You will need to sort through considerations like weight, warranties, screen resolution and size, processor speed, battery life, hard drive size, and many other options. Let's see if we can find an easy path through this wilderness.
In the computer world, it has long been understood that you need to define what you intend to do with this machine after you own it. If this is just a vanity item to keep up with your friends, just look at the latest model that your friends own and go out and buy one like it. If you are looking for a computer to let you to play games, about all that you need to look at is the game requirements and make sure that it exceeds them. To get online, you just need either a phone, network, or wireless modem. Almost all laptops come with some variation of these as standard features.
Since most laptops today that you will buy at Wal Mart or similar store fall within the $500 to $1,000 range, options are more a matter of want than price for most buyers. Make sure that you are buying a laptop with an operating system.
If you intend to do a lot of graphics work or submit a lot of material to newspapers and magazines, you may want to begin your search by looking at Apple computers instead of IBM clones. For most people not needing these capabilities, laptops with the latest version of Microsoft's Windows operating system is probably preferable. For one thing, you are very likely to already know someone who can bail you out if you trash your system.
Go for the screen that is largest with the highest resolution. Even if you have to give up a little processing speed, you will appreciate being able to see your screen in less than idea conditions most of the time. Older technology screens are difficult to use in sunlight because it overwhelms their brightness. Also, many higher resolution screens can be viewed from a side angle much easier.
Unless you are planning to download huge amounts of video and music, most family use computers can serve very well with a hard drive of 40 megabytes. Some people feel that more is better, but if you can save a nickel by not buying bigger, go for it. If you plan on downloading large quantities of video, you may want to go up as big as you can. Sizes of 160 megabytes
