Before we start, just what exactly is a business laptop? For years we have had laptops classified into various categories, we have gaming laptops, multimedia laptops, business laptops, laptops for this, laptops for that. But as time has progressed most mid-range and high-end laptops seem to do precisely the same things. These words in most cases have become nothing other than marketing words for laptop manufacturers.
A multimedia laptop, for example, can be defined as a laptop which can become an all-in-one entertainment system. As a result they have large HD monitors, blu-ray players, HDMI leads to hook up to an LCD TV, a good graphics cheap for games, and some speakers which are actually audible. The use of the word isn’t entirely unjustified, not all laptops will offer these features, but they will be cheaper as a result. If however you are spending $2000 on a business laptop, you would expect it to offer all of the features that a $2000 multimedia laptop offer, wouldn’t you?
A gaming laptop these days is almost the same, in some cases precisely the same, as rival laptops branded as laptops for ‘multimedia’, in fact a high end multimedia laptop is expected to play games. So if multimedia laptops are the same as gaming laptops, how do they differ from business laptops? What do business laptops need to have? You should ignore the marketing tripe and just look for the quality of the core components. Businesses tend to buy standard sized laptops, of at least 15″, and for good reason. Smaller laptops, e.g. 13″ systems, will typically use components which were cutting edge in the last generation of laptops three or four years ago; particularly the processor. The processor
Cheap Business Laptops?
It isn’t just us dismissing labels as marketing tripe, as the price of technology falls so does the amount that businesses are willing to spend on their laptops. There is a growing trend for small, medium and even large businesses to buy popular general consumer products at a low cost. It isn’t unusual for businesses to buy general multimedia laptops for as little as $600 in the full knowledge that the core components are perfectly sufficient for their needs. There simply isn’t such thing as a business laptop in 2011, there are laptops with good specifications and there are laptops with bad specifications, and you don’t need to spend much to find with which is easily powerful enough with plenty of longevity for less than $1000.
One must also consider the financial climate, businesses are simply willing to take more risks when things aren’t going well in the knowledge that they will probably spend money. Spending $2000 on a laptop may pretty much guarantee that it is still being used in three years time by an employee, but spend $600 on a system which will probably last three years with perhaps $150 of upgrades and you find that a fair bit of money is being saved for your bottom line.
Buying A Budget Business Laptop
The smart way to find the laptop for your business is to simply set yourself a budget. What are you willing to spend per unit? Perhaps you are willing to spend $3000 on four laptops, in which case you are simply going to have to find the best laptop priced at $750 or under. The articles Best Business Laptop Under $800 or Best Business Laptop Under $700 will help you with that. The process for buying a laptop for business really doesn’t need to differ in any way from the process that you adopt when shopping for a laptop for personal use, with all laptops being so similar in terms of their wide range of functions now you could quite easily go and look at the Best Multimedia Laptop Under $700 and walk away with the perfect system.
On this site we have done a lot of the groundwork for you, performing extensive research to present the laptops which we feel are the best for any budget from $400 all the way up to $3000. We only feature systems that we are genuinely excited about, and always perform a significant amount of research into levels of customer satisfaction. Simply choose your desired price range from the links to the right side of this page and every other page!
