When searching for a new laptop you have to decide before hand if you are looking for a desktop replacement or just an additional portable computer. This is important since the price range and features will be widely different between these two different choices.

Although most argue that replacing a desktop with a laptop is not possible, with today’s technology and the right add-ons such as a docking station you can get pretty close to doing just this.  The latest laptops can come equipped with enough memory and processing speed to rival most desktops, however if you are looking to replace a high end desktop with a laptop then be prepared to spend a decent amount of coin.

Stay tuned as we’ll be bringing you through some of the things you should be looking for when purchasing a laptop this year.

You have probably heard these two terms before and been clueless, well it’s not that difficult to understand, basically these refer to a LCD TV’s refresh rate: 60Hz means 60 frames a second; 120Hz means 120 frames a second.  Video is filmed at 24 frames a second and since 24 does not divide evenly into 60 the even frames are shown twice a second and the odd frames are shown three times a second. What this means is that to the trained eye 60Hz LCD TV’s will appear to drag or stutter.

If you go with a 120Hz LCD TV this eliminates the odd ratio because 24 goes into 120 evenly so all frames are shown five times a second. In all honestly the dragging / stuttering on a 60Hz LCD is only really noticeable if you are looking for it, otherwise it’s not very evident at all.  It all comes down to how much you want to spend and how much of a critical eye you have.

This concludes our Television Buying Guide, stay tuned for our laptop buying guide coming right up.

Unlike what most people think, there isn’t that big of a difference between these two, it all depends on how far away you sit from the television and what size of a television you have.  For example, a 32” HDTV with a 1080p resolution isn’t even noticeable for people sitting more than 6 feet away…and if you have a 42” inch HDTV the benefits of 1080p don’t even come into effect unless you are more than 8 feet away from the television.

Although this CNET article is about 2 years old, it still holds very true today and explains the difference much better than we here could ever do…read about 720p VS 1080p (update, the article has been rewritten for 2009).

The general guideline we like to go with is that if your TV is less than 42” than there is no need to pay for a 1080 resolution since the normal viewer will not be able to tell the difference. However if you plan on using the TV as a PC monitor part or full time then you should definitely go with a 1080p.

Our main focus with this guide is value is to bring you up to speed on the best HDTV offers on the best performance relative to the price they will cost you.

PLASMA VS LCD….THE BIG QUESTION.

We won’t get into all the nitty gritty technical differences between LCD and plasma tv’s, the differences and similarities have already been addressed many times including in the following two articles: Plasma vs LCD: Which is right for you? and LCD vs. Plasma.

When flat panel televisions first started gaining popularity there were many differences between the two technologies which made the choice much easier. These days however, the two HDTV camps are very similar in performance and price and in reality you can’t go wrong with either choice unless you are purchasing your TV from the back of a van on skid row.

Important to note is that although burn-in is not even close to the problem it use to be with earlier generations of Plasma TV’s, the fact of the matter is there still is an outside chance that it will occur.  The way to prevent this from happening or at least limit the chance of this happening is to really limit the amount of time static images are present on the screen, essentially this means if you are a gamer or plan to hook your computer up to your TV then do not get a Plasma.  One good thing though is that burn-in most likely occurs in the first 100 hours of use.

If in fact you are in the market for a laptop, Black Friday is probably the absolute best day to find the deal you want, followed by Boxing Day and Cyber Monday respectively.

Before you jump into buying a laptop, there are two very important questions to consider when purchasing not only a laptop, but any computer for that matter. These questions relate to the memory level and operating system that a laptop comes with.

If you are purchasing a brand new laptop in this day and age you should expect nothing less than 2GB of RAM (memory). This is what Windows Vista and the new Windows 7 will require and considering the amount of multimedia applications run on computers these days you will want at least this amount.  If you decide on a laptop that has less than 2GB of RAM we would recommend upgrading to at least 2GB since RAM is no longer a large expense.

If you do decide to purchase and upgrade RAM yourself you should avoid Best Buys Geek Squad and other similar big box stores in-store tech team specialists since they are way over priced and really not worth the dollars you spend on this service.  You are better off asking a tech-savvy friend or attempting it yourself if you have the time to spend reading up on how to do it.

Keep in mind that having memory more than 3GB is excessive in the majority of situations so don’t fall prey to the over aggressive sales people.

Soon Windows 7 will be the standard operating system offered with new computers. Windows 7 will look nicer than Vista & XP, but it is also a lot more resource intensive. Windows XP will run noticeably better on the inexpensive computers available this Black Friday and Windows Vista will probably be avoided at all costs soon due to the many glitches and bugs associated with it.

To conclude the ideal laptop computer this black Friday will come with 3GB of RAM, Windows 7 installed and will cost approximately $500-$600.  Stay tuned to this site as Black Friday 2009 approaches because we’ll bring you the absolute best deals on laptops in all price brackets as soon as they are published by retailers.