Earlier in the week I posted a reply on the PPT Newsgroup (A resource everyone using PowerPoint should take advantage of) on a fairly common question – “What should I buy for PowerPoint Presentations?” Of course my answer is ‘the biggest, fastest and most powerful’ but I realise that is not the most budget appropriate answer… So here is my recommendation on the minimum specs for a new computer:
- A lot really depends on your PowerPoint use, if using animation and video playback, and if you will be running more than one application at a time. Here would be my minimum requirements for a laptop today:
- – Intel DuoCore, P4 or Centrino CPU (eg. not a celeron), I do not use AMD but the equivalents.
- – 1 GB of RAM
- – 64 MB of Video RAM (and that is the minimum, with 128-256 MB being highly preferable)
- – On video ram there is a big difference in shared vs. dedicated memory. For PowerPoint to playback animation, flash files, movies and even audio the computer really needs to have dedicated memory (this allows the use of the ‘Hardware Acceleration’ feature). It should be by ATI or Nvidia.
- – Everything else is just a matter of what is offered. I prefer a wide screen for a laptop. Having a physical on/off switch for the wireless is
desirable and you cannot have enough USB ports.
Hope that is helpful.
– Troy @ TLC