Are you looking to buy a new laptop computer? With so many laptop models available in the market today, with each sporting many different features, choosing what kind of laptop to buy can be confusing. You need to consider carefully just what kind of laptop you should get before you take out your credit card. In this way, you know you will end up with a machine that is just perfect for your needs.

Your needs are what you must take into consideration when you go out to buy a laptop. Many people have different uses for their laptops. Some get laptops that they can work with while traveling. Some just want a machine that will replace their desktops and give them the mobility that their desktops cannot possibly give. Some look at their laptops as extensions of their home entertainment systems or use them for intensive gaming. Before you buy a laptop, you need to determine first the purpose for which you will use it.

People who need to be on the road or in the air a lot – business executives, journalists and freelance consultants, to name just a few – need a laptop that is easy to carry, does not use up power so much and is small enough to be used conveniently in cramped seats on the train or in an airplane. If you are going to do a lot of traveling, these factors should count a lot when you choose your new laptop. You will be lugging this machine a lot, so it would be great for your body if your laptop is small and ultra-light. And because you would be moving a lot, you should choose a laptop that has a long battery life or is low on power consumption. It would be horrible to find your computer shutting down on you while you are in the middle of something, and you either do not have extra battery packs or far away from a place wherein you can plug in your computer.

The typical laptop computer used by travelers is a machine that weighs no less than four pounds and has a 12-inch screen measured diagonally. The size of the hard disk may be too small and limited for you, so it is important that the laptop you will use for traveling has a built-in DVD/CD-RW combination drive. This will adequately address your storage needs. The capacity for wireless networking is also necessary in ultra-light laptops, in case you want to access the Internet while you are on the go.

If size and weight are important factors that travelers should look at when buying a laptop, power and performance come first for the gamer. Laptop computers that are meant to be used by gamers are packed with a large-size hard drive, memory that is 512MB or more, a powerful video card and sound card, a built-in DVD/CD-RW, networking capabilities and a widescreen display. Most of the popular computer games today are power-gobblers that can stretch the performance of a computer to its limit; a gaming laptop should be able to meet the resource demands of these power-hungry computer games. Also, laptop computers that can be used for gaming are also great extensions of a person’s home theater and entertainment system.

When you choose a laptop for your gaming needs, it does not really matter if the machine is light enough or has a long battery life. You would not be carrying it around a lot and it is highly likely that it will be plugged to a main power source all the time.

A laptop that shall be used at home or in the office is often a toss-up between size and power. Just like a gaming laptop, a laptop that shall be used primarily for business or home computing must have a wide screen – around 15 to 17 inches. A wide screen is easy on the eyes, and if this is the kind of computer that you need, you would be looking at it a lot. It does not have to be as powerful as a gaming laptop, but it nonetheless needs to be powerful enough so that digital manipulation and PowerPoint presentations would not be difficult for you to do. Having the basic multimedia capabilities would be welcome as well.

It is likely that the laptop you will be buying for your office or home computing needs is something that will replace your desktop computer. Desktop computers often have features and capabilities that laptops can only have as external peripherals connected through USB. Here is a handy tip you can use when looking for a laptop that is supposed to replace your desktop computer: If the laptop weighs more than three kilograms with all its peripherals plugged in, then you should not be looking for a laptop. What you need is a new desktop.

Choose your laptop wisely according to your own computing needs.