Have your wallet wide open. Gaming laptops can be expensive. Dell purchased the famed game laptop computer Alienware in March 2006. The first thing you should do is check out the Minimum Systems Requirements for your favorite games. Once you have done that you should have an idea what hardware and computing power will be required. A major component in a gaming laptop is a quality of the video chip. The video card needs to have at least 128mb of RAM and a fairly good processing speed. It would also be nice if it was in a socket, so it could eventually be removed and upgraded. The amount of system RAM the notebook has is critical. A decent gaming notebook needs at least 1gb of RAM or more if possible. I recently upgraded our desktop at home for a game my son likes that required 2GB of RAM. Speaking of the CPU get the fastest and latest chip available. If your laptop will be moving around then battery power might be important. A decent video card, fast CPU and lots of RAM will burn the juice. You should even consider a second battery or a unit that accommodates a second battery in one of the bays.

The first question to answer if you are student looking to purchase a laptop or a parent thinking about buying a laptop for your child is the budget. If there is no budget or you can spend $800 or $900+ consider buying a new laptop. Once the budget is in hand then consider the intended use for the laptop. For colleges and universities, visit the school’s Web site for useful information. They will often provide a recommended minimum required laptop specification. However, don’t be fooled they often will suggest much more than is needed.

One final thought: students need a notebook that is small and light enough to lug back and forth across campus but rugged enough to withstand bouncing around in a backpack. If it is to browse the web, instant messaging and type papers then a minimal laptop will work fine. Browsing the web only requires 128MB RAM. You can’t type faster than a very old Pentium 90 laptop, so word processing runs fine on older laptops. If you have any specialized applications it is always a good idea to go to the software vendor’s website and check out the Minimum Systems Requirements to make sure the application will work. If you are a serious gamer all bets are off as you might need 2GB RAM, a fast CPU and even a specialized graphics chip and have to spend $2000.

Most college campuses these days have wireless networks. Older laptops can accept Wi-Fi cards, which cost $30, so they are easily to upgrade. Older laptops often do not have working batteries and even on new ones after a year or two the battery may not work. It usually does not matter, as schools know students want to use their laptops everywhere and often provide many extra wall outlets, so they can be plugged in. New batteries often don’t last more than 2-3 hours.