| Criteria to personally check on the spot instead of trusting the
salesperson | Tick |
| Show unit: loaded with OS (or else you cannot verify the machine
capability on the spot) | |
| Keyboard: 'Backspace' not square but rectangle; right 'Shift' not on the
right of Up arrow (so that you will not press the wrong button); 'O' does
not look like '0', keyboard button can be detached easily without damage
(e.g. ThinkPad series) for cleaning, every key works | |
| Palm rest: will not discolor (you should be able to guess by looking at
the material, or perhaps you do not mind how your laptop looks after
discoloration); no groove that can trap dirt (e.g. DELL Latitude D630 has
such grooves that trap dirt). | |
| Battery: 5000mAH (less than that means you cannot work long without
power cord. You should be able to see the spec printed on the battery) | |
| Power cord jack size: follows market majority in your area so that it is
easier to find replacement in case of damage or loss. After Lenovo took over
ThinkPad, it enlarged the jack size of T60 causing T60 to be unable to use
T43's power cord. | |
| Optical drive: not a writer (read-only is more durable. It is hard to
change the drive so durability counts) | |
| Volume: loud (usually a laptop computer is loud if it has speaker holes) | |
| Mouse buttons: functional (you will be amazed that many are not working) | |
| Stability: the system does not freeze when the power cord is pulled off
(LENOVO T60 has this annoying problem), the computer does not hang or
restart after the lid is closed when it runs on battery power. | |
| Graphic memory: at least 128MB (use GPU-Z or install a 128MB graphic
game to check this on the spot); has graphic card tag (e.g. ATI. If no tag
then the graphic processing is enough for normal usage only, e.g. typing a
document) | |
| LCD screen: no dead pixel (change the background to black and check if
there is tiny white dot); ratio of screen width over height is 4:3 (some
full screen programs and all wallpapers are in this ratio) instead of 16:9
(this ratio is suitable only if you watch a lot of movies) | |
| Processor: at least 4MB cache; speed and model are as claimed (I was
cheated on this before: claimed to be Pentium 4, but actually just Pentium
Celeron) | |
| RAM: 2GB in one piece / stick, not two pieces of 1GB; DDR2-667 AKA
PC2-5300 (for speed) | |
| Motherboard: at least 965 mobile Intel chipset (to match DDR2-667 RAM
above for speed); dual channel architecture for RAM (T60 is single channel
as shown in the second picture above) | |
| Hard drive: at least 8MB buffer (for speed) | |
| RAM slot: at least two (so that you can add more RAM next time if you
want) | |
| USB BIOS support: available (so that OS can be installed using a USB
optical drive) | |
| Ports: Check each USB and HDMI to make sure
they are working | |
| 'Show windows content while dragging': smooth / no trail when dragging | |
| Avoid purchase at computer fair unless you are sure the shop is already
around for a few years and it is not far from your house (easier follow-up
in case of problem) | |
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