Choosing a Laptop: Laptop Classification to Make Your Choice Easier (1)

The Laptop Brand Options

First, you will need to narrow down to a brand choice. Wit many laptop makers out there and different product brands, you need to decide which product group to go for. Many factors influence such choice – past personal experience with a product or brand, recommendations by other users, adverts seen, etc.

So, what manufacturer and brand options do you have? Here is a list that is certainly not exhaustive, but does cover the major names and their product brands:

Acer - Aspire, Extensa, TravelMate, Ferrari, eMachine
Alienware - M11x, M15x, M17x (mainly high-performance gaming laptops – Subsidiary of Dell)
Apple - MacBook, MacBook Air, MacBook Pro
ASUS - Asus Eee, Lamborghini
Compaq (HP brand) - Evo, Armada, LTE, Presario
Dell - Vostro, Inspiron, Latitude, Precision, Studio, XPS, Studio XPS
Fujitsu - LifeBook, Stylistic
Gateway (an Acer company)
Hewlett-Packard (HP) - Pavilion, ProBook, HP G Series, EliteBook, TouchSmart, Envy, HP Mini Series, HP Compaq Notebooks
Lenovo - ThinkPad, IdeaPad, 3000 series
Panasonic - Toughbook, Satellite, Samsung Electronics
Sony - VAIO
Toshiba - Satellite, Satellite Pro, Dynabook, Portege, Tecra, Qosmio, Libretto

Choosing from this list is already a huge task. What can be said is that most of these names are strong in the business. It can also be said that in terms of popularity, HP towers above the rest, in our market, with its various product brands generally out-selling other brands. But, no doubt, brands like Dell, Apple, Toshiba, Acer and Sony also have a strong showing.

Product Options

When you settle the choice of laptop maker, you still need to choose a product from the basket offered by that manufacturer. Take HP, for instance. Its range includes many options of HP Pavilion, HP ProBook or TouchSmart series? Others are various HP Compaq products - . Or the HP Elitebook. Obviously, the sieving process is a difficult one. Here is one way to strip it down.

Laptop Categories

You can narrow down by deciding the type of laptop you want. Laptops can be categorized by physical size, capacity or design. Let’s look at size categories:

Mini Laptops (Netbooks/Ultra-portables)
Minis are the smallest and cheapest – the ultra-portable, thin and light laptop series. These are laptops in the screen-size range of 10.1” and less and, in a few cases, slightly more. In terns of weight, you’ll be expecting less than 1.5kg. They come with microprocessors for mini laptops such as the Intel Atom or AMD Athlon Neo or Via Nano. Most of these are energy-efficient, giving long battery life (up to 9 hours for some minis).

Minis have grown in capacity and can now boast of as much as 2GB memory and 320GB hard drive. Most minis are configured for mobile computing, with wireless connectivity for on-the-go access and internet surfing features like webcam. One downside is that they often lack an internal optical drive (DVD/CD drive).

Mini laptops are a great choice for traveling business executives and professionals who need a mobile computing tool. Students attending lectures will also find minis very handy for class-work. When faced with a limited budget and not willing to go for a used laptop, a mini laptop is a good option to consider.

Portable Laptops
While mini laptops are designed for ultra-portability, there are also full-capacity laptops that offer substantial portability. Usually, portable laptops are 12.1” to 13.3” of screen-size and can have as much capacity as any other full-sized laptop.

Here, again, the advantage is the ease of mobility, reducing your laptop to a size you can conveniently take with you on the road. The weight range will be less than 3kg.

Since these are regular laptops with as much capacity and features as others, they actually tend to cost more for the extra mobility convenience they provide. In some cases, some of such laptops also come without an internal optical drive.

Standard Sized Laptops
Standard sized laptops would be in the range of 14” to 16”, with most at 15.6”. 14” is really a good blend of small and big – portable enough and still large enough. Yet, more laptops are 15.6”, which more people tend to use. That’s a good display for the eyes and bulk you can still carry, when you have to.

Another advantage here is that you have a full-sized and spacious keyboard, which can facilitate your work-pace. Some will also have a separate numeric keypad, for more comfort in typing figures.

Full-sized laptops usually come with internal optical drive – a DVD writer or DVD ROM, or a CD writer or CD ROM. You’re also more likely to find the kinds of ports and slots that can aid a more flexible use of your laptop - card readers, HDMI, more USB ports, etc. Your chance of a full-featured laptop is higher at this level

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