Laptops are today becoming the dominant method of computing, quickly supplanting bulky desktops. While this growth is no doubt beneficial to the consumer, buying a new laptop can be very confusing. There are plenty of good brands in the market today, with all kinds of specifications, sizes and weights.

How does a new buyer sift through all this and find the perfect laptop? How does one maintain the laptop for optimum use in the future? While there may be hundreds of opinions, there are some definite tips that can make the whole experience of purchasing and maintaining your laptop much smoother.

So here are the tips. While quite a few of these can be called “common sense”, the truth is that a lot of us (this writer included) tend to forget them. Hence, a refresher/reminder is never a bad thing.

Stuff To Look Out For
1) Price of Laptop and Nature of Work
These are the most important factors in the purchase decision. So why am I mentioning them? Well, I often see that when someone wants to purchase a laptop, they can be pretty vague about it, and come out with statements such as: "I want one under Rs 30,000".

If a lot of people seem confused as to the amount of money to spend, there are those who may be clear about their budget but can't make up their mind what they want to do with their laptop. There are even those who want to run Photoshop and edit images... on a laptop with a Celeron processor, bought for Rs 28,000.

Having undergone the same confusion myself, I'd suggest that you first make a budget and stick to it! While identifying a prospective machine, factor in all the taxes and cost of warranty. Also decide what you will be doing with your machine; this will help you pick the right configuration and keep costs low. Unnecessary upgrades can spiral the cost of a new laptop and take it well beyond your budget.

2) Size of Laptop

Laptops fall into various categories, based on their screen and weight. The most common sizes are 13", 14", 15" and 17". A smaller-screen laptop will generally be lighter, offer increased battery life, and be easily portable - at the cost of performance. A 17” laptop will give you increased performance and great features, but at the cost of battery life and portability. The 14" and 15" screens are aimed at the mainstream and offer a good balance of features, weight, and good battery life. Keep this in mind while making your choice.

3) Processing Power, Storage and Memory, and Discrete Graphics
i) Processing Power

Dual-core laptops have been around for a while now and their prices have dropped to well below Rs 30,000. While Intel rolls out a new mobile platform every six months or so, the performance increase in every subsequent generation is just around 7 percent. Keeping this in mind, I would suggest getting any laptop that has an Intel Core 2 Duo processor or an AMD X2 processor. Stay away from single-core processors. These have outlived their utility and are almost obsolete.

ii) Storage and Memory

This section refers to how much HDD space you have and the amount of RAM your system packs in. Most budget laptops today come with a minimum of 160GB of disk space and this is ideal for most users. Make sure your laptop has at least this much. And RAM is vital for multitasking. Though most machines come with 1GB minimum, this is inadequate for Windows Vista. I'd suggest a minimum of 2GB of system memory as this will help increase productivity.

iii) Discrete Graphics

This is generally a term used to refer to Nvidia’s/ATIs graphic solutions, which are separate modules and are not integrated like Intel’s offerings. Nvidia rules the roost here, as the company's graphics cards offer gaming capabilities, HD decoding and other goodies. In comparison, Intel’s integrated solutions are good only for normal document work and for basic multimedia. The basic chipset to buy is Nvidia’s 8400m GS. Going a notch higher, the 8600 chipset offers a better gaming experience.