Whenever you’re having trouble with your laptop, your best bet is probably to have a knowledgeable friend! Short of that, there’s more than enough laptop help, advice, and how-to on the internet…
If you’re looking for buying guides for help selecting a laptop, you’ve got a few options. You can look at customer reviews on websites that sell laptops, but a lot of that is kind of subjective or specific to an individual’s needs. For example, if you want to use a laptop to edit movies, then the guy who bought the laptop to write a bunch of text files is probably not the best guy to ask. Before buying a laptop, you should do a lot of research on the individual laptops you have your eye on, and to help narrow it down, you could post a question up on yahoo answers or a computer forum like Notebookforums.com and en.forum.laptop.org.
Laptop forums, by the way, are also great places to go for general troubleshooting. Oftentimes, general how to and helpme sites aren’t able to address specific needs and problems.
So far, you may have gotten the idea that your best bet is always going to be simply asking someone who knows. There’s a lot to be said for websites like eHow.com and wikihow.com, but your problem isn’t always going to be specifically addressed on those sites. When you ask a forum full of knowledgeable, experienced laptop users, somebody there is bound to know what you’re talking about, because they’ve been through it themselves. You get instant, customized feedback to your query.
If you’re not too familiar with these forums, some things you’ll want to consider when posting…
Be very specific
“My laptop’s being a jerk!” isn’t going to get you any helpful feedback. “My FireWire port won’t receive any video” is a little better. Other forum users can’t help you unless they know precisely what’s going on.
Mention your make and model
A lot of problems are specific to certain types of laptops and peripherals. Oftentimes, it can be a compatibility issue.
Answer questions when you can
It’s just good form to offer help when you can. If you’ve experienced another user’s malfunction before and you figured out how to fix it, help out!
Check the forums before asking a question
Sometimes, your question might have already been asked and answered a few posts down. Check the first couple pages of threads before starting a new one.
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very informative.
I am planing for pruchase of Compaq Preserio series. Whats you think about it.
My Basic needs are C2D 2.0, 2GB RAM, 200GB HDD
regards,