When you are buying a Laptop, you can become feature-hungry. Features that may be of no use to you become a necessity. If you are on a budget, then you try your best to get as many extra features as you can within your price range.
It’s completely natural to have such an episode of greed. But there are certain things that you can skip. You can use your budget to focus on other important features that you need. Oftentimes, the luster of a new product blinds us so much that we end up spending way more than we intended.
Keeping that in mind, here is a list of features that you can probably skip to save yourself some bucks on your next laptop.
1. Fingerprint Reader
First up, Fingerprint Reader. Until a few years back, fingerprint readers were a rage. And with good reason. The prospect of having a futuristic way of unlocking your laptop sounds really cool. While that was one of the reasons fingerprint readers were hit, the major reason was that people thought it made their systems more secure.
That would have been true, if not for the arrival of Windows 10. The way Microsoft does things leaves almost little to no choice to users. Windows 10 was not that much of an improvement on its predecessor Windows 8.1 but it also decreased the importance of having fingerprint readers on your laptop.
With the advent of Windows Hello, the need to use your finger was no longer a need. All you needed was your face, and you could unlock your laptop. But that was not all; Windows 10 required its user to set a password. There was no way out of it. What’s the use of having a fingerprint reader on board your laptop if, in the end, you are going to use the password?
The money you save from this can be better spent on getting a laptop with a better processor and RAM specifications.
2. Backlit Keyboard
Backlit keyboards have come a long way since they were introduced. Their main purpose is to provide users with a method to find their way across the keyboard even in the dark. Today, most laptops have a backlit keyboard or can be configured to have one.
But here’s why backlit keyboards are not really that important- if you are good at typing, you can already find your way around your keyboard in the dim light of the laptop screen. Many laptops offer either a 3-Zone lighting or even an individual key lighting customization setting. The latter means that you can choose what color each of your keys on the keyboard will glow in. It is implied that the more fancy the feature, the more is the pinch on the pocket. When you look around for some good laptops with backlit keyboards, the prices are undoubtedly higher.
As such, a backlit keyboard ends up being nothing but a decoration. If you use your laptop to play games or work in low-light conditions, then this may be an interest to you, but if you are buying a laptop for work purposes, you can probably save the bucks here.
3. Touchscreen
The touchscreen on Laptops sounds cool. But here’s an interesting fact about laptops with a touchscreen- not only do they cost more, but they also drain the battery life out of your laptop. If you have a laptop that can be on standby for about 5hrs or more, having a touchscreen on it would lower its standby capacity to half or even less.
If you have a high-resolution laptop with a 17-inch or 15-inch screen, then that means more pressure on the battery and performance. This is one feature that becomes an extravagance if you are really after the performance on a low budget. If you are a gamer, laptops with a touchscreen are not really a good idea as they will rob you of the classic engaging experience.
Moreover, touchscreen-only adds trouble for the user. You have to be extra careful with your laptop at all times. So if you are going to buy a laptop for school activities or even business activities, then getting a touchscreen defeats the whole purpose.
4. Discrete Graphics
Discrete Graphics means that you have a dedicated graphics card on your laptop. After the craze of Bitcoin and Crypto mining took off, the prices of graphics cards soared. So much so that even gamers started cursing the whole Cryptocurrency thing.
The difference between discrete graphics and integrated graphics it that if you have integrated graphics, then the graphics card does not utilize its own Memory but that of the computer. Discrete graphics, on the other hand, leave your RAM completely undisturbed.
If you are going for discrete graphics, then it will cost more, and you have to make sure that the laptop has a top-of-a-line cooling system otherwise you risk damaging your laptop due to heat generation. Integrated graphics offer a cooler and cheaper solution.
If you are buying a laptop today with discrete graphics and you are on a budget, chances are that you are going to end up with a laptop having an Nvidia MTX 950. To get an idea of how bad an Nvidia MTX 950 is in today’s standard, just Google it. You will find that the new standard for the graphics card is an Nvidia GTX 1050i.
So if you are going to buy a laptop with discrete graphics, and you are on a strict budget, it’s a better idea to avoid it altogether.
5. Windows 10 Pro
Windows 10 may seem user-friendly on the outer side, but Microsoft hasn’t really done any good with Windows 10 in general. If you are going to buy a laptop, you should go with a Windows 10 Home if you must.
Even so, you do not get much freedom when it comes to upgrades. They are kinda forced upon you. With Windows 10 Pro, you may think that you might get some cool new features, but all you get is an outdated and dull voice assistant in Cortana and a sorry excuse for face recognition in Windows Hello.
Not to mention the countless flaws which put your privacy and security at risk.
There is also the fact that you have to use a Microsoft email to sign in. Otherwise, Windows 10 Pro will irritate the life out of you. This also becomes problematic when you have to let someone else handle your laptop, or you need to let your IT advisor have access to your Laptop. In that case, you need to give them the password of your email. And even though Hotmail is nothing compared to Gmail, the risk of privacy breaches remains.
So if have to choose an OS, you should go for options like Linux or Elementary OS. If you must go for Windows 10, then go for the Home edition as Pro is not worth the bucks.
