Alright guys here’s the big picture. You're shopping for a laptop, what do you do? What do you want? What do you want in your laptop? Well, there's a whole lot of things that come in play when you're shopping for a new laptop PC. Now, I happen to have a brand new 17 inch model of this HP Pavilion DV17, I’ll be glad to go over it for you. But I'm just going to go through a list and you can see this link in the description of exactly how to pick what laptop you want to buy and I hope this tips are helpful for you. So I’ll go down the different parts of a laptop and see exactly which ones you might be interested in.
So I'm going to start with the processor. The processor is one of the key features of the laptop. It determines how fast you're able to process information as far as opening and closing programs and downloading and installing and basically the ability to process things.
Now, some notebooks use AMDs and some notebooks use Intel. I happen to have an Intel Core 2 Duo running at 2.83 gigahertz. It’s a decent machine and I'm pretty sure this is a good processor for me to recommend to you guys. Now I have to start by saying this is a 17 inch high end notebook PC basically.
The second part is the brand of the processor which right now I had to recommend the Intel Core 2 Duo of course. You can also with AMD Turion. You can go with Turion 64, a 64 bit processor. I can go a lot into processor features in a later video if you so desire.
So the next part I'm going into about your system is your RAM. Right after that, there's a lot of stuff that goes into your RAM but right now I have an 8 gigabytes of DDR 3 RAM that I actually have to install to this laptop manually. Because at the time that I customize it, there was no option for 8 gigs of RAM.
Windows Vista, generally, is going to require 2 gigabytes of RAM. You do not want to go with anything less than 2 gigabytes of RAM even if your Windows running in basic mode with absolutely no themes turned on. You're going to want at least 2 gigs of RAM for Windows Vista.
There’s also the DDR 2 RAM versus DDR 3 RAM. And I highly recommend going with DDR 3 if you can afford it. I happen to pick up some DDR 3 RAM. It was extremely inexpensive and I’ll give you the newat.com link, eventually if I can find it again. But it’s probably selling out. That determines a lot of the speed of your computer. The more RAM you have, generally, the more applications you can have running at once without having a little bit of lag when the animations come in.
By the way, Windows Arrow I found out uses about 200 megabytes of RAM. So if you turn Arrow and transparency and everything off, you’ll save about 0.2 gigs of RAM.
So there is also the 32 bit versus 64 bit issue which again is going to be the topic for a separate video. The 32 bit operating system which I have the privilege to have. I have 4 gigabytes of RAM at the time and I only had about 3.2 gigabytes recognize by that 32 bit operating system. Now of course I have 8 gigs of RAM, so I needed obviously to upgrade to 64 bit Windows Vista which can handle up to 100 or something gigabytes of RAM. I’ll get back to you on that. So that is really nice feature and I recommend to getting at least 2 gigs of RAM, again, if you're using Windows Vista. And that will also extend your battery life of course, the more RAM you have, the less time you have to access the hard drive which uses a lot of battery.
Next is, I'm going to say your hard drive. I'm just going off the back here, so just pardon me. The hard drive, there's two major components of the hard drive and that is the size and the speed. The more hard drive space you can afford, the more I recommend. You can go with the dual hard drive, I also recommend that. However, if you do have external storage, I don’t recommend going for size. I'm going to say go down the speed route.
When I was shopping for my laptop, I noticed three different sizes of hard drives that you can actually go with. You could go with a 4200 rpm hard drive which is a very low, it’s like a 13 inch ultra portable that you happen to have a CD drive and listen in music. Then you go with the mainstream 5400 rpm hard drive and this laptop I got. I have a 500 gig external hard drive here made by Western Digital. So I didn’t need size, so I just went with speed when I increased the price. I went with the 250 gigabyte, 7200 rpm hard drive which is perfect for me. And trust me, the performance increase was worth it. I was working with the 4200 rpm hard drive that I did not like that kind of experience. So that is the hard drive part of it.
The next part is graphics. Your graphics card is probably one of the top most important part of your laptop. There's graphics memory base on how much is actually needed to dedicate to processing your video. The built in integrated graphics by Intel or whatever. They’re going to be terrible. I’ll tell you that off the bat, they’re going to be bad. But if you do go with an external graphics card, obviously it uses a tiny bit more battery. But gamers and highest desktop replacement notebooks, you're going to want a 512 Meg graphics card. And if I can pull it up here I’d show you, but I have a 512 Meg graphics card. It’s an Nvidia G Force 9700M I believe. But I have to double check on that. So that’s basically, that’s the basic on graphics memory. Again, separate video if you so request.
The next is your screen. Laptops are continually having larger and larger screens. Mine is a 17 inch desktop replacement. You can go with a mainstream notebook with about a 15.4 inch or 14.1 inch and the more portable ones have even small screens such as a 13 inch or when you get down to a netbooks like a 9 inch or anything. But I’ve also seen 18 inch laptops and yes a 21 inch laptops. So don’t be surprise, there are huge laptops out there and obviously the more bigger your screen the brighter it is. The more it use battery, but that’s the price to pay. What I would recommend is if you really like to game or watch a lot of videos. Then you would go with a higher definition screen obviously. But there's really not much to talk about. I have a 1680x1050 screen on this 17 inch laptop. You can also go with 1440x900 or I know someone with a 16 inch laptop whose resolution is about 1300x768.
Anyway, the last part I want to go over is your battery. Again, using a different processor will determine how much battery life you're going to get out of your laptop. And Intel Core 2 Duo is going to last longer than AMD Turion. Taking steps that I’ve shown you in other wireless or other videos I’ve shown you about battery such as turning off wireless or using less graphics for background task can cut down on how much battery you actually use.
So that’s basically my laptop tips tutorial for you guys. Subscribe if you like this video. It was a pleasure teaching you guys exactly how I got my laptop and again, customizing your laptop is going to be the best thing you want to do. Go online and look for different deals that you can get, such as online retailers like newegg.com, which I’ll show you guys later. Sizestar.com. A lot of videos are to come on these topics.
So again, thanks for watching and I hope you like this video tutorial and any other video request. Definitely PM me and I will get to it. Thanks guys. Peace.
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