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Buying Laptops: Same Features,Different Price?

If you had a chance to visit the BCS Computer City in recent times, you must’venoticed the influx of laptops, as well as promotions and price discounts in themarket. Every alternative month there is a computer fair with a huge collection of different brands and models of laptops and other accessories. And it’s reallyamazing how the prices of these products have been slashed. You get good laptopsfor Tk. 45,000 now (A recent Compaq Presario model is offered at Tk. 39,999!). Notonly price, the speed at which newer models are being introduced is alsoastonishing. I found models like Acer Aspire One, new Dell Inspiron Series enteringBangladesh market not more than 2 months after being introduced in Singapore.However, the price and the feature of products still remain rather elusive. Forexample, if you plan to buy a laptop, and take a look around, you’ll find that laptopswith almost similar features can vary in prices up to Tk. 40,000. Why? This isbecause the similarity of the features exists only on the surface. If you manage todig deeper, you’ll find the reason behind the price differences.Digging deeper would usually mean reading the detailed specification of theproduct, and reading reviews on the internet. The user reviews can prove to behighly valuable when you are contemplating a new purchase by pointing out themajor flaws (if any) and performance. There are many good websites that have anexhaustive collection of reviews of different models, such as:“reviews.cnet.com/laptops.”Remember that the more you dig, the better understanding of the potentialperformance. For example, a Core2Duo processor would probably work faster thana Dual Core. But the extent would depend on, 1. The Clock speed (expressed inMega Hertz, e.g. 2.6 MHz), 2. The Cache Memory (e.g. 1×2 MB, 2 MB, 3MB) andfinally the Front Side Bus (800/1333 MHz etc.).Such detailed technical descriptions are not only hard to grasp, but almostimpossible to remember and apply. That is why we suggest you to look for thebenchmarking scores in the internet reviews. Benchmarking is process by which thelaptops are tested and scored in terms of their performance. Benchmarking is themost reliable tool, since the description in the flyer and the actual real-worldperformance may vary widely. Products with better performance would usually getbetter benchmarking scores, which can be compared with other models you mightbe considering. And if that is also too difficult to understand, stick to simple userreviews and comments.