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On top of that, most laptops today include Microsoft's Windows 8 as an operating system, but the radically different Windows 10 is coming in the summer of 2015 (but skip down to our FAQ for why you shouldn't worry about it).
That's a lot to consider, even before getting into screen size, budget, or task-specific features, so we'll instead begin with a few favorite picks that should get you pointed in the right direction.
Three rules for buying a laptop
1. Don't buy too much laptop
Go back several years, and $1,000 was considered a good price for a budget laptop. Today, that's considered premium, and only one company, Apple, gets away with pegging its least-expensive laptop at just around that (the 11-inch MacBook Air is $899).
So when a reader emails us to say something along the lines of: "I'm looking for a laptop for school, and I've only got $1,500 to spend," we generally tell them to ease up on the gas pedal and look at a mainstream slim laptop for $700 to $900 or so as a starting point.
And it's not just underpowered plastic boxes in that price range, either. Intel Core i5 CPUs and touchscreens in slim, reasonably attractive bodies, with 128GB SSD hard drives are available in that price range -- which is more than adequate for most users, unless you're planning on working with 4K video or playing very high-end PC games.
Long story short, many consumers have been buying too much laptop for years. Touchscreens and solid state hard drives have moved prices up a bit, while Chromebooks and sub-$200 experiments such as the Intel Compute stick have pulled in the other direction.
2. Think about traveling light
The first question I have when someone asks, "What kind of laptop should I buy?" is this: How many days per week to you plan on carrying your laptop around with you?
The answer to that should determine what screen size your laptop should have, which largely defines the system size and weight. Frequent commutes suggest a lightweight 13-inch ultrabook (similar to the MacBook Air). Even better, ultraportable laptops with screen that measure 12 inches or less, are now coming equipped with better processors and higher resolution screens.
More common midsize laptops, such as the 15-inch model probably sitting on your desk right now, are really not much fun to lug around more than once a week or so, so it's worth thinking about getting a smaller one and connecting it to an external monitor for desktop use.
Lastly, if you're convinced you're never going to need to take your laptop along with you, or at best very, very rarely, then a big 17-inch or larger desktop replacement is an option. Keep in mind that most of these big laptops can't run for very long away from a power outlet, and the intended audience for the handful we've seen lately is primarily PC gamers.
3. Design is king
If there's one thing we've learned from benchmarking and testing hundreds of laptops, it's that under the hood, a lot of these systems are awfully similar. I'd go so far as to say that, with most laptops constructed from the same pool of stock CPUs, hard drives, RAM, and video cards, it's dangerously close to being a commodity product.
That's where design comes in. If most laptops within a given class, and incorporating similar components, are going to run similarly, it's the look and feel that's really going to push you toward one model over another.
Think of a laptop as a very visual extension of your personality. You may carry it around with you all day, or even all over the country. You send emails from it, store personal photos and documents, and use it to connect with people on social networks.
Like any personal accessory, such as a jacket or a pair of glasses, you should choose a laptop with a style and design that works for you, as well as one with a keyboard and touchpad you find comfortable and easy to use. That's what Apple nails really well -- the parts inside of a MacBook are not that different from other laptops (although the operating system is another story), but the human interface tools are fantastic, and the design has become a standard for what a lot of people think a laptop should look like.