Desktop Replacement Laptop There has been a trend recently where people are buying portable notebook PCs as their main home computer. Sales of desktop PCs has fallen off considerably and laptops have become more popular than desktops. The requirements for a mostly "stay at home" notebook computer can vary a lot. This is because people use computers for many different things. A teenager into video games has a much different requirement set than his mom who is looking up recipes, sending emails and doing web surfing. What this impacts is processing power, memory and video. The more demanding game applications will require more of all of these. However, for the basic home laptop a moderate combination of these factors will suffice. What is more important in a home desktop replacement notebook computer is the screen. Since this will be your every day computer, a large high-resolution screen is probably the most important consideration. Large laptops with 17 inch wide screens at high resolution are a joy to look at and compare favorably to the best desktop screens. Laptops in this category weigh around 7-10 pounds and usually feature large screens -- say 17 inches or larger. The other nice feature of these machines is that they feature full-sized keyboards unlike the compact notebooks. Price performance is also at it's best in this class of machine since the large size allows for easy to engineer inside parts and the use of less-costly, larger sized components. In today's market a perfectly good laptop capable of running all normal applications with a 17 inch wide screen can be had for less than $1000.   Road Warrior   General Purpose   Desktop Replacement