Laptop Buying Guide for Medical Transcriptionists and Bloggers

Foreword: A desktop connected with a foot pedal and a headphone is all that what is needed for medical transcription and a notebook (laptop) for a medical transcriptionist is not a necessity at all, but a luxury. But how is the idea of laptop for medical transcription if an MT (home based or independent contractor) needs a little freedom moving between rooms or occasionally outdoors for some emergency? This article is focused in that direction, a laptop buying guide for medical transcriptionists. Of course, you can’t think of it if you’re working in a medical transcription company unless you’re permitted to carry it with you to your office!

Gone were those days when many disadvantages would hinder the buying decision of a laptop like high cost, short battery usage time, heaviness, extra precautions needed for handling and the fear that prolonged use of laptops could lead to impotency. Notebooks have now become an inseparable workstation for many of us on the move. So, what factors should one look into while going for a notebook? I’m sharing with you the factors that should be taken into consideration while hunting out for a laptop in general and in particular for medical transcriptionists and bloggers. I’m focusing on buying a new one as one cannot expect warranty or genuineness with used or refurbished ones. Assuming that you are not a techie, I’ve tried to make it as simple and short as possible, a laptop buying guide for medical transcriptionists and bloggers. Here are those guidelines for you:

Necessity

First of all, to choose the right laptop with the right set of features at the right price, you will need to figure out the purpose for which you are going to use your machine. Either you may be a home user, student, frequent flier, business user, gamer or multimedia author. For eg., in my case, I’m a home transcriptionist and an occasional blogger, who just want to break the monotony of work and move between the rooms or occasionally outdoors if any need arise.

So the minimal requirements that I would expect in a notebook could be summed up as:

1. Wireless or wired Internet connectivity.
2. A word processor.
3. An audio player.
4. Foot pedal and headphone connectivity.
5. External mouse and keypad connectivity.
6. Reasonable storage space, speed, price, weight, warranty period and battery usage time.

Similarly, you could chart down your needs and start scoring out one by one as they are fulfilled while zeroing in on a notebook.

Portability

One of the prime reasons for me to have a laptop is the portability, the need to take my computer from one place to another. After all, laptops are made for that, to make you wire free! I am in front of my computer almost 14-15 hours a day. I need to break that monotony at least by staying away from my desktop on weekends or on week days after I’ve finished MT chores, to sit some time for blogging away from my workstation. If portability is the only advantage that I’m looking for, I could have settled for a smart phone/PDA but I need portability along with the advantages of a computer.

Price

Laptops cost twice as compared with well-equipped desktops. You can actually buy two well-equipped desktops for the price of a laptop. So if you need just portability between two places, you could settle down with two separate desktops!

Upgradeability

Laptop computers are mostly non-upgradeable. Whatever processor, video card (inbuilt with the motherboard), sound card (also inbuilt), and screen, that comes with the laptop are the same parts that the laptop will end with. While it is possible to upgrade RAM, hard drives, and sometimes processors, these upgrades can be expensive. You can also upgrade newer laptops through their USB, USB 2.0, and Firewire ports. Only USB 2.0 and Firewire ports can run high speed devices, for e.g., hard drives and DVD drives. While much improvement has been made in the speed and price of external drives, upgrading a laptop this way adds weight and decreases portability. (However, it is a very good idea to back up all your important files to a CD, DVD, external hard drive, web storage etc. at least once a week. – Read Computer Maintenance Checklist)

Games

The need for games in notebooks varies from person to person as some may need those thrilling games in their notebooks to while away the time while transiting or to relax or to turn away the attention for a while to relieve the stress of work. I’m in no way concerned with the games as I don’t need any resource-occupying games in my laptop, and I may need to spend at least $2,000-2500 for a laptop that can play current games at a respectable speed.

Processor

Our processor should have at least two cores, as single core processors are outdated technology right now. There is an array of Intel processors to choose from and a new Intel processor is released every six months! If price is the determining factor, you could even settle for Intel Celeron Processor. Similarly, you have a range of processors from AMD to choose for your notebook PC.

Currently, the processor speeds range anywhere from 1 GHz (gigahertz) to 3.7 GHz. If you’re an intense user of those gaming and video applications, you could go for 3 GHz processor while you could settle for less depending on your needs, and 2 GHz will be the moderate one that’s available in the market now.

Hard Disk

Nowadays most of the laptops come with minimum of 160 500 GB hard disk space. Of course, if you could get a larger one for a bargain, it is better. Though medical transcriptionists tend to destroy any file related to medical transcription aged more than a week, if you want to store any other huge video files or collections like MP3 apart from your MT work, you could go for a large sized disk. If you look at the speeds of hard drives, a typical laptop hard disk drive rotates at 5,400 rpm, with 7,200 rpm models available for a slight price premium while gamers tend to go for 10000 rpm hard drives due to their fast transfer rate.

RAM

Most of the low-priced laptops are sold with 512MB of RAM. Okay, if you need to use your laptop for occasional typing and web browsing with the completely free operating system and open Office, Ubuntu, you could get away with 512 MB, but if you need to try Windows somewhere down the lane, you need 2 GB RAM. Many laptops have only one memory expansion slot, and you will end up throwing away the old memory if you need to upgrade. Hence it is important that the memory is purchased along with the computer.

Batteries

Lithium batteries are superior compared to others. A typical full size laptop will run between one to two hours on its battery or even some laptops can run between six to eight hours also on their batteries. If you need a long battery life, inquire about battery life before purchasing the laptop. A 4-cell battery could weigh less with less usage time while a 9-cell battery could give a more usage time with more weight but usually a 6-cell battery would be ideal taking into consideration the weight and usage time. Once charged fully, a 6-cell battery should provide you a usage time of about 2-1/2 hours.

DVD-RW

Gone are those days with CD-RW. Nowadays DVD-RW (Digital Versatile Disc-Rewritable) drives are standard on almost all laptops, and it can hold more data compared to CD-RW and play DVD movies. Of course, the DVD movie performance will depend on the speed and video performance of the laptop.

The latest available DVD rewritable drives come with dual layer recording, which allows DVDs to store significantly more data, up to 8.5 gigabytes per side, per disc, compared with 4.7 gigabytes for single-layer discs. Hence it is advisable to go for these.

Floppy Drive

With the advent of CDs and DVDs, floppy drives have become obsolete; hence no need to incorporate that at all.

Video/Graphics

The size, brightness, and clarity of a laptop screen are best shopped for in person. Usually the larger the screen, the heavier the laptop, and the more use of power. The screen sizes vary from 13 inches to 17 inches that are commonly available in the market now. Hence it would better go for a medium sized, say 14 or 15 inch wide, display screens to optimize the weight and the consumption of power.

The screen resolution of any notebook is a function of the graphics adapter, amount of Video RAM available, the size (pixel density) of the screen shown (e.g. 640×480), and the number of colors used. These screen features are generally defined by the type of output the screen can produce like VGA (video graphics array), SVGA (super video graphics array), XGA (extended graphics array), WXGA (wide extended graphics array) and SXGA (super extended graphics array). I’m not going deep into the technical details as WXGA TFT-LCD (Thin film transistor liquid crystal display) is the widely used output currently and we could settle for that for our needs.

Discrete Graphics V/s Integrated Graphics: If you’re a gamer or a multimedia enthusiast, you could go for mother boards with discrete graphics cards like NVIDIA or AMD than settling with Intel’s integrated solutions like Intel Graphics Media Accelerator (GMA) 900.

Connectivity

All new laptops should have a local area network (LAN) port for plugging into a wired network. In addition, all new laptops should have wireless network capabilities. New wireless laptops will be able to use the highest wireless speed available which is termed “wireless N.” Some laptops are still being made with the older wireless B/G capability.

Web Camera

A 2 megapixel integrated digital web camera will serve you the purpose of keeping in touch with family and friends or to have a video conference while on the move. Of course, with more megapixel camera, the images produced would be crispier at the receiving end.

Warranty

Most notebooks are provided with one-year warranty nowadays so as to cover any manufacturing defects. It would cost you much if any repairs are done beyond this period. Hence it would be wise to go for a laptop with 3-year warranty or to go for any extended warranty period if it could be obtained by shelling out some extra pennies.

Additional requirements for medical transcription

1. Ports for connecting external keyboard and mouse.
2. Headphone jack.
3. Port for connecting foot pedal.

So coining out those sample descriptions, here are the key features I am zeroing in for example:

Processor AMD or Intel with processor speeds as per your desire.
Motherboard: With inbuilt audio and video cards
Hard Disk: Large (with a storage capacity of about 160 500 GB) and fast hard drive.
RAM: At least 2GB of RAM, preferably 3GB for Windows
Battery: 6-cell lithium battery
DVD: Dual-layer DVD burner
Video Screen: A 14-inch or 15.4-inch or as per your wish, SXGA or WXGA, TFT-LCD display
Connectivity: Wired and wireless networking
Webcam: 2 megapixel or above integrated webcam
Warranty: At least one-year warranty
MT requirements: USB, serial and parallel ports as needed for connecting foot pedal, external keyboard and mouse, and headphone jack.

These are only basic general suggestions, and before buying any laptop, compare the ingredients, functions and price with similar equipped laptops on the net and only after complete research and satisfaction, zero in on one product of your choice. Make sure that the manufacturer is reliable and that you will get good after sales customer support as we cannot repair laptops ourselves as we used to do with our desktops, since laptops are much complicated.

Hope this medical transcriptionist’s notebook buying guide has been helpful to you too or did I miss anything? Do you have to say something?