Were witnessing two diverse, yet interesting trends emerge in the enterprise market. At the back end, data center centralization is happening at a frenzied pace, wherein enterprises are consolidating their IT infrastructures into the data center. At the front-end, the trend is exactly the reversedecentralize and give users access into your network from anywhere at any time, something more commonly known as mobility.

According to IDC, notebook PC shipments have witnessed a growth of 73.1% y-o-y over last year. The prime reason for this has been nose-diving prices. Today, an enterprise can purchase a notebook for as little as Rs 25,000 on the lower side, and Rs 1,00,000 at the upper end of the spectrum. This vast price difference connotes lots of different configurations, form factors, and features to choose from. The good news here is that today, enterprises can find the right laptop for their requirement. The bad news is that choosing the right one is no cakewalk. To add insult to injury, some vendors further segment their laptops for consumers and business users, while others dont. How do you decide then what to buy?

Business Vs Consumer
Some vendors have very clearly drawn the line between their notebook models. Consumer laptops stress on things like entertainment features, personal touch, and style. Entertainment features can vary from providing tiny sub-woofers on the laptop for better music playback to software that plays high definition movies, shares photos, etc at the touch of a button. Some vendors even offer laptops that can play movies and music CDs/DVDs without booting into the system.

Business laptops, on the other hand, stress on improving manageability and reliability, provide better battery backups, higher security, ruggedness, more connectivity options, enhanced user productivity, etc. Each of these claims should be analyzed in detail to actually see their effectiveness.

Classification
Business laptops can be broadly classified as ultra-portables, high performance/desktop replacements, regular computing, and tablet PCs.

Ultra-portables, as the name suggests, are the thinnest and lightest of all laptops, which can weigh as little as 1kg. Theyre also small enough to slide right into your travel bag. You can also buy a business laptop to serve as a desktop replacement or performance workhorse. This category of laptops would have everything on the higher sideweight, configuration, screen size, etc. As the name suggests, theyre not meant for frequent travelers, but can nevertheless be moved around easily.

Lastly, there are the regular laptops, which vary by cost, features, and screen size. This category has the largest variety of models, making it extremely difficult to choose.

Configuration Drill Down
It may appear that deciding the hardware specs of a laptop is a trivial matter, but its not. There are quite a few things to watch out for. Well now drill down into some of them.

De-mystifying Mobile Processors: Theres a whole range of mobile processors available for notebooks, and the trouble is their names are very similar to each other. For instance, should you buy a laptop with an Intel Core Duo, Core 2 Duo or Core Solo processor? Or, should you go for a Pentium M or Pentium M Dual core processor? Processors can cause a wide variation in price. This matter is further clouded by stickers like Centrino Duo, Centrino, etc. Lets clear the air a bit.

Intels mobile processors are divided into three families: Intel Core, Pentium, and Celeron. The Core and Pentium families of processors are broadly classified under Intel Centrino mobile technology. Plus, the Core processors family is supposed to consume lesser power than the Pentium family.

The Core processor family has the following processors: Core 2 Extreme, Core 2 Duo, Core Duo, Core 2 Solo, and Core Solo processors. Core 2 Extreme is the highest end mobile processor having two cores. Core 2 Duo has two cores, 4 MB of shared L2 cache and supports up to 667 MHz Front Side Bus. Plus, it is 64-bit enabled and supports virtualization.

Core Duo is also dual core, but has 2 MB shared L2 cache, is available in two FSB speeds of 533 and 667 MHz, and does not support 64-bit extensions. Core Solo, on the other hand, has a single core, 2 MB L2 cache and supports 667 MHz FSB.

Page(s)   1  2