The Screwdriver Center

There are two types of expensive laptop. On one end you have the large, powerful gaming laptops and on the other you have the razor thin ultra portables which are ridiculously priced. Both command high price premiums. Gaming laptops are more practical for everyday use if you’re replacing a desktop pc and the ultra mobiles are the best option if you are syncing with your desktop at home. However the market for ultra mobiles is rather small and the most popular screen is 15.4 inch. A new trend seems to be the budget umpc’s laptops that are 10 inch or smaller, underpowered and only suitable for a number of common tasks. If I had to choose right now the gaming laptop will always win as most users who require mobility can still be portable with the standard 15.4 inch size.

Intel entered in to the laptop market first and that has given them an advantage. The centrino certification has always meant the user gets a certain level of performance however there has been some misunderstandings regarding what centrino notebooks are. Common misconceptions include thinking that just because the laptop has an intel processor that makes it a centrino laptop. The majority of consumers still don’t understand that centrino is a marketing platform that means the laptop has an intel mainboard, intel processor and intel wireless card.

When buying gaming laptops the processor, memory and gpu are the most important components one should consider. You need a processor with a minimum speed of 2GHz and it should be dual core. Minimum requirements for RAM are 2GB if running Windows Vista but try to get 3GB or even 4GB if you have a 64bit OS. For a gaming laptop you need to have a dedicated video card. 256MB is the minimum dedicated video memory to look for. I think an Nvidia 8600M gpu should be good for playing all the latest games well. For hardcore gamers get only the top of the range video cards.

With the future of laptops looking bright it seems we will only see more and more innovations coming out over the next few years which will come in all shapes and sizes. The gaming laptop market seems to be making good progress towards narrowing the performance differences making notebooks a good choice for power users whilst the value, umpc market is hotting up with a number of devices set to make their debuts very soon.