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5 Commandments Of Buying Laptops

The last couple of weeks have been pretty hectic. First, I find out I can neither cook nor keep house. Why is that? Coz if I can’t make idly, that simplest of breakfast dishes, it means I can’t cook. At least not yet. Then came the dreaded ‘C’ day – 14th Dec 2010. I’m now a permanent employee of this great insurer LIC. Through it all, the cauldron of confusion & befuddlement that calls itself my workplace kept throwing up one emergency after another, which is pretty much par for the course.

So what’s a girl to do? Shop, of course! I tried the Holy Trinity of Retail Therapy – Shoes, Clothes & Bags. By the time I got to bags though, I realized I was thinking small. I needed to think big and geek. Enter my first New Year Resolution ever:
  • Buy a new laptop
And this one I intend to keep. There’s nothing I love more than shopping for gadgets, especially when they are for moi. But as I would soon find out, never was the path to Nirvana so crooked or bewildering. Here’s the result of my tortuous path through Laptop land - 

5 Commandments of Laptops
  1. Google is your God – You should know by now, gadget shopping without Google by your side is a sure way to overspend and/or get ripped off. Research your options, prices, places, specs, brands etc. beforehand.

  2. The Holy Budget – Draw a line and say this is it. When shopping for a laptop, it is easy to get carried away by specs, more RAM, faster CPU and so on. Before you know it, you’re spending way more than you can afford.

  3. The Big Brands – Quality of build and technical support offered by the bigger brands are worth the extra money you may pay for it. The day you spill coffee on your keyboard or the monitor goes blank, you’ll be thanking your warranty.

  4. Specifications – Try to balance your needs with your wants. Getting just what you need right now means you’ll have to upgrade in a year while going all out could mean you cannot replace it willy nilly for the next technology. For example 2 GB RAM may be enough for you while 8 GB RAM is truly drool worthy. But 3-4 GB RAM is the best best so you don’t have to add RAM for the next 3 years at least without breaking the bank now.

  5. Buy Online – Electronics is one of the few things you can buy online without fear of getting the wrong item. As long as you know your specifications & the market price, you’re good to go!
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