2) Buy off the shelf, already put together or build your own (customize it):

There are basically two ways you can go about making this purchase:

Buy a laptop off the shelf, already put together and ready to go.

Build your own, customize it to be exactly what you want.

In the beginning we decided that your laptop was going to be for primarily household use. Now we are going to make the assumption that you decided to buy new and not refurbished. If you were buying refurbished, it would be comparable to buying it off the shelf, you most likely will not have the opportunity to customize it.

Buying new, off the shelf is usually a little less expensive than customizing and you can probably find one that has all the characteristics of List 1 above, plus some extras you may or may not want. But in order to get everything on List 1 and some or all of List 2, you will have to customize. Personally, I believe customizing, or "building your own" is the way to go because you have control over almost all the features of the computer. You decide the size of the hard drive, the amount of RAM, what kind of CD or DVD drive comes with it, etc. Otherwise, you are buying what the manufacturer put together and that may work for you but there were some features I wanted and the only way to get them was to build my own. Shop around, see what’s available and if you find a laptop with a package that has everything you want, great. Just know that if you don’t find one with the package you want you do have the option of building your own.

Take a Trip without Leaving Home

You’re almost there. You’ve decided on a laptop for household use that you are going to purchase new and build it yourself. Now it’s time to shop around and find out where you will get the best deal. The laptop will be yours, no kids allowed. But you still have the family computer right? You know the desktop that you never get to use because the kids or your spouse are always on it? Will, kick everybody off for a couple of hours, get online and start comparison shopping. You can do all the comparing, building, etc right from your house and when you find exactly what you want you can pay on line and have it delivered. It beats running all over town or calling the various stores and hoping you get someone on the phone that has some sense.