Notebooks: Basics & Buying Advice

You'll see the best battery performance, and the best performance overall, if you get a machine with the latest-generation processors inside. Laptops running on Haswell chips are now widely available, so stay away from older processors. Touchscreen laptops are also great in number, but most Windows 8.1 apps you'll be using weren't made for touchscreens. A touch-enabled laptop only makes sense if you play casual games or consume a lot of media on the desktop. Need a DVD drive? Many of the top-tier machines don't ship with them anymore, and you'll need an external drive. Same with storage space; opt for a 256GB or 512GB SSD drive — the speed gains of which are worth the expense — then pick up an external USB 3.0 storage drive.