7 Pro Tips to Buy a Laptop for Your Business
Laptops are an essential item for your business, whether your business is mobile, or you need to have access to your information whilst attending meetings in different locations. When purchasing a laptop, regardless of your budget, you always want to make sure you get the best laptop for your money. Below are our top 7 helpful tips to consider whilst you buy a laptop for your business.
1. Operating System
The first and most important decision you will need to make is determining what operating system will you be using? If you’re looking for something made by Apple you will need to know how to use their operating system Mac OS as this differs from Windows and Chrome OS. Be aware that Mac OS is only available for Apple product but is generally the most secure. Windows is probably the most adaptable and user-friendly operating system. The simplest operating system would be Chrome OS but doesn’t necessarily have the ability that Mac or Windows will have.
2. Battery Life
When looking at the potential laptops, check the battery life since you won’t necessarily want to be carrying around your charger as well as the laptop. Maybe you have an outdoor meeting where you won’t be able to plug in; the last thing you want to be doing whilst giving a presentation is scrambling around looking for an extension cord because your power cable doesn’t reach the plug. Anything with a battery life of 7 to 9 hours should be plenty, anything over 9 hours is even better.
3. Size
Laptops have many options for you to choose from with regards to size. How large do you need your screen? Are you prepared to carry the laptop around with you at all times? If your laptop rarely goes out with you and is kept on a desk, then it shouldn’t matter how big it is. If you are constantly moving around, you’ll want something a bit smaller and more manageable to carry from meeting to meeting.
4. Specs
These are what you need to consider when looking at the list of capability inside your laptop.
Central Processing Units (CPUs): look for the most up to date available that runs well with the machine to give you the best performance. You don’t always need a massive amount of storage with your machine as you can always get an external hard drive to keep hold of the information that you don’t need direct access to.
Random Access Memory (RAM): this is something you want to try and get the most for your money as this will help with the speed of your machine. Generally, anything in the rage of 16GB-32GB is fine. A good gauge is the bigger the numbers, the better the performance. So always get the highest numbers within your budget, the authority website deals with this matter TheWiredShopper.Com suggests.
5. TouchPad and Keyboard
If you can try a display model of the laptop you are considering buying, this will give you a feel for the keyboard. Depending on your typing ability, you’ll want to consider how close are the keys are to each other and what’s the travel like. When looking touchpads, consider how it feels and the degree of difficultly to press, hold and the speed & reaction of the onscreen mouse. You may find a blue tooth mouse to be helpful if you the touchpad provided is difficult to use.
6. Docking Station
With laptops coming in sleeker and minimalist designs to keep them light and allow for higher-end specs, you may end up sacrificing ports such as HTMI, Micro USB and memory card slots. Fortunately, you can separately purchase external ports that plug into your laptop and have all the ports and slots you need.
7. Screen
What do you want your screen to do? Do you need your customer to be able to touch the screen to select an option? If so, you will need to avoid Apple as their laptops do not have touch screen capability. Full HD screens will be able to give you the most out of your screen without sacrificing battery life and power. 4K screens look great and can help you multitask with the power to run many documents at once. If you want to connect your laptop to an external screen like a 4K TV or monitor, be sure the laptop can support this functionality.
Final Thoughts
Determine what you need from your laptop so you can prioritize the features that will be most important to you. If you need to carry a laptop with you all day, not knowing if there may be a charging point, then battery life will be at the top of the priority list. If you are using your laptop to show designs, then a 4K or HD screen may be more important. Once you’ve determined your priority list, strive to get the best features offered for your money as long as it performs and does what you need it to do.
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