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Andrew Parker<\/p>\n
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While retaining its dominant position on our desks at home and in the office, the personal computer has also evolved into a variety of different mobile devices, each sharing a common heritage, but designed with a specific user or purpose in mind. <\/p>\n
Sometimes, and often due to the underhand tactics of an eager salesman, people make the mistake of buying a laptop based solely on price or an arbitrary specification such as processor speed. Ranging from R2 800 to R28 000 plus, any new computer is a fairly substantial investment for most of us, so it\u2019s wise to choose right the first time and avoid being lumped with one that doesn\u2019t suit your requirements. <\/p>\n
As if buying a laptop isn\u2019t confusing enough, new laptop categories pop up all the time. In 2007 the \u201cNetbook\u201d concept was launched to instant acclaim in the form of the \u201cEeePC\u201d from Taiwanese manufacturer Asus, which I\u2019m proud to say is the first computer even my mom can use. <\/p>\n
Small, cheap and immensely popular when they launched, netbooks were the ideal entry-level computer for those who just wanted to browse the web, check e-mail and use online chat or Skype to make video calls. All netbooks feature a built-in webcam and a small screen, so they\u2019re great as a sort of portable \u201cvideo phone\u201d \u00e0 la Stanley Kubrick\u2019s 2001: A Space Odyssey<\/em>. Kids love them too, and they\u2019re useful as an educational tool. <\/p>\n Global netbook sales have slowed recently following the launch in 2010 of the Apple iPad \u201ctablet\u201d device, leading to a mass shift in computer sales patterns that has turned the computer industry on its end. <\/p>\n One of the largest netbook manufacturers, Dell, stopped producing them late last year in order to focus on their other product lines and it\u2019s likely others will at least scale back netbook production. There\u2019ll be more about netbooks later on in this series. <\/p>\n The new kid on the block in the laptop line-up is the \u201cUltrabook\u201d, a term coined by Intel for a \u201cnext generation\u201d laptop. Intel has applied to trademark the term and in order to market a laptop as an Ultrabook, manufacturers must meet certain criteria, as specified and updated by Intel with each of their \u201cmobile platform\u201d releases. An Ultrabook is extremely thin, featuring for example, a maximum 18mm closed height for a model with a 13.3 inch screen. They must have a minimum battery life of five hours and fast resume from \u201chibernation\u201d mode \u2013 you should expect to be working again within a maximum of 7 seconds from waking up an Ultrabook. <\/p>\n So, they are light and thin which makes Ultrabooks eminently portable, but where\u2019s the catch? Well, it\u2019s less of a problem than it used to be, but if there\u2019s any compromise, it\u2019s performance. Very high-end, high-performance processors still generate too much heat to work within the restrictions of the Ultrabook design \u2013 there\u2019s no point using a laptop that melts your trousers, so most Ultrabooks feature low-end or mid-range processors specially designed for mobile computers. <\/p>\n<\/p>\n Hard drives are where Ultrabooks get interesting as many models feature a new, high performance hard drive known as an SSD (Solid State Disk). SSDs have no moving parts, and are the first mainstream diversion from the traditional \u201crecord-player\u201d hard drive design of a rotating disc and roving arm. <\/p>\n So as you\u2019re hopefully appreciating by now, when choosing a laptop, it\u2019s not all about the speed of the CPU. <\/p>\n * More advice and musings on the variety of laptops currently on offer next week. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Andrew Parker While retaining its dominant position on our desks at home and in the office, the personal computer has also evolved into a variety of different mobile devices, each sharing a common heritage, but designed with a specific user or purpose in mind. Sometimes, and often due to the underhand tactics of an eager […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[8275,953,2143],"class_list":{"0":"post-9631","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-south-africa","7":"tag-durban","8":"tag-newspaper","9":"tag-the-mercury","10":"entry"},"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9631","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9631"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9631\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9631"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9631"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9631"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}