Choosing the Right Notebook Computer for Your Business – 2

WIFI. WIFI is a way for your notebook to reach the internet without wires and without paying for an internet data plan if you’re using someone else’s and get lucky. There are many open networks across most cities – many places will leave their WIFI on at night for anyone to use. You can set up your own WIFI network in your home with a Wireless Router. Easy stuff. Now, do you need it? Of course you do. If you ever travel WIFI is available in all major airports by now and even Starbucks and other coffee shops offer it all over the world with reasonable data plans. Remember – Free WIFI connections
for your business are nice WIFI connections. If you don’t have WIFI on your notebook computer you’re going to be wishing you did someday. The price for adding WIFI to your notebook as an option at HP or some major OEM is about $40 and becoming less with time. Get WIFI!

WIFI will be designated a/b/g/n. These are all the different possibilities and speeds. Usually a notebook will get 3 or all 4 of these. Get the “n” if you can because it’s the latest and fastest. Meaning, get all of these.

Bluetooth wireless network is a short-range wireless network that is very cheap to have added to your notebook (about $10) and you should get it too because it enables you to transfer files from mobile phones and other devices easily and securely. In addition to this Bluetooth can be used in place of wires for your mouse, headphones, speakers, and other electronics.  Get Bluetooth -it’s inexpensive and you’ll need it someday.

Hard Drive (HDD). Hard drives are growing and shrinking all at the same time – all the time. Every year they get bigger. Every year your operating system gets bigger and takes more of it. In addition, with each passing year you have more multimedia files to interact with and save. So, your 500GB hard drive becomes full in a few months. Storage is far from being in abundance. Get a large hard drive. If you do lots of video – use a big 500GB hard drive on your notebook and have several 1TB drives to backup your data. Speed of hard drive rotation is an issue too. Choose minimum 5400 rpm. Optimum is 7,200 rpm. Well, optimum is an expensive Solid State memory drive that doesn’t move – it’s like a USB stick memory – but very fast for inside your notebook. These are very fast and yet, not that big yet and very expensive. Soon the prices will drop and we’ll all have big smiles. Maybe 3 years?

RPM speed of the disks spinning in your hard drive is important for a couple of reasons.

1. If your hard drive disks spin very fast you have a fast computer. Access speeds and writing speeds to the hard drive takes time when done by the thousands of times. You’ll love a 7,200 rpm hard drive – so get one if you can afford it. Otherwise a 5,400 will have to do.  Remember – a faster hard drive means a faster emptying battery. A fast hard drive can REALLY kill a battery fast. Take that into account – and plug in if you need to.

You’ll find there are many considerations you must make before buying a notebook computer as battery life is usually held in high esteem – but, top components sometimes eat at it.
business computer.

Optical Drive. (DVD +- R/W). Get a Blue-Ray compatible with + and – designations and you should be OK. Most drives write dvd’s at only 8x (8 speed). That is slow, but you’ll need to pay extra for a faster one. Again, the choice… If you’ll be creating many DVD’s for your business or for backups you’ll probably want to buy an external DVD drive that can burn at 32x and if you wanted you could even get multiple drives – stacks of these to use all at once.

Battery. Lithium Ion is the standard – don’t get another type. You can get a battery with 3 cells or 9 cells sometimes. IBM is good for offering batteries with extra capacity. HP is not. Some HP’s come with 6 cells, which is double a 3-cell. Under no circumstances should you get a 3 cell battery for your business notebook. They are just horrible! Be careful that the extra cell batteries don’t transform your notebook into an uncomfortable brick – some of the larger batteries are strangely shaped and add a slant to your notebookthat you may not be able to deal with.

The Weight Factor. Most notebooks are about 5 lbs. The lightest they get is just over 2 lbs. Lighter means more flimsy and easier to break. It also means easier to carry around for a day of it in your pack. Sometimes you can do without a DVD drive – so maybe an external USB DVD is best? Notebooks are getting lighter weight now – so a 4 lb. computer is pretty strong. The HP line is strong, as are the IBM’s – always.

Ports. Ports are for plugging in external devices to your computer. Network ports (for RJ-45 connectors), modem port, USB ports, PCMCIA ports, Firewire, etc.

You should have these ports as a minimum:

3 USB 2.0 or 3.0 ports. USB’s are the standard and you should have at least 3 of these. You can connect just about anything to these ports

Modem. A place to connect your phone line for dial up connections when broadband internet isn’t available.

RJ-45 in plug. Computer cables have RJ-45 cable connectors to plug into your computer, you should definitely have one.

Serial VGA port. Plug your external monitor into this. Very helpful if your notebook computer display dies!

Extras.

Webcams are fun – you should probably have one. Microphones jacks are great as are headphone jacks as you already know. You may also want an external monitor to be able to connect to your computer – IBM usually has this serial 9 port for this. Some ports allow TV’s to be connected (S-video)
I hope this helps you choose a business computer that puts a smile on your face. Obviously I didn’t cover everything but the points I did cover are crucial to helping you make a good business choice.