people to find their ideal notebook better.

Yep and I thought stickied and locked would make it not get all messy.

We might link to this thread at the bottom for feedback, but I'll leave that to the author and you guys to decide.

It's about time. Gets kinda old answering the same question over and over again. Thanks.

so I'm taking some time to look at this:

Ok, echoing what TheGreatGrapeApe said:

Ok, that's fair.

I think size is ambiguous. my first reaction is screen size. I think that is what most people put. But it could also mean ultra-portable, thin and light, tablet. . . if its meant for screen size, we should say screen size as in What screen size do you desire? Do you prefer wide screen or standard?

Is this more a way of saying: How important is portability: very important, imortant, not important, or irrelevant? or some better way to make it easeir for the respondant and the reviewer to better asses the respondant's threshold for portability

Probably the most important question. .. could be number 2 on the list as this also influences size / portability, battery life and screen size. Or is this more of asking: Do you need discrete graphics or not?

And then this would be asking [/i]how fast a CPU to you need and how much RAM?[/i] and then be the third question on the list.

Do we ask about optical drive, too? Most have DVD-RW these days standard but there are blu-ray floating around. And some that have external drives and some that don't have anything at all *cough* Macbook Air *cough* (ok, included at any rate).

Sites or models? Or both?

I'm not entirely sure how to interpet answers to this. Are we assuming warranty coverage or assigning subjective analysis to various OEM's build quality, or re-sale value, upgradeability, or what?

I wonder if it's worth asking about special connectors (SD, CF, FireWire, ExpressCard) or specifically mentioning these sorts of things in question 11.

And I agree its not really a FAQ well its a FAQ from the point of view as these are question we frequently ask those seeking advice, not get asked. Although a FAQ including questions that come up from time to time might help (even though the answers are pretty much available elsehwere), specifically:

• AMD or Intel?
• AMD/ATI or NVIDIA?
• How do I get the data off my dead laptop's hard drive?
• Can I build my own laptop?
• How much memory can I put in my laptop?
• Can I upgrade the procesor?
• My laptop doesn't turn on anymore, what can I do?
• How do I manually install a device driver?

and finally

• Why didn't I listen to dwellman and buy a ThinkPad?

To me #5 - battery life is for longevity at whatever task they then describe, some people want long battery life for basic stuff (usually quoting really high number like 5-7+hours) others want long battery life for DVD watching, this is usually a long-haul flight 4+ hrs on a single battery (although now power plugs ar emore comment) and then long battery life for gaming is usually anything over 90mins.

#6 being a determinant of the level of game stress, both CPU and GPU required. No gaming, (and no menion of something stressful liike 3D modeling in question 7), then efficient CPU and intergrated graphics. Light gaming good efficient CPU (t8xxx to mid P series), high settings gaming, more powerful GPUs (even SLi), and more powerful CPU (T9300- to (Q)X9xxx series), less worry about efficiency.
Depending on the game focus may be more CPU or more GPU where you could play once on a T5250 with a GF8800MGTS, or the other better on a QX9300 with an HD2400.

Not limited to CPU speed or RAM size, it would also provide insight into GPU assited tasks feautres, different platforms/mobos, and different type of CPUs that perform that task better because of either their design, or their cache, FSB, etc.

Sure you could ask that too, I think there's always the option of external for optical, but it's a pretty quick question so adding optical reader/writer info makes sense.

You could ask both, but the major issue usually comes from people asking a bunch of question, getting suggestions, and then they say "Oh I can only buy from obscure obtuse oblong computers here in the countryside....or DELL" Usuall if it's models, then it's I have this model or this model, what do you think (which is better, what options should I chose). Usually if they're limited to models that's usually part of their opening line, however rarely do those that have site restrictions mention it until 20 suggestions have already come in.
Usually the model is a function of the suggestion. 15" screen, gaming laptop, with good battery life, then it's a XYZ 321A laptop suggestion. Whereas limited sites cuts down on wasted time suggesting models that aren't an option.

We aren't assuming anything other than the question: How long long do you plan on keeping this laptop?
ie. upgrade cycle, can you do a just for now laptop, or do you buy every 3-4 years after saving up all your pennies to have a major top-of-the-line blowout? Or do you upgrade every year (I usually upgrade every year, but might take a pass this fall until the new stuff comes in the spring/summer).

The reason I like it ambiguous is it makes people think about the question, and then supply their reasoning. It also gives us an idea of whether they care that this or that option/feature may not matter in 2-3 years.

And that's sort of the place for the catch-all, because listing everything from eSATA, FireWireB, to TVTuners and what not, you're going to have a big list of junk that people don't really know, but sure, yeah I want it all, everything! And on a 12" laptop too! Trying to cover all the options just adds to the confusion IMO, and if we stick to the basics, then the items people truly need we can address, things like card readers and add-ons can address the other things. Getting into the minutia tends to cloud things, and then you have to ask, well you want and SD card slot reader, is it worth being forced to have the lower CPU and GPU for it, or are you fine with a USB reader? If it doesn't come to mind without prompting it's probably not the main concern, if it were they'll add it to 11 themselves.

To me the thing is to provide guidance more than a checklist, give people some direction, but let them provide the info they think is most important.

Anywhoo, PM me when there's a finalized update.