Gaming & Ultra Mobile Notebooks Eating Up Market Share
The most expensive type of laptops come in two varieties. On one end you have the big, powerful gaming laptops and on the other you have the anorexic ultra portables which are insanely expensive. Both command high price premiums. Gaming laptops are more practical for everyday use if you are replacing a desktop computer and the umpc’s are the best choice if you are syncing the data with your desktop at home. The market for ultra mobiles is rather small and the most common laptop screen size is 15.4 inch. A new trend seems to be the budget umpc’s laptops that are 12 inch or smaller, underpowered and only usable for a number of common applications. If I had to choose right now the gaming laptop will always win as the majority of users who need mobility can still be mobile with the average 15.4 inch size.
Intel has been controlling the laptop computer industry as long as I can remember. The centrino label has signified a certain level of performance however there has been a lot of confusion regarding what centrino laptops are. Common misconceptions include thinking that just because the laptop has an intel processor that makes it a centrino notebook. The majority of consumers fail to understand that centrino is a marketing platform and requires an intel mainboard, intel cpu and intel wireless card.
The cpu, memory and video card are things to pay attention to when you are buying a gaming laptop. The cpu should be a dual core cpu like the intel core duo with a speed of over 2GHz as standard. Minimum requirements for RAM are 2GB if running Vista but 3GB is recommended for the best performance. For a gaming notebook you need to have a dedicated graphics card. 256MB is the standard dedicated graphics memory to look for. A mid to high spec card should play all current and future games without any lag. Nothing but the most powerful cards will do for gaming enthusiasts.
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 buying a gaming laptop. Choosing just one is still difficult at the moment as gaming laptops still command a high price tag for the added functionality and benefits they offer but the majority of consumers would be willing to pay the price to get the best of both.
