I recently went through the process of purchasing a laptop for my own personal use. Although on the surface, it sounds simple, I was surprised at how involved it became.

The first question of course was that of a budget. I was looking for something $1000 or less. With todays pricing, I could get a lot of performance for this price, but would avoid overspending. This budget needed to include everything. The computer, carrying case, wireless router, wireless mouse as well as additional software.

I decided that I was going to buy locally rather than online. Not only to help businesses in the area, but also because I wanted to try out the machine before the purchase. Something you can't do online.

I shopped a number of retail outlets, compared the specifications, and decided on the type of computer. The standard 15.4 inch monitor was too cumbersum for my purposes. I wanted something more portable, but I needed to make sure the screen was bright enough that it could be used outside on a regular basis.

I also needed lots of RAM so I could have lots of things running at the same time. In my initial digging, I found that upgrading RAM was very inexpensive online, so I could save money in the short term by going with less RAM, and upgrading later. One Gb of RAM would be enough even though I would perfer to run 2 Gb.

Hard drives these days are very large, and I wouldn't have this as a real issue when making the purchase. Besides, you can always get an external USB drive if you really need it down the road. Anything over 100 Gbs would be just fine for my purposes.

I ended up making the choice based on the specifications of the laptop. The maker and retail outlet had nothing to do with it. The tiebreaker was the look and feel. I played with it in the store, and made my decision based on this.

Of course, once you have your first laptop, you need extra stuff. A laptop case. I spent $50. A wireless router. I rent from GreenBayNet, and swapped my Zoom X5 router for an X6. This is a $5 difference each month, but well worth the cost to be able to sit outside and surf the internet. (Once the weather is nicer of course. . . ) I spent $25 on a wireless USB mouse, and $30 on a heat pad to help to cool the laptop.

So now I'm all set, and very happy with the purchase. I still need some more RAM, and probably an external hard drive down the road, but these things can wait for now. The key to the purchase was that I knew it would do what I wanted, and then I just picked the one that also felt good.