Small Laptop ComputersEveryone wants small laptop computers today. This is the same consumer choice that is driving net book or mini laptop sales. The good news is an ultra portable or ultra small laptop seems to be what the manufacturers are trying to sell you. The bad news is small laptops, in the 12 to 13 inch screen size cost more than their larger 14 to 17 cousins and the their performance maxes out well below what you can get in a larger model. The primary reason for this is the video cards available. The best video card available in a 13 or 12 inch computer at the HP, Dell, or Apple websites was labelled "mid-range" on the website. The card is good enough to run most games, but not at even close to the highest settings, even for Worlds of Warcraft. It is good enough for most other uses though. If you will be using your laptop for streaming video, gaming, or extensive video or photo editing, I suggest you buy a larger computer. Even the best small laptop does not have a graphics card suitable for these uses. If you will be using your computer for surfing the internet, shopping, downloading music or videos, word processing and little else, you can buy a low entry level ultra portable laptop computer with an Intel GMA and a Pentium dual core processor for about $675. An extra $50 or so will get you a Core 2 Duo processor. The computers have 4 G.B. RAM, a WXGA display, a wireless card, a CD/DVD burner, and a large enough hard drive. If you shop carefully, you can probably find an equivalent 14 to 16 inch laptop for $150 less. When you compare the performance of ultra portable laptops to the even smaller net books or mini laptops, the laptops are more powerful. They have faster processors and more memory (ram). The laptop screen is larger and wxga compared to the wsvga on the mini-laptop. The graphics are better and the ultra portable laptop has a CD/DVD burner. On the other hand, the most commonly seen configuration of a mini laptop costs more than $300 less than the small laptop computers we are talking about. Even adding an external CD/DVD burner to a mini laptop will still keep you $200 under the price of the laptop.
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