With prices ranging from $300 to $3,000 and up, even setting a budget for a new laptop can be a daunting experience. Then you've got to figure out which brand and model to buy in a market stuffed with thousands of options. Here's how to think about the process and find your perfect portable.
What Are Your Options?

The lines separating laptop categories have blurred in recent years, but in rough terms, the market shakes out like this (from smallest to largest):

Netbooks: These are ultracheap, low-power machines intended as secondary devices, for use while traveling or for those on extreme budgets. Specs vary widely. Their screens are typically in the 8- to 12-inch range, keyboards are small and performance is often sluggish, thanks to low-power processors.

Ultralights: Often touted as the "CEO's laptop," ultralights sacrifice some performance for extreme portability while hanging on to a solid sense of style. Screens are usually 12 to 13 inches in size, and prices are often extremely high.

Mainstream notebooks: The sweet spot of the market encompasses a vast swath of 14- to 16-inch laptops, and prices and performance are all over the map. Most notebooks sold fall into this category.

Desktop replacements: A dying breed, these hefty notebooks with 17-inch (or bigger) screens defy description as "laptops" and are instead intended to be placed on a desk and tethered to power permanently. Performance is invariably the focus, with many machines designed with games in mind. Pricing is usually extremely high.

Key Laptop Features

So, how does one go about sifting through the mess of terms and acronyms to determine which laptop to buy? Pay attention to the following specs:

Screen size: The most important consideration in your buying decision. Only you know how much screen you need, so check out a few laptops in person to see what works best for you. Apart from the size, consider the pixel counts. Remember: There's no such thing as too much resolution. RAM: No computer today should be without 3 GB of RAM, minimum.

Intel chipCPU: At least an Intel Core 2 Duo is essential for anything north of a netbook. New model chips will be arriving in January, however, so tread lightly.

Graphics: So-called discrete graphics are all the rage and for good reason: Many apps now make use of genuine graphics capabilities, and integrated graphics are just not up to the task any more.

Optical drive: Want to watch DVDs on the plane? Make sure you have an optical drive.

Hard drive: Even ultracheap laptops regularly include a 250-GB hard drive or higher, which is plenty. It's rarely an issue on computers today.
New and Upcoming

This is an industry that changes with blazing speed, so expect that what you buy today will be obsolete tomorrow. It simply can't be helped. That said, a few big new features have recently hit the scene that merit special attention.

Blu-ray drives: The jury's still out on high-definition optical media, so this is a gamble. Adding a Blu-ray reader (or writer) will add a pretty penny to your purchase price.

WWAN: Many laptops offer an integrated wireless WAN modem as an option, giving you internet access when Wi-Fi isn't available. Remember though that you're locked in to the carrier and technology that comes with the computer, and data plans cost (a lot) extra.

Multitouch touchpads: The latest touchpads do new tricks, letting you use multiple fingers to zoom, scroll, rotate and perform other actions you'd previously have to do with a mouse. They can be tricky to get the hang of, though, especially with pads that eschew separate buttons.

Touchscreens: The tablet is back, and nearly all manufacturers are outfitting laptops with multitouch-capable screens. We're not sure how useful this really is, though, and the additional cost added to your notebook can be enormous.