Computer Buying Choices

What do you need. A PC, Laptop or Netbook. What are the advantages and disadvantages. What specifications to choose

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Laptop, Netbook or PC. Which to Choose

How to choose
When deciding about what type of computer to purchase you need to consider first what you intend to use it for.

If you intend to use your computer in one place and plug into it a lot of devices such as a printer, scanner, separate backup drives as well as a router for wireless networking you may well be better off with a PC. A desktop replacement laptop can also be used although bear in mind that it has less ports into which you can plug devices. A way round this is to purchase a USB hub. This is used to plug into one USB port and then usually around 4 USB devices can be put into it. Certain devices usually the router must be plugged in directly.

One point to consider is cost. You can generally obtain a much higher specified device for the money by purchasing a PC as opposed to a laptop. A netbook will usually be much cheaper than a PC but these devices are quite small with small screens. They also have limited capacity both in hard drive and ability to deal with high-end software. A netbook is best chosen if your priorities are portability and travel and it is going to be used for lower end uses such as Internet browsing email and word processing.

If you decide to choose a laptop there are number of different types to consider. If you are generally going to use it about the house and not travel with it weight is not such an issue. In these circumstances you choose what is known as a desktop replacement laptop. This can very often have high specifications such as a large hard drive. If you intend to travel a lot with your laptop then weight is far more important and you may wish to go for a smaller screen and keyboard. Nevertheless there are many laptops on the market with low weight but still reasonably good specifications.

Whichever device you choose you need to bear in mind that future developments in software will put more strain on the specifications. It is always best to future proof your purchase is not possible by going for the high specifications you can afford. These will include the size of hard drive, the RAM which is short for random access memory and the processor.