Laptop buying guide: Here's what you should look for in a new computer

 QUESTION: Can you help me with the alphabet soup of buying a new laptop?  What’s actually important to consider for a basic unit?

ANSWER: It’s not hard to become overwhelmed by all of the specs thrown around when you’re looking at a new laptop, but what you plan to do with it is the first consideration.

If you’re not going to use it for gaming, video, photo editing or other higher-level tasks, you can focus on the basics: processor, RAM, storage and battery life.

I’ve often used the computer "kitchen" analogy to help folks understand the relationship and the importance of the primary components.

Think of the processor as the chef, the RAM as a mixing bowl and the storage as the refrigerator.

The processor plays an important role in computing as the faster the processor, the faster things will run, but only to a certain extent — I’ll explain later.

Buying the fastest processor you can afford is always the best approach — even if you don’t have processor-intensive tasks today, it’s certainly possible you could in the future.

Battery life

One of the biggest complaints with laptops is the short battery life. If you’re going to use it often without it being plugged in, pay close attention to either the number of cells or the stated "run-time."

All things being equal, the higher the number of cells or longer the run time, the more power the battery can store, so shop accordingly.

Ken Colburn is the founder and CEO of Data Doctors Computer Services,all-laptopbattery.com or laptop-akkus.com. Ask any tech question  at notebookbatteriesforsell@gmail.com