Buy Laptops Now or Later

For the less techies among us, our mobile device buying route is simply.  First, get the Sunday papers filled with ads and see what Best Buy, Office Depot, and Circuit City is offer as their special.  Second step, we make comparisons.  Easy right?

But these days, it's very difficult to tell with the different chips, graphics cards, and overlapping platforms.  To make matters worse, open up the ads and try to make comparisons.  You can't because every electronics giant has a different model with specs that .  This makes comparison difficult but no impossible.

Thus, for the majority of us, there is no doubt that when we need a laptop, we need it right now.

Starting this week, we'll sort through the ads and help you sort through the different "deals" so you can decide on your own, making it easier to chose and buy with confidence when you walk though the door.

No need to thank us.  It's a weekly ritual to sort through the ads anyway with coffee at Starbucks.

As for buying now or later.  It's always now.  Always.  Because if you're consider, it usually means you have a need for it, now.  There's is always something better around the corner.  But having the right mobile tool to help you with your work today is more important.  And with speeds they are now, they are incremental and not likely to see a huge jump in performance.

Right now, there is a dearth of software capable of taking advantage of multi-core processors that dominate the consumer market.  While dual core is very common, they are underutilized.  And going forward this will be a larger issue as the marketing folks at Intel and AMD to push four-core.  As you may well  know, AMD has a three-core processor as well.

Also, this fall, we'll see a four-core notebook processor.  A first from Intel or anyone else.  I do a lot of video processing on the Mac and iMovie takes advantage of quad-core but I'm not willing to shell out $$$ for it.

So, eager look forward to a Macbook this fall to replace my current Powerbook and Mac Mini workhouse.