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So the school year is upon us again and I'm sure the first thing on all your minds is: "What type of laptop can my parents buy me to best help me with my studies?" A laptop is essential to your education as it allows you to take better take notes during class, keep up-to-date on the news of the day during your lunch hour, engage in academic online social activities with fantasy characters and study for your advanced female anatomy class while lying on top of the covers in your underwear...

Seriously, though, a notebook computer's portability does make it ideal for many situations. Laptops have also become more customizable over the years. You can swap out hard drives and disk drives, add memory and on some models even replace the graphics card. Granted, it's still not as modular as a desktop computer, but walking around with the huge box strapped to your back, along with the monitor, speakers, mouse, keyboard and all the necessary cables, is a hard look to pull off. I mean it kind of worked for Jack Black, but for most people, it looks a little ostentatious.

With so many to choose from, though, the question becomes what type of laptop should you get? For only your life savings and the promise of your firstborn's soul, you can get a Macbook, which compared to the equivalent PC was obsolete six months to a year before it hit the market.

Granted, I'm not suggesting you go straight out and buy the top-of-the-line PC notebook either as one could just as easily cost you thousands of dollars. And it's not really necessary unless you plan on doing heavy gaming or large scale graphic design or video editing, which may require a separate graphics card. (This feature is usually only available in higher end machines.)

Buying an entry-level laptop
Assuming your laptop is your secondary computer and you have a decent home computer for your preview copy of Halo 3 and to master your illicit copies of the "Underdog" movie, then you could easily find a laptop that could fit most of your needs for under $1,000.

As for what brand to buy, it frankly doesn't matter. Some may look sleeker or lighter than others, but often the inside parts, even though, custom-made for the machine, can be similar. And so, the specifications are far more important than the name on the top of machine. Especially since every company has their share of defective models.

That being said, I might recommend you picking up an Acer or a Gateway as they are usually cheaper than the rest. Electronics stores, such as Future Shop and The Source, often have entry level models from those lines starting at around $600. Granted, Acer recently announced it is buying out Gateway, so only the future will tell whether this means future offerings will be more or less affordable.

One recommendation if you're buying Acer laptop, is to reinstall Windows after purchasing, as this company, even more so than others it seems, loads the operating system with so much useless trial software, the computer's speed gets bogged down significantly. If after reinstalling, you realize you deleted drivers you need, you can just download from the company's website.

Actually, reinstalling Windows is a good idea for any laptop you buy not just for having a clean install, but also because you typically no longer get a Windows recovery disc when you buy a machine. They just add a partition to the hard drive and save the backup there so you can make your own disc. By getting a real copy of Windows, by legal means of course, (Windows Vista Ultimate is available at Best Buy for the low, low, budget cost of $499.99) you can delete that pesky partition when you install it and get more hard drive space as a result. My Acer Aspire's hard drive went from 40 gigabytes to 70 gigabytes.

What to look for in a laptop
When buying any computer, three of the most important elements to consider are clock speed, memory and graphics. Now with clock speed, things have become a little difficult to fully comprehend. There always seemed to be some discrepancy between the two major brands of processors, Intel and AMD, on how they rated their products. For example, the AMD 3000, which run at a speed of 1.8GHz was the equivalent to a Pentium 4 machine that ran at 3.0 GHz. I was never 100 per cent clear myself if AMD was getting better results than Intel from its CPUs at slower speeds or Intel just lied about how fast theirs ran. Or both.

But things are more complicated now as dual core processors (two CPUs in the motherboard) have started to become more standard. And it's not that easy to figure how fast a computer runs. For example, obviously a machine with 1.6 GHz chips will respond quicker than a single core 1.6 GHz machine, but it's not twice as fast, at least not for all processes.

To make matters worse, there's different kinds of dual core to choose from: Intel Dual Core, Core Duo and Core 2 Duo and AMD has X2. Essentially, Intel Dual Core is the worst performing of the bunch and Core 2 Duo is the top of the line. But most likely any dual core you buy will run better than a single core machine, even if the chips are Celeron or Sempron, Intel and AMD's lower end CPU architecture, respectively.

There are also 32-bit and 64-bit chips, but if you're buying new, you'll most likely get a 64-bit machine running a 32-bit version of Windows, so the distinction is a moot point.

For memory, the key is generally to ensure you have enough to run the programs you want and that your machine has room to add more RAM when it becomes obsolete three months down the road. More RAM can often solve slow downs experienced when running memory intensive programs. Most laptops that come pre-installed with a version of Windows Vista come with a gigabyte of memory which should be fine for most situations. But even if the notebook only has 512 megabytes of RAM with Windows XP, you should be fine.

With graphics, although most laptops' graphics card are integrated in the motherboard, many nowadays are ATI and NVIDIA chipsets, which are the two major companies for this product. Some even come with their own memory, even if they're not separate cards. This will allow to play some mid-range games. You may need to turn down the graphic settings and you certainly won't be playing the state-of-the-art releases, but you could probably play slightly older games. And you could definitely watch downloaded movies with ease, or on DVD as most now have the drive. The picture quality should be pretty good.

Obviously, no machine can improve the film itself, only the look of it. Even watching the Blu-Ray copy of Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby that came free with my PlayStation 3 on a Sony Bravia television doesn't make Will Ferrell any less of a crap-tacular actor.

Two other things to doublecheck are the battery life and screen. Both are pretty straightforward. For battery life, longer is better but shave an hour or two off whatever number is stated because it will probably be more realistic.

As for the screen, pick a laptop with one that looks good to you. But size makes a difference. The standard laptop screen size is 15 inches on the diagonal, so typically if you go much bigger than 15.5 inches or much smaller than 14 inches, the price will jump considerably.

I do see the appeal of getting say a laptop with a 10-inch screen, but you're paying extra money primarily for aesthetic reasons. Sure it makes it a little easier to transport, but most laptops now are pretty light and compact and not difficult to carry around.

Conversely, people who buy notebooks with 20-inch screens boggle my mind. They seem to have missed the concept that a laptop is supposed to be portable and not part of a home entertainment system. Sure, they're not as heavy or bulky as the Grid Compass 1101 and other laptops from the eighties. But that was the eighties. Back then, people thought headbands were a fashion statement.

And just remember, like everything, no matter how good a deal you think you got, there's always going to be a sale four days after you purchase it. So once you buy it, just never look at the price of the particular model you got again. Also, there's no need to get an extended warranty because by the time it breaks it will probably be so out-of-date, you'll want a new one anyway.

Bargain basement option
If you're really looking for a dirt cheap laptop that might be a scam, you could order yourself a Medison Celebrity. This little computer has caused quite a stir since news of this product started circulating on the Internet back in July. Medison, a Swedish company, is supposedly offering a notebook computer for $150 plus shipping and service charges. A 1.5 GHz Celeron machine, it truly is an entry level laptop but if you just want a computer to write essays and surf the Internet (as it does have built-in wireless), it might be ideal. And you'd probably even be able stream those "instructional" videos that you kids like to watch online these days, as that relies more on the speed on the Internet connection than the speed of the computer. It runs Linux to keep the price low and realistically you would need to expand the RAM because it only comes with 256M and that's a little low to even run XP. It uses DDR400 RAM, which is the previous generation, but it's still pretty easy to find and not too expensive.

Still, the laptop seems a little too good to be true. It may be just another scheme to get money out of the unsuspecting Web surfer, such as when that poor Nigerian bank manager sends you a friendly e-mail because he needs your financial help to move his millions out of the country. A third party company is taking the online credit card orders and supposedly won't charge the account until you receive the computer. But you're still taking a chance on whether you'll actually receive the computer in four to six weeks. A friend of mine has ordered one and if he does get it, I'll write about it in a future column.

About G4 in Canada
G4 Canada (formerly TechTV Canada) launched in September 2001. G4 is the one and only television station that is plugged into every dimension of games, gear, gadgets and gigabytes. Owned Rogers Media Inc., the channel airs more than 24 original series. G4 is available on digital cable and satellite. For more information, see www.g4tv.ca.

Tech News on G4

Finding the right laptop

September 10, 2007

By Adam Swimmer - G4 Canada