What are good specs for a small business laptop?

Question

Need decent speed. Will be mostly using Office Suite type docs, but also a hulking database resource.

Answer 1

You should check with requirements for each program you are planning to use, and allow some increase for future update requirements.

In your situation, what are the requirements for your database?

To help you think through *some* of your options, you should consider:
Are you writing specs to be used for competitive bidding?
Where will info be stored? On a server or this computer?
Will this computer be part of one or more networks?
Will there be one or more users for this pc?
WinXP or Vista?
Will this be part of a paperless office, meaning you need a scanner and possibly addtional storage requirements?
Should this computer be Energy Star compliant?

In general, I would suggest a business not purchase a top-of-the-line model, nor one of the economy models. Neither will be cost-effective in the long run. Buy the best you can afford, but not the max. of what is available on any component.

HTH : )

Answer 2

I'd recommend a dual core mobile processor, especially if you are going to transfer documents to/from your customers (don't want the virus scan killing the system when importing docs). For the "hulking" database, is this more because of size or processing power required? Are you working with just a lot of alpha/numeric data fields or are you talking clobs/blobs? Do you have an application that interacts with the database? Are you going to run a 32bit or 64 bit OS? This will affect the amount of memory you can get (32bit - 4 GB of RAM, 64bit - not sure on a laptop but I'm guessing up to about 16 GB given the form factor)

Just about any laptop will meet the requirements for an Office Suite package but the database makes sizing a bit difficult without additional details. I'm guessing this isn't a custom application or the developers would have told you what they believe they need. If this is a commercial or custom vendor delivered solution, check with them for a minimum/recommended specification to run the database.

Oh, when you decide on the product, please make sure you have the ability to back this up. Ensure you have the ability to backup the entire database (check into "cold" and "hot" options based on your particular needs). Also consider encryption options for the laptop. I'm guessing you'll have company and customer proprietary data so make sure you have an option to encrypt any sensitive data. This will also factor into performance but is critical incase the laptop is lost/stolen.

Answer 3

I'd recomend www.dell.co.uk, you can customise it to make it fit your needs.

If you will be using a LOT of applications and stuff i'd recomend a large procesor, ram and a decent size hard drive.

Try;
2.00 GHZ DUO
2 or 4 Gig Ram
100+ Gigabyte Hard drive

I would also recomend Linux if you can get hold of it, it has AMAZING Speed but it lacks a lot of applications which can only be run on windows but I heard you can get a version that will run windows applications.

Answer 4

What type of DB is the big thing. As well as the size.

Generally any current laptop should do.

If you just want to get stuff done go with XP w/1gig RAM and a decent (60gb+ HDD).