How to Buy a Laptop

Want to buy a laptop?

When I started I had little idea about the new advances in hardware. I did some research (in January 2016, technology changes fast) and found out that you need to focus on the following things:

1. Business versus personal class models
2. High performance suitable for our needs
3. Price

Business versus Personal Class Models

Computer hardware companies produce two series of laptops: Business class, and Personal class. Performance, durability and hence dependability differs a lot. For example:
Business class> Dell Latitude, HP EliteBook nnnnW (W=workstation)
Personal class> Dell Inspiron, HP EliteBook nnnnP (P=personal)

Business class models doubles in price of the same configuration personal class models and are not available in the market, can only be bought through a special order to the brand distributor.

Performance

Machine performance mainly depends on:

• Processor model (Ci3, Ci5, Ci7...)
• The higher the processor model the better performance in general, if the processors belong to the same generation and with same suffix.
• Processor number (2670, 3340, 4800, 5500...)
• The 1st number from left represents the generation and rest of the number is the processor number in the generation, the higher the generation the better fixing the other 2 factors.
• Processor suffix (Y, U, M, MQ, MX, H, HQ...)
• Y = Extremely low Power, hence lowest performance, used in very thin laptops and pads that has no cooling fan.
• U = Ultra-Low Power, low performance needs, used with laptops with just office and internet browsing.
• M = Mobile, medium performance start of business machines.
• QM = Quad-Core Mobile, used by Developers when performance is needed.
• H = High performance graphics, used with graphics applications
• HQ = High performance graphics Quad-Core, used with intensive graphics applications, 3D rendering and heavy graphics gaming.
• Memory (RAM)
• The amount of RAM should be suitable to your needs. For normal office work and Internet browsing 8GB RAM should be enough. Working with RAM intensive applications, like Photoshop, AutoCAD...etc, then 16GB should be enough. If you are planning to work with Virtual Machines, then the maximum total of each VM's dedicated RAM is the real amount. For example if you intend to run 3 VM's simultaneously with 8GB RAM each (24GB in total), also, 8GB should be reserved for the host system, this should be a total of 32GB of RAM in total.
• Personal class laptops has a maximum of 2 memory bays, that can hold a total of 16GB RAM.
• Business class laptops has a maximum of 4 memory bays, that can hold a total of 32GB RAM.
• Less RAM amount degrades performance becasue system uses disk swaps to compansate.

Price

Please note that prices mentioned here date to July 2016, before EGP floating.

As mentioned, the price of a business class machine doubles a normal machine, also the higher the performance factors the higher the price. If a normal personal model costs about EGP 6,000, a business class machine would have the price of EGP 12,000.
To overcome this I had searched the import market, mainly at Bostan mall, and found the following suitable offers:

• Dell Latitude 5430, 14" normal res, Ci5 3340M, 3MB Cache, 320GB HDD, 8GB RAM, Intel HD 4000 VGA (EGP 2200)
• Dell Latitude 6530, 15.6" HD res, Ci7 3540M, 4MB Cache, 320GB HDD, 4GB RAM, Intel HD 4000 VGA (EGP 3300)
• HP EliteBook 8560w, 15.6" HD res, Ci7 2670QM, 6MB Cache, 320GB HDD, 8GB RAM, nVidia 2GB RAM (EGP 3750)
• HP EliteBook 8560w, 15.6" HD res, Ci7 2800QM, 8MB Cache, 500GB HDD, 8GB RAM, nVidia 2GB RAM (EGP 4100)

Note, Although the HP is 2nd generation processor, its performs 30% higher than the 3rd generation just because is QM

To read the Dell model number, like E 6430

E = Series
6 = line
4 = screen size 4 is 14, 5 is 15.6, 3 is 13...
3 = generation
0 = I dont know :)

References

• Desktop and Mobile Processors
• COMPARE CPUS