How to Shop & Find the Best Deals on Laptops

Are you in the market for an affordable laptop? Amazing deals can be found online for laptops these days, if you know where and how to search the web to find a great deal. Shopping online now allows you to see plethora of information on the product desired. However many retail and specialty stores do not have subject matter experts on a specific products. Many times when a customer requests information about a product they are told to go online and check. As a savvy customer you will cut out the middle man and shop smart online. How can you find the best deal?

Once you have decided to buy a laptop the first thing to do is figure out is why are you buying this laptop? Which functionality in a laptop are important to you and what will this laptop be used for?. For example if you are a student you may want to do word processing work such as writing reports vs if you are a web developer you may want to run some graphic and other advanced application. You can also check out customer reviews online such as Amazon to find what customers are saying who have purchased that product.

The easiest way to compare features is to go to the manufactures web site, such as Dell, IBM, HP, Toshiba etc. These sites will list very detailed information regarding the specifications of your Laptop. Another benefit of going right to the manufacture is to obtain customizable options and instant rebates. Customizable options means, you can add more memory, hard drive space, bigger screen, and faster processor etc and pay only for the features as requested. Laptop purchased from stores cannot be customized to your needs and are sold as configured. If you only need the laptop for word-processing they do not need a top of the line graphics card, which no doubt will save you money in the overall cost. Several manufactures offer such customization as well, such as Dell, HP which also offers deals on the upgrades. Some manufactures, like HP, even show the specification side by side which makes it very easy to compare.

Once the model has been chosen, such as the Toshiba Satellite A200 series, the specific options need to be chosen. Don’t just go for the best selling laptop. Two of the A200 series, the A215-S5837 and A205-S5872 for example are both priced at $ 649.99; however the A205-S5872 has more 40 more GB and more extras. They both have duel core processors but A205-S5872 uses Intel, with a speed of 1.86 GHz and front side bus of 533 MHz and A215-S5837 uses Turion, with a speed of 2.0GHz and a front side bus of 800 MHz. Notice the speed listed after the processor above after the model number, the higher the speed of the process the faster it can execute commands and higher the price. You will notice several vendors will raise the price by increasing memory or hard drive space. If they offer you a higher price for higher memory, its best to buy the same model with lower memory and then upgrade it.

If you already know your needs, it is incredibly easy to find the best prices online. This is also an excellent method if price is more important than features. Another way to compare prices online is to put your search criteria into Google, such as Toshiba Satellite A200 series; once the results come up select shopping at the top of the page. This will then display a list of that product and all the prices it can be found at on the web. The price on this product ranges from $ 539 to $ 669. That is a $ 130 price difference. All of this comparative price shopping may only take a few seconds it take for you to type in the product and search.

Another thing to check out before buying is shipping costs. Many sites have free shipping. Also look up the rebates. One vendor may have a nice rebate finder. The rebate can be applied after coupon deals on many items and is a great way to save money. It is good to check on the rebates if there is question between two or three laptops. Now how do you find these rebates that work and an save you money?

To do so, it would be best to search for your model on deal and coupons website. These websites save consumers the time and research necessary to find the best deals on the particular product they have been searching for. These sites usually list the best deals, on laptops and other items, from a large number of stores. The nice thing about a deal and coupon website is that these sites offer you a large range of laptop deals and pricing options. Instead of surfing from web site to web site, it is a one stop shopping option for deals, rebates and coupons on laptops.


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