The Context Machine

The most highly priced type of laptops come in two varieties. On one end you have the large, powerful gaming laptops and on the other you have the ultra mobile portables which are insanely priced. Both command high price premiums. Gaming laptops are more practical for everyday use if you’re replacing a desktop pc and the ultra portables are the best choice if you are syncing the data with your desktop at home. However the market for ultra mobiles is very small and the most popular laptop size is 15.4 inch. A new phenominen seems to be the budget umpc’s laptops that are 12 inch or smaller, low powered and only suitable for a number of common tasks. If you could only choose one the gaming laptop will always win as most people who need mobility can still be portable with the average 15.4 inch size.

When buying gaming laptops the graphics chip is often a vital, if not the most crucial component of the spec. Two options are available in this area. Nvidia and ATI are the two major companies in the graphics technology market. Since AMD aquired ATi things have slowed down for the graphics giant where as the competitor Nvidia has been forging ahead without any restriction of bigger plans in place, only thinking about releasing the fastest mobile graphics cards as fast as they can. This technology is changing every year and Nvidia seem to be in the driving seat at the moment.

The cpu, ram and gpu are things to pay attention to when you are buying a gaming laptop. The processor should be a dual core processor like the intel core 2 duo with a clock speed of over 2GHz as standard. 2GB is the minimum amount of ram required for playing games. For a gaming laptop you need to have a dedicated graphics card. 256MB is the standard dedicated graphics memory to look for. I think an Nvidia 8600M card should be good for playing all the latest games well. Nothing but the most powerful video chips will do for extreme gamers.

So gaming laptops do offer the functionality of a PC and if you want do some gaming then they play all PC games rather well too but what about gaming consoles? The PS3 and Xbox 360 could offer a threat to the thought of a gaming laptop. Choosing just one is still difficult as gaming laptops still command a high price tag for the added features and benefits they give but the majority of consumers would be willing to pay the price to get the best of both.