Small laptop guru provides information, technical specifications, reviews and advice on the latest small laptops and netbooks. What is a small laptop? It’s just a regular laptop with a smaller screen, making it more lightweight and more portable.
A lot of smaller laptops and hand held devices lack integrated CD/DVD drives, though with many External USB drives on the market, that’s not a major factor, considering the ease of portability and considering most software used by most people is available to download. To get your hands on the best smallest laptop, there’s a few questions to ask when purchasing.
What to look for in a Small Laptop
The main things to look at are the same in any laptop. Just be careful that any extra inputs, devices or “ports” may not be in the smaller portable. The three key things to check on your latest small laptop are
Processor, Memory, also known as Random Access Memory (RAM) and also the
Operating System (ie Windows and Linux).
Of course the screen size or
Display size is important, but that’s really down to personal preference. Also the
Battery life, like any portable device is an important consideration too.
Processor (CPU)
For processing power any processor above 1GHz is going to give you a smooth internet experience. Pound for Pound a laptop will normally have a slower CPU than an equivalent priced desktop. Only if you are doing a lot of processing jobs or data entry are you going to need a very fast processor.
Operating System
Small laptops are increasingly pre-installed with Linux. This is a popular choice for OEM manufacturers as Microsoft Windows licensing is usually more expensive, but then most people are used to Windows and Linux is still in its infancy in terms of average user usage.
Display Size
Remember the screen size on a small laptop is usually within 7-11 inches. A regular laptop notebook screen size is normally over 14.1 inches (though laptops have 12 and and 13 inch screens too). This defianatly impacts the way web pages are viewed and so expect more horizontal and vertical scrolling on a small laptop. Also most small laptops, sacrifice the CD/DVD player/rewriter in order to keep the laptop small.
Memory (RAM)
The more memory the faster your windows and other programs will work, and also the faster more windows will open. Follow this simple rule when it comes to checking if you have enough RAM memory- The more memory the better. Typically anything over 1GB (one
gigabyte) will provide a smooth internet experience, though depending on the machine even a 512MB will do the job adequately. The best laptop notebook will have lots of memory. Most mobile computers allow you to upgrade your memory quite easily and its the best most cost effective upgrade of any computer or laptop notebook.
Hard Drive
Check that the
hard drive has enough capacity for your needs. If all you are doing is surfing the web and checking mail now and again, then the lastest small laptop isnt a must, and in some ways you’re at an advantage-you can choose any good branded laptops, and it would serve your laptop notebook needs.
Pound for pound you will get MUCH more hard drive space in a
SATA drive over the
Solid State Drives (SSD), mainly because it costs loads more to manufacture.
The netbook craze
There has been a lot said about small laptops and their ability to match a regular laptop in terms of specification or performance. The small laptops which are known as netbooks are not really designed as a replacement to your work horse regular sized laptop. They are more designed as a portable web device where you can check your email and surf the web to get some information or an update you are expecting. These netbooks are not designed to carry out your main workload or as an alternative to viewing regular videos, tv shows or any other multimedia scenario. However people have a thousand reasons to use a portable small laptop so you have to judge each requirement on its own merits and solutions.
What these netbooks are great for are minitiarisation and reduction in raw materials needed to manufacture them. Why use a hefty power hungry tank of a machine if all you are doing is checking your social networking site and checking train times? A netbook is a perfect small laptop for this scenario and a perfect tool to get the job done. Plus a far as portable laptop computers go, its easier to carry around and takes less power to run.
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