Laptops Arena

In this article, we are going to treat a different subject; that of cheap laptops for kids. I must say, writing this article is very fun because it gave me the chance to check out some different laptops that what I was used to writing about and I bet I’ll give some ideas of what to buy for your kid on his next birthday.

For those of you have seen Star Wars, you must be familiar with the R2-D2 (must be read Artoo Deetoo) character, that fictional and funny droid from the movie. If you kid is at least 4 years of age, you can buy this Artoo laptop for $15. It’s a funny looking blue and white laptop with an unusual keyboard which s going to help your kid to explore the wonders of the English vocabulary. It has 8 different learning activities that are going to keep your kid busy for quite a while. The small LCD is easy to read and this small gadget only needs 2 AA batteries. I bet your child is going to have hours of fun with this cheap laptop for kids.

For $100 you can buy the VTech Genius notebook which has a very cute design and you can spot it from miles away as being a great laptop for kids. It comes closer to a real laptop than the Artoo. It has an alphanumerical keyboard and the letters of the alphabet are spread from A to Z rather than using the QWERTY system. It has a touchpad just like a real laptop and there is also an external mouse attached. The animated LCD is bound to catch your child’s attention. The main reason why this kid’s laptop is more expensive is because it has 30 different activities compared to the Artoo that has only 8. Not only are these activities going to improve the child’s vocabulary, but it is also going to help him work on his math, phonics and other important aspects that are part of your children’s education. This is an ideal gift for your child because it provides fun and education so it’s going to make him happy and you’ll also be happy when you see him learn.



If you have a pretty young lady that awaits a special gift to please her, you could spend $25 and get her the Barbie B-Smart learning laptop. Even if she doesn’t like it, she will fall in love with all that pink design that is girlish and childish just the way they love it. The pink lid has the Barbie logo and a floral imprint finish that your daughter is going to love. I must say, I do envy this laptop because it’s so slim and I sure with my Toshiba was as thin as this laptop. It has some 1^st and 2^nd grade learning and fun activities.

The 80 activities of this Barbie laptop are new ways to learn math problems, logic problem and even spelling problems and the best part is Barbie is right there to help your girl on her quest. The keyboard follows the QWERTY system so once your daughter grows up, she is going to have no trouble in adjusting to the transition between this kid laptop and a regular laptop or computer keyboard. The mouse is also pink with a beautiful flower imprint and the mouse pad is shaped like a flower, just to keep us faithful to the Barbie design. The screen is powered up by back lid so this laptop can be used under low light conditions. The super cute gadget also comes with a pair of matching ear buds that allow your girl to play even when you want an afternoon of peace and quiet. There are some cool activities in Spanish so your girl can learn the basics of another language while she is still a youngster. When you close the laptop, it looks just like a pink briefcase with a handle that makes it very easy to be carried around.



And here comes my personal favorite: the Wall-E learning laptop. I saw the movie and fell in love with that cute and generous little robot and I’m sure he won the hearts of most of the people that saw it. The shape of the Wall-E laptop resembles perfectly the little robot we saw in the movie. With 15 different activities, your kid is bound to have some fun with this awesome toy or laptop. Call it whatever you like, but I think it even looks cute as a decoration in the children’s room. The QWERTY keyboard can be flipped up when you child is not using the laptop and that makes it look exactly like a toy because you can’t see the QWERTY keys. You can control the laptop by using Wall-E’s arms which are act like moving controllers. You will love Wall-E because his right eyes blink just like in the movie and he looks so real! It’s a good laptop for boys but it can also be fun for girls if they enjoyed the movie and liked this character as much as I did. It runs with 3 AA batteries and you can order one online from Toys R US or Amazon.com.



I think kid’s laptops make a perfect gift because it’s hard to buy something that represents a fun activity for your child and that doesn’t represent a total waste of money for you. You are going to love the fact that your kid is going to have so much fun while learning things that are essential for his primary education. Math and spelling have never been this much fun to learn and it helps improve your child’s vocabulary. I think that all the laptops I’ve listed above are not as expensive as you may have thought at first and it’s a small price to pay for your kid’s education. Browse online for different other models at really competitive prices and you’ll get an idea of what to buy for your child at home.

How can you turn your laptop into a gaming laptop? It’s one of the easiest questions even but it does have a very long answer. It’s easy because it’s basically a matter of upgrading certain components. But you have to know exactly which part to upgrade and why it needs upgrading. We are going to go through the basics of gaming notebook components and in this article we will try to explain how to turn your laptop into a gaming laptop.

Before you start doing any upgrading there are 2 things that you need to pay attention to. First, you have to make sure that the parts you want to change are not soldered to the motherboard. In some cases, components like processors are attached to the motherboard and replacing them basically means you have to replace two components instead of just one. Second, before you open up the unit, you have to make sure that you do not void the warranty if your laptop is still in the warranty period. There is usually a sticker that covers one of the screws that you normally need to remove in order to upgrade and once you remove that sticker, the warranty is no longer available. Also keep in mind that buying new laptop components means there is some investment to be done. Laptop components are more expensive that desktop computer parts.

Now that we have cleared that, let’s start with what you need to buy to turn your laptop into a gaming laptop. A good gaming laptop should have at least 2 GB of RAM. In our days, manufacturers put some 3 or 4 GB into a mainstream laptop. Pay attention because some laptops have a limit of RAM that they can accept. You may have noticed that lots of laptop reviews write “2 GB upgradeable to a maximum 4 GB”. The basic idea is that the more RAM you have, the more applications you can run simultaneously.  The next important thing is the processor. Today, laptops usually come with dual core processors. Dual core means twice the speed so the better you processor is, the faster your games and other applications will run. Top of the line gaming laptop have quad processor and they also use the new Intel i7 CPUs which are currently the best on the market. These processor are very expensive, so an Intel Core 2 Duo T8300 let’s say should to the trick for some serious game play.



The available disk space is also an important part of gaming computers. Since new games can occupy even 10 GB of space, you should have at least 160 GB of available storage. Laptops usually come with 250 GB or 320 GB (of course, there are laptops with 500 GB of HDD) of free space and this is better because you don’t have to make back up copes of your files on DVDs all the time to free some space on your laptop.

And here comes the most important part of all: the video card. Changing the graphics card on your laptop is a very difficult process that takes a lot of time and you may have to dissemble most of your laptop. If you are not careful enough, you may damage certain laptop parts when taking them out or putting them back together. On new laptop models, you can get access to the graphics card by simply removing one of the bottom panels that reveals most upgradeable laptop components. Older laptops require more steps in order to complete the upgrading process. The first thing you have to do is remove the hinge covers by prying them up and pulling them away from the chassis. Remember to check if your laptop supports the graphics card that you want to install. This information is found in the laptop’s manual, usually available for download from the manufacturer’s website.



The next step would be detaching the keyboard by removing some screws. Be careful where you put the screws because in the end, when you have to put everything back together, you are supposed to know exactly where each screw came from. Then you have to remove the entire display by gently removing the screws which are located on the bottom and on the back of the laptop. Then you have to unplug the video plus the wireless antenna cables which will be revealed. After that, remove the optical drive (there is a latch located at the bottom of the notebook which lets you slide the drive out).

Then you must remove the shell by getting rid of the screws. You will find that there are usually about a couple of screws that keep the video card attached to the unit so just remove those, put in the new card and then reverse the entire process that we described in this article and you should be able to get a new and improved graphics system. The ATI Radeon HD 5970 is the fastest and therefore the best graphics card in the world. It’s big and bad, not to mention powerful but probably most of you can’t afford it since it costs about $950 which is the price of a good mainstream laptop. I think you really have to be a gaming maniac in order to spend that much money on a graphics card.



It would be nice if your video card had at least 256 MB of video memory (512 MB would be even nicer). It is recommended that the memory is dedicated because integrated video memory means that those cards are part of the motherboard and they take out from the total RAM. You will notice that the best gaming laptop have 512 MB of memory and Alienware even has 1 GB. This improves the quality and the frame rate of the game play and it provides you with high quality gaming experience. Remember to make sure that whatever part you wish to replace is indeed upgradeable before you go around and disassembly your laptop. Be careful where you put the screw and detached parts because you are going to have to put this laptop back together once you’re done.

We have spoken a lot about the advantages of buying a refurbished laptop. It’s an easy way that helps you get the laptop you have always wanted at a cheaper price than a brand new unit. If people were not convinced about the efficiency of this method, the warranty period was supposed to convince them that they are not buying just any piece of cheap junk, but a laptop that is backed up by the guarantee of the manufacturer that it has been reviewed and all errors and problems have been fixed. Well, another way for you to buy a laptop if you don’t have enough money to spend, is getting a laptop that you can pay monthly fees for.

Laptop monthly payments mean you pay a fixed sum of money each month, for a predetermined period until you have fully covered the entire cost of the unit (plus some interest).  The advantage is that the sum of money you pay is smaller than the total cost of the laptop so it’s easier for the buyer to include the payment in their monthly budget. Finding a financing solution for a new laptop is easy. Even if it’s simpler to just pay the entire cost of the laptop when you buy rather that complicate your life with another bill, people with a low budget often consider monthly payments as a good option not only for a laptop, but even for a television, washing machine, other house hold items and even for a new car.

Even if you have a bad credit, in our days it is not that difficult to get financing for something. It is easy to find a lender thanks to the internet. Since the online environment has made our life much easier and we can pay our bills online using our credit cards, why shouldn’t be able to find some financing solutions using this very useful tool? Not only can you find a lender on the internet but there are different website that can take care of this entire process for you. Such websites give you the possibility to buy laptops from good and respected manufacturer like HP, Toshiba or Dell. When you find the model that suits you best, it’s only a matter of filling in some online forms and in the end you get everything in your mail. The prices for the laptops on these websites are very ok so basically anyone can afford a new laptop.



If you are the kind of person that likes to check out the merchandise before buying it, it’s easy to get credit though local retailers. You have to visit different stores that sell laptops on monthly payments and then choose which one has the best prices and policy for you. Since stores will do almost anything to sell their items, there are lots of perks even for people that don’t have the best financial situation. There are also stores and offers that give you the possibility to buy a laptop without having to pay anything for a couple of months and start paying later on. When you choose to buy a laptop with monthly payments, make sure your read the policy very carefully as some retailers have huge interest that are written in small letters at the bottom of the contract and you may end up paying lots of money without knowing why. This is why it’s very important to read any type of contract carefully before signing it.  Always be on the lookout for promotion especially now with all this holiday seasons fuss. Stores are offering really good laptop at very good prices and who knows? Maybe you can afford a new one without having to do any kind of monthly payments.  When you go into a store, make sure you consult a specialized sales person that can give you exact and accurate details about that store’s financial plans.



You may not know this, but your credit card is one important tool that helps you get some cheap monthly payments. You can get some useful and nice cash back rewards and some even help you get extensions to warranties. That’s why I love credit cards; they always give me so many possibilities. Some stores even offer discounts if you pay directly with your credit card. Getting a credit card is easy and depending on the emitting bank, it can also be free (anyway, the fee for getting a credit card is very low).



Another way of getting a laptop with monthly payments is the high risk loan. This type of loan is usually given to people with bad credit because it’s the most aggressive type of loan that should only be made in case of emergencies. This payday loan is very drastic and if you don’t make you payments on time, you are risking some very high penalties. The interest is also enormous compared to other types of loan so you had better think twice before adventuring yourself and making such a big step.



If you are a student looking for a laptop, the government offers different financing options that the ones stated above. In some cases, students even have a shot at getting free laptops depending on the school where they study. The corporate environment also gets some pretty good deals on laptop as they normally purchase a large number of units and this generates huge discount and certain advantages on monthly payments. If you have good credit, you shall have no problem in getting a laptop with monthly payments at an interest that isn’t out of this world.It’s up to you to decide if it’s easier for you to just pay all the money at once and not get too complicated with extra papers and interest or if it’s easier to add another small amount of money to your monthly bills. As you can see, monthly payments on laptops are a big area and there are lots of possibilities and option for you to choose from.

In one of our previous articles we spoke about stolen laptops and how dangerous this could be as it is a threat to our identity. People that have their laptops stolen are bound to be victims of identity theft. Corporate companies that have their laptops stolen are risking to lose some important information stored on the unit and if that information falls into the wrong hands it could lead to blackmail or serious prejudice of the company. In this article we are going to see if there are ways of tracking stolen laptop.

One of the best methods to track down a stolen laptop is installing software that will help you do just that. Adeona, for instance, is a system that helps us track down the stolen laptop with no need of involving any second party. The privacy preserving feature means that the owner is the only one that can track the laptop using Adeona. The best news is that Adeona is available for download and it is free to use. All you have to do is download it and install it on your laptop. The disadvantage is that the stolen laptop has to be connected to the internet in order to send you signal of its location.

Adeona checks the location one every 30 minutes. It has a very simple way of working. It simply collects the laptop’s internal IP address, then it checks the external IP from any third party reporting service, then it tries to see if the wireless network to which the laptop is located has any mane and it will also give you the names of the routers nearby. It could also send a photo using iSight camera if it’s available. This information is encrypted and stored safely and in the future is uploads all this information to the OpenDHT network.

After you download and install Adeona, you have to choose a password and make sure it’s something difficult to figure out (I’m telling you this because most people choose easy passwords like their birth date or the name of some close relative). After installing this software, in will quietly run in the background and send details to the server at a pre-established period of time. On your desktop, a new file will appear. It is named “adeona-retreivecredential.ost”. You must copy this file somewhere else, like make a backup CD or simply send it to your e-mail address. This file is important because it helps you retrieve details of your stolen laptop.

Once these steps have been completed, now you can actually begin tracking the stolen laptop. Adeona Recovery Tools will be installed together with Adeona (so make sure you don’t deselect this feature upon installation of the program). Run the Recovery Tool and now you must enter the location of the .ost file you previously backed up. You most also enter the password you chose during the installation. Now, Adeona will connect to its server and manage to recover the details we mentioned before and put them in a .txt file. After you get the IP address of the stolen laptop, you can use IP2Location which is a program that can give you more details about that IP address. Be careful though, because the thief can stop Adeona and therefore you can no longer get the details.



Another similar application is Prey. It has the same working pattern meaning that it send out reports at a pre-established time period (let’s say 30 minutes). This one can also give you a list of the programs that are running on the stolen laptop and even a desktop screenshot. The cool thing about this application is that if you have a webcam, it can send you a photo of the thief. This program has a remote activation system and this means you choose when you want it to run. In the meantime, it just stays there in absolute silence. Using the Prey web control panel it can send you information about the location of the stolen laptop and if you want, it can be sent directly to our e-mail address.

This program will be useless if the thief formats the hard disk drives after he steals it. However, in most cases, thieves tend to buzz around the laptop a bit searching for valuable information and that gives you enough time to track it down. There have been some successful cases where people actually got a picture of the thief using the integrated webcam of the laptop and that is all the evidence you need to easily find the culprits.



As you can see, tracking down a stolen laptop is easier that finding a stolen cell phone where the thieves usually remove the SIM card right after the theft. In the end, it’s all a matter of luck. If the one who steals your laptop is smart enough to erase all the data stored on the hard disk then it’s going to be pretty hard to find them. Remember that laptop thieves steal notebook so that they can resell them and that is going to make it even more difficult to find the real person responsible for the theft.

Companies and business people will show more interest in protecting the data on the laptop rather than actually getting the notebook back. For these people, there are special programs that encrypt the data in such a manner that it’s extremely difficult for a plain thief to decrypt it. You can encrypt and entire disk or just some important files and folders, depending on the amount of information you want to protect. Such programs can even automatically delete all the data that you wish to remain secret and this is one of the most efficient ways to protect yourself against identity theft.



Remember that it’s always better to prevent that to combat. Try not to store information like your bank account or credit card number, nor any type of valuable information that fallen  into the wrong hands can produce even more harm than a simple stolen laptop.

In some of our past articles, we spoke a lot about which is the best choice for a gaming laptop. In terms of brands, Alienware is by far the best choice for a gaming laptop. It is also the most expensive one. We said that the Alienware m17x is one of the best gaming laptops around. But it is not the only one. The Alienware m15x is like the m17x's younger brother so it can be tagged as one of the world's best gaming laptops.

The beautiful silver coating is what attracted me most in terms of laptop design. In bright light, it looks like a shiny diamond that inspires both power and elegance. If some may consider it boring and not gaming laptop looking like, other will be very attracted to the simplicity of this beautiful laptop. The omnipresent alien head is available on this laptop model as well. The beauty of the design does not compensate durability. There are some creaks that all if you will notice if you ever get the chance to use this laptop. Just when you start opening the lid, the sound is pretty annoying. The keys are backed up by a blue LED and they offer positive feedback each time you type. One thing that surprised us with this durable laptop is the flexing of the keyboard. This is only noticeable in certain areas and it's nothing to be worried about.


The 15.4 display offers a resolution of 1920 x 1200 pixels. The 6.12 pounds of this laptop will add up with whatever you decide to put in the Smart Bay. It can either be a secondary hard drive, an extra battery or a Blu-ray optical drive. The number of ports and connections is sufficient to make every type of user happy. It has a total of 3 USB ports, an Ethernet port, the swappable Smart bay, a 7-in-1 media card reader, an Express Card slot, a HDMI port, a FireWire port and the regular headphones out and microphone in jack. In the palm rest area, the heat can become quite pronounced and disturbing but it's something you expect to find in a laptop that has powerful components. The fan does not make any disturbing noise.



The price is pretty spicy but when you get to use the nVidia GeForce 8800M GTX graphics card with 512 MB of video memory you will see that it was worth making that financial effort. The performance of the video card is awesome and once you use this laptop for playing games, you can never go with anything weaker. It takes one day to get used to the performance and way longer to forget about it. The Binary GFX feature will help you make the graphics card run off of the integrated memory and this feature will help you save some serious battery life if you are traveling and need that extra power. You can go with the Media Center remote control that comes in handy when you want to watch some nice Blu-ray movies. Alien FX is definitely one of the coolest features we have seen a gaming laptop because it allows you to choose between different colors for the lid and touch pad border depending on the program you are going to run. People that are into the cool design of a laptop are going to love this feature.



The aluminum name plate which has the name of the user is another cool feature that can be personalized. Unfortunately that name plate can be easily detached by removing the 4 screws so in case it gets stolen, it will be hard to prove that unit is yours. The 2.8 GHz Intel Core 2 Extreme X9000 combined with 4 GB of RAM are the perfect combination for pretty much anything you want to use this laptop for. Is this really the world's best gaming laptop? Well, the multi taking possibilities would definitely give a positive answer to this question. From office work, to student work, multimedia work and game play work, this laptop can cover pretty much any type of computing activity. Like I said, if a laptop is good for gaming, then it's good for pretty much everything else. The 2.0 mega pixel webcam is going to be your best friend when you use video chatting programs like Skype because it beats all the regular 1.3 mega pixel webcams out there. The images are clear under different light conditions. the PCMark Vantage score for the Alienware is 3767 which is a notch weaker than the Asus M70sa which scored 3784 on this very same test.



The starting price for the Alienware m15x is $1800 but if you want a unit with similar specs to ours, it going to cost about $4800. I know the price is going to make you jump 3 feet high with anger but think of it as a long term investment. Also think of all the benefits you can get and think about Alieenware's reputation of being the best gaming laptop manufacturer. The combination of the Core 2 Duo Extreme processor with the 8800M GTX graphics card is equal to speed and performance all in one very nice looking laptop. Few people have ever regretted buying an Alienware for gaming. You can always customize your own model as this $4800 one has all the top of the line specs that were available.



Remember that the reviewed unit came with an extra battery, a Blu-ray burner and a secondary hard drive with 300 GB of disk capacity. This is a premium gaming laptop and if there were a category above premium, Alienware would definitely fit in that one with the m15x. It's only a matter of how much money you have to spend. You have a standard one year warranty period and if you want this period to be extended, you have to pay an extra $200 for two years in total and $300 for three years. In conclusion, the 15 inch Alienware m15x wins the race against many 17 inch desktop replacements and so called gaming laptop wannabees.