Whats a good laptop/notebook computer to buy?
If you are going to play games on the laptop, make sure you buy one with discrete video card (the one that has its own RAM). Generally laptops of low to mid range have integrated video cards, so they will share some of the main RAM. Games play better if the video card has its own RAM because it doesn’t have to share. Also, get the maximum RAM you can afford. For a 32-bit Windows Vista, it means 3GB. But the minimum RAM for any version of Vista to run OK is 2GB. One point I want to stress is that if you buy a laptop with 4GB of, you will not likely be able to use all 4GB. The reason for this is because 32-bit has the maximum addressable memory using this formula: 2^32 (that is 2 raised to the power of 32) gives 4294967296 bytes. Take that number and divide by 1024*1024 will give you 4096MB, which is the same as 4GB. Some of this 4GB is used by the system for various functions, leaving the user with less than 4GB. Unless you want to run 64-bit Vista. Unfortunately, most games are optimal
