Notebook Buying Guide
Screen Size
LCD displays have improved significantly and have reduced
in price over the last year or two. Generally a 15" or
15.4" will suit most needs, but the 17" widescreen
format is slowly taking hold as the weight of the notebook is
reduced.
Now that DVDs have become common place in most households, there is a move to 15.4"/17" to take advantage of the wide screen formats. Dont be misled to think that a 15.4" is actually bigger than a 15", in terms of screen area they are roughly the same.
Screen Resolutions
The screen resolution is an important factor when choosing
a notebook. For a 15" the minimum resolution is 1024x768
but 1280x1024 is becoming a new standard. Higher resolutions
are better for video (ei. watching DVDs, TV) with resolution
of 1400x1050 and above are better for this purpose.
Beware that as screen resolutions get bigger the size of the text gets smaller. Depending on your eyesight the high resolutions screens can be a problem for some people.
Unlike a traditional CRT monitor, a notebook LCD screen has a native resolution that gives the best display for text. If you decrease screen resolution to make the text look bigger the text becomes a little "fuzzy". This problem can be partly overcome by changing the Windows default font size from 96dpi to 120dpi to make the text larger without reducing the resolution. The 120dpi solution does have some side effects displaying some web pages.
Video Graphics
The type and power of the video graphics processor needed depends
on the intended use of the notebook. For TV tuner playback and
many games a more powerfull video processor is required.
For notebooks the video processor may be integrated with the processor chipset or is an addon video processor from ATI or NVidia. Many of the ATI Radeon video (eg. Radeon, 9200, 9600 or 9700 are more than adequate for most uses). A new generation of PCI express based video are now becoming available (eg. Radeon X300, X600 and X700)