No this picture is not the under $100 laptop being built, it's actually a Steampunk invention that works but far from $100. More cool gadgets and other stuff at http://www.geekologie.com/

With laptops outselling desktops since 2005 the price for laptops have fallen enough for the adverge person to afford but choosing the best one for your need is not any easier.

This is where I come in, I will go over some tips for buying a laptop and hopefully you can use this cheap laptop guide towards your future purchase. First lets go over some terms use to identify certain components.

CPU: Central Processing Unit - This is brains of the whole operations and determines the core speed of your unit examples are: Intel® Pentium® Dual-Core mobile processor,
Intel® Core™2 Duo mobile processor, Intel® Celeron® processor, AMD Athlon™ X2 are just a few so this makes it confusing for consumers, keep in mind that Core 2 Duo currently is the fastest one on the market but in my opinion not that much faster than a Dual-core or Amd Athlon dual-core to justify paying $400 more to get one. Myself I run a 2.0 Ghz Celeron (single core) which is an old budget minded CPU, Intel Celeron & Amd Sempron are at the bottom of the CPU food chain, that has enough power to run the task I need plus a bit more. Keep in mind although Celeron is an old CPU it is more powerful than any atom cpu powered netbook on the market today so if just need a laptop for internet and basic tasks then you can get one of these Celeron based laptops for a steal ( paid $300 on sale ).

When buying a laptop I recommend getting a cpu speed 2.0 Ghz and above on any cpu choice you decide on, whether it is single or dual core or not. You can find Intel dual-core & Amd dual-core cpu's are a far cheaper price than Intel® Core™2 Duo.

Hard drive: This is the drive where you keep your data and is very important most affordable laptops have 120 gigs - 160 gigs standard. On this option you want the biggest storage you can afford for example my drive is 160 gigs and it only took 3 weeks before it was full due to my DVD convertions and database stuff from work so if you see a laptop with a 250 gig or more drive for around $400-$500 I would jump on it within reason.

RAM: Ram is used for the operation of your computer: For the operating system and programs that run on it, 2 gigs should really be the standard for all laptops running Vista anything below that on a full laptop ( not a netbook ) I would not recommend. On the other hand ram is fairly cheap so if you were to see a notebook you like with only 1 gigs, it would only take about $20 or less to upgrade it.

VIDEO CARD: Outputs the video to the display: Remember that most $500 and under laptop are not design for high end gaming or graphic graphic intensive programs, so most are on board integrated which means the video card is on the motherboard and uses the systems ram not dedicated. What this means to you as the consumer is that ( in this case ) try to look out for Nvidia GeForce, ATI Mobility Radeon. Even an Intel GMA 4500 will let you play games like The Sims 2 and watch high definition content. A good site to compare cards is HERE.

Ok those are four main things to consider when looking to buy a laptop, other obvious things such as screen size, overall size and weight plus color vary according to make and model. For example if your a student and mainly need a laptop on the go for email and online courses that does not require a powerful computer then a Netbook might be more your speed if you don't mind the small screen.

Another thing to keep in mind that in many cases the misconception of spending over $700 for a laptop is the best way to get the very best..... Not true at all, you would be better off to look into what exactly you are going to use it for? ( your needs ) then to blindly buy the most expensive one.

Part II HERE