BUYING A LAPTOP ?, SIMPLE STEPS ...

With the wide array of Laptops in the Kenyan market and an influx of suppliers, buying a laptop has become a job in itself, some of us who are tech savvy have been pushed by society ( our brothers, mothers, nephews etc.) to do the donkey work for them, of shopping around a task which sometimes eats up our much valued time.
Below are some of the factors to consider before purchasing a laptop:
BUDGET
in Kenya price comes first before the purpose of the laptop, these is one of our peculiarity. Before you make any plans for purchasing a laptop, you should at least have an idea of what you are willing to spend, these shall guide you on not to overspend, particularly because, once you are in the market the models and styles of laptops will confuse you.
In budgeting remember the low performance laptops tend to be cheaper.
Intel Pentium and Celeron; AMD A6, A4,Intel Atom, AMD C series, AMD E series, some of these processors  tend to be used in the 8.9- to 11.6-inch space, in laptops often incorrectly termed "netbooks" — a phrase that is actually reserved for laptops featuring Intel's Atom CPU.

USER
these is the end user, as a user you have to be sure what the purpose of the laptop shall be, there is no need to go for high performance laptops such as core i3 or i5 while the use of the laptop shall only be for word processing. to understand the usage I shall summaries as follows:

what shall you be using it for?

1. Development
2. Coding
3. Word processing 
4. Gaming
5. Watching movies
6. Internet
7. Hacking
8. Lending it to buddies
9. All of the above 
10. Some of the above 
11. all the above

these shall guide you on the processor speed to pick i.e. Celeron, Intel Pentium, core i3 or core i7, as some of the processes to run the above tasks require specific processors, also the RAM( Random access memory) size, and as I had put it before prices go up as you select the best performing processors.

SPECIFICATIONS

These is where the problem comes in, each user has his/her own version of what makes a laptop be a better performer, some believe the bigger the RAM the faster the laptop, whilst others believe on the latest processor e.g. core i7.
on specifications the following are the most important aspects to consider before purchasing the laptop;
Processor
an electronic circuit which executes computer programs, containing a processing unit and a control unit, they come in different forms depending on the requirement of the user, such as Intel atom for simple tasks and are popular with the 8-12" notebooks, Celeron processors; for word processing Intel Pentium, core i series, AMD etc.
the higher the processing ability of a laptop the more expensive it is.
Battery

These are generally low-power, very low-performance chips best suited to basic internet browsing and office tasks.

So whenever you are looking for high performance laptops your budget should be higher.

An important factor to consider is how much battery life you’ll need on your laptop. No matter how much battery you have, using your built-in DVD drive a lot and having a 17? Screen will drain it faster. Battery technology–just like any technology–is improving all the time.

Memory Laptops are underpowered enough as it is with their stringent size and heat requirements, so don’t cripple them anymore. Do you think that just because a laptop is small it doesn’t need memory? If you go smaller than our recommendations, expect to have a slower computing experience. Hard Drive Most laptop hard drives are compact drives that have a 2.5? Form factor, as opposed to the 3.5? form factor of a standard desktop PC hard drive. Because of their extra small size, they have a higher price. Optical Most laptops have some sort of DVD or CD-RW (CD writeable) drive built into the laptop itself. Because of the tight space constraints, some smaller laptops offer an accessory slot where you can swap the optical drive with a spare battery or other accessory. Even smaller laptops don’t have any internal drives at all. An internal DVD drive is very handy and, in our opinion, is a worthy trade-off for a bit more weight and size. Video If you are going to get a large, high-resolution LCD display on your laptop, or you’re planning to attach an external monitor, make sure you get some good video. The standard low-end built-in graphics from Intel or chipset manufacturers will always be listed as “integrated” and will usually be the base graphics offered. Sometimes it’s just a little more costly to get better graphics, and we recommend going for the better solution Screen We used to have to agonize about different grades of LCD screens, but you can assume that LCD laptop screen today are Active Matrix, the better version of LCD compared to Passive Matrix. LCD screens are perfectly flat, about half an inch thick, and use less power than old CRT screens. The main power drag on the LCD is the need to run a backlight to illuminate the display. On top of that, the backlight has to shine through the screen and illuminate even when you are viewing a black screen. Until there’s some alternative such as a self-illuminating screen technology, we are stuck with lighting up a backlight. Sound All laptops come standard with sound nowadays, and most manufacturers won’t tell you what chip they are using. You’ll want to pay attention mainly to the audio connection ports available. Most laptops will come with a built-in microphone to enable Internet telephony and videoconferencing. If you want the best of all worlds, get a laptop that has line output and line input jacks so that you can easily connect it to external speakers or a home stereo. Speakers Nowadays, most laptops come with stereo speakers built-in. If you can listen to the speakers before you buy, all the better. If not, and you are an audio purist, you may want to just make sure there’s a line output so you can easily connect external speakers if you don’t happen to like the sound quality of the built-in ones Networking Get built-in 10/100/1000 Ethernet in your laptop. It’s the standard non-wireless way to connect to a DSL modem, cable modem, a corporate network, or the lame wired network at the mediocre hotel you happen to be staying at. Network cables plug into the RJ-45 connector on your laptop. Almost all laptops ship with a 10/100/1000 Gigabit Ethernet port nowadays Wireless Typical wireless laptop technologies today are 802.11a/b/g (Wi-Fi) and BlueTooth. There is also the emerging 802.11n standard, which promises longer range and faster throughput than the previous standards. Most laptops feature a built-in antenna, and the manufacturers offer an add-in card that handles a specific wireless connectivity. We suggest that you go for as many of the 802.11 standards as you can get, and BlueTooth if you think you will need it. Modem Many laptops offer built-in modems. You really have to be somewhere remote when a modem is your only method of connecting; that’s why we recommend not even getting one. If you do get one, fine–you’ll probably never use it Pointing Device Which pointing device you choose depends largely on personal preference. If you don’t plan to use your laptop on the go then you can always just plug a standard mouse, trackball, etc., into it. It’s harder to do this when you’re traveling, though, because you need a surface to move the mouse on and you’ve got to deal with the mouse cord, so you better choose one that you like Keyboard There’s not much variation on laptop keyboards. As screen sizes increase, more and more laptops offer “full-sized” keyboards on their units. This implies that the spacing between keys is the same as on a full-sized keyboard on a desktop PC, which is better for your wrists, but not as good as an ergonomic keyboard Operating System For the majority of laptop buyers, at purchase time you get to decide between Windows Seven or Linux, always choose what you are comfortable at using and do not rush at picking one with Linux only because it is cheaper, some pick with without any operating system a go ahead and install pirated versions of operating systems, at the end of the day you are at risk with such operating systems. Expansion Ports Expansion ports are those various holes and sockets where you can plug stuff into your laptop. Here’s an explanation of some common ones and why you might like to have them on your laptop  WARRANTY Whatever you do ensure you get warranty for your laptop, these will ensure you get the right product and also you get value for your money. some of these products, usually have manufacturers fault and most of the time we never notice such during purchase because of the limited time we have, but later on during the heavy use of the laptop you shall realize, either the battery power does not last an hour whilst it should do four hours or F2 is not working etc. therefore it is important to ensure you leave with warranty and understand there terms and conditions, for example how long it takes for one to get replacement. REPLACEMENT speaking of replacement, a friend of mine imported a machine from UK and after an or so with laptop, he mistakenly poured to on the keyboard, these is where I came in to assist in replacing the keyboard, the first option was to look in the capital city for a replacement which never bore any fruit, next to go to the appointed service center for the brand, they could not assist us because the product was not meant for East and Middle East Africa, and the option we had was to pay four times the average price of a replacement keyboard, in short it took us two months to sort out his laptop. Whenever you are purchasing ensure its parts are available or are still in production so that in a year you don’t have to buy a newer laptop just because you cannot get a replacement for the hard disk. supplier most people ignore suppliers or basically the retail shops, a laptop being a heavy investment please also check out where you are going for one, for example make a simple call on their advertised office lines, if properly picked and you are satisfactorily assisted, go to the next step, check them online, whether reviews on them or basically their website, if you think it is satisfactory, now go and visit the shop, not when purchasing but prior make funny requests, like compact disks prices or so, if you are served as the next person making 100k purchases, put your money in them. LOCATION most Kenyans think coming to the city will save them cash rather than buying at their local shop, in the short term basis that will sort you out but whenever you have problems imagine coming all the way from Kisumu to Nairobi just to be sorted, pick out a good supplier from your neighborhood this shall save you a lot of frustrations afterwards.