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Laptop For A Better Cost

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Do you know that a laptop is able to save up to 80% of electricity comparing to a desktop?

A typical desktop uses about 500 to 600 Watt Power Supply Unit.

Let’s take 600 Watt Power Supply Unit as example and assuming loading is about 80% for most of the time, the power used by a typical desktop is about 480W.

A notebook uses 60 to 65 Watt Power Adaptor, the max power will be to charge the battery and run the system.

Let’s say this laptop is used to replace the desktop, eliminating the usage of battery but just using Power Adaptor to run the laptop system. Assuming the loading is at 80% too for most of the time, the power used by a typical laptop will then be about 52W.

See the difference?
Using laptop can save you about 89% on the Power Charges as compared to desktop.

Did I mention the LCD Monitor of desktop requires additional Power Supply too?
The most a laptop can consume is only 65 Watt with LCD turned on.

Although a laptop consumes much lesser power comparing to desktop, the drawback of laptop is its performance.
As technology advances, an increasing number of better performance hardware are out in the market.
But as these hardware increase in performance, they require more Power Supply too.
This is why the perfect gaming machine is always a desktop and not laptop as performance is a limitation.
(Although this limitation has slowly be overcome as technology advances)

For the others who are not into gaming, why under utilize a desktop and paying more for electricity bills?
This is what many computer manufacturers see too.

More and more laptops are appearing in the market, of different sizes, designs and even performance.
With so many out there, how do we know which one really suits our needs and usages?

Many sites provide too much technical information and specification. However, what people really need is user friendly laptop reviews and not technical overview.

Mainly, there are 3 types of laptop in the market: Ultra-portable, Media and Gaming.

Nowadays, Ultra-portable laptops are gaining popularity as more Wireless Hotspots and even Surf Everything Services are being provided, and what people need is a portable solution comparing to the traditional bulky laptop. Ultra-portable is made for all normal needs like surfing the internet, checking of email and not any other processor-intensive activity like gaming.

As for media laptops, some of the key features include Wide Monitor, Quality Speaker, External Graphic Card, HD-DVD and HDMI In/Out. Unlike normal laptop, a media laptop is built more powerful for graphic intense process. Another feature you might notice, media laptop tends to have nicer and sleeker design.
The biggest drawback for most media laptop is the short battery life. As the monitor, speaker and graphic processor are specially made for media viewing it requires much more Power Supply compared to normal laptops.

A good example of media laptop is the Toshiba Qosmio laptop, perfect for every day usage. Providing it’s user with all the key features of media laptop, Toshiba Qosmio is also packed with powerful Intel Core 2 Duo Processor and 3GB RAM to ensure smooth usage. With Nvidia GeForce Graphic Card, it even makes basic 3D gaming possible.

Gaming laptops, on the other hand, are the most expensive among all laptops. By having the fastest CPU, large display, a quality graphic card and lots of RAM, it’s the best laptop in terms of performance when it’s used for gaming purpose. In short, a laptop with the power to match a gaming desktop when the competition involves advanced 3D graphics and fast frame rates.
But I’m sure you can guess, with such a power machine, battery life is definitely a limitation. Portability is also an issue with gaming laptops especially with its large display and heavy weight.

By understand these 3 different types of laptops, you should now be able to understand what type of laptop to look for that serves your purposes.

For those out there that has yet to fully understand the specification and how to look out for good specification laptops, here’s a very useful site to help you make your decision: Laptopical.com



It’s a place where you can find Informative Laptop News, Reviews and even Professional Opinion.
With its quick overview of pros and cons plus a full review of the laptop, it’s especially useful for not so technical people.

Integrated with a price guide and recommended place to buy, Laptopical.com really brings the convenience to all its readers.



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Computer Memory

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What Kind of Memory Does My Computer Have Installed?

If you are looking to upgrade the memory in your computer, you are probably wondering how many open slots you have, what type of memory is already installed, and what you need to buy for an upgrade without having to open your computer.

Since you shouldn't have to open up the computer just to figure out what you have installed, here's a couple of options for detecting the type of memory already installed in your system.

System Information for Windows

This very useful free application should be a standard in any computer user toolkit. It comes bundled as a single file, no installation required.

Once you open it up, navigate to Hardware and then Memory on the left-hand pane, and you'll see what type of memory is already installed in your computer.

Looks like my system supports 4GB of memory, and I have two 1GB DDR2 modules already installed and running at 533Mhz.

It also lets me know that I need the SODIMM form factor memory, since this is a laptop and all.



Using this information, I should be able to find the correct memory upgrade, which in this case would be two 2GB DDR2 533mhz modules if I wanted to upgrade to 4GB of memory.

The only question is whether I can install faster memory than the memory already installed, which leads us into our next option.

Click here to Download System Information for Windows

Crucial Memory Advisor

Memory manufacturer Crucial has put together an amazing website, combined with an optional system scanner tool that will detect the memory already installed in your computer the same way System Information for Windows does.

On their homepage, there's the two options but if you've already figured out the memory you have installed, you can use the drop-down menus on the right to select your system.



They will give you some great information about what your computer can support, along with a list of questions and answers. Turns out I can upgrade to faster PC2-5300 memory if I wanted.



If you chose the system scanner route, you'll be redirected to a web page showing you the current memory configuration, and what they recommend for upgrading, although they seem to give you less information on this screen.



It's not necessary to buy memory from Crucial directly since you could probably get a better price elsewhere, but their memory adviser is extremely useful to figure out what you need.

Click here to Download Crucial Memory Adviser

Other Options

  • You can look up the specs for your system to figure out what memory types your computer takes. I usually Google for "model number specs", for instance I'd type in "nc8430 specs".
  • You can use some of the other memory advisers, like Kingston or PNY, but their sites are a bit less useful.
  • Pull out the manual for your computer or motherboard, and take a look at your receipts to figure out what you bought last time.
  • If you built a computer with parts from Newegg, you can look at your order history to re-order the exact same memory module if you know you have empty slots. (This is exactly the route I chose last month)
  • If you are running Mac OS X, you can just look under your "About this Mac" and then click on More Info.
Upgrading the memory in your computer is the fastest way to better performance in Windows Vista.
I'd recommend 2GB of RAM for Vista, but don't bother going over 3GB if you are using 32-bit Vista or XP because Windows won't be able to use all of it.



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