Find Your Laptop Choice

This website will provide the public with an efficient and accurate way of finding what laptop fits them the best. People will answer 4 questions, and based on this the website will post the best fit.

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Inspiration

At the beginning of the hack, I had no idea what to do. Then, I thought that I should at least do a project that helps with the daily life of the public. I did not expect myself to build, say, a tumor curing system, or other projects that bring a dramatic revolution, as these are too hard for a high schooler to build, not to mention the 24-hour restriction. Thus I started to think about what do we need in our daily life that we can improve on, either boost efficiency or increase accuracy. Gradually, an idea came to my mind: as I'm fascinated with the hardware, laptops, and desktops, why don't I build a website that helps people to choose their laptop? Since I know a lot about the laptop configurations, I have the capability of doing this. Moreover, I saw a lot of questions on Quora asking what laptop suits them the best. That was how I decided to do this project.

What it does

My project basically builds a website that can help people to determine what laptop fits them the best. By filling out 4 simple questions, the website will provide the person with at most 3 choices to choose from, which makes their selection process greatly simplified. What the website needs for figuring out the result are budget, use for the laptop, screen size, and special requirements. The database includes over 70 types of laptops that covered nearly all genres of laptops.

How I built it

I first made a summary chart on what are the price ranges, types of use, screen size, and special characteristics. Then, for each of the combinations, I figured out what are the best laptops for that specific configuration by performance evaluation, PCMark evaluation, and real-life reviews on the product. After this, which took me around 8 hours, I started to build the website using HTML and Javascript, which took me in a total of 10 hours, including construction, debugging process, revision, and further improvements.

Challenges I ran into

During the development process, I encountered a crucial issue: there were no output from the website. Even though I checked again and again, I found nothing wrong with the HTML code. It took me more than 2 hours to find that bug. Eventually, with the help of the internet, I corrected the mistake, which was from the "radio type input" statement.

Accomplishments that I'm proud of

I spend about 3 hours adjusting the colors of different parts of the web page, as well as the special effects used on the website. I finally felt satisfied with the whole design of the website, where the colors seemed to live with each other well. Another accomplishment was that I inputted over 70 different types of laptops into the database, covering nearly all genres.

What I learned

It is really crucial to know how to learn from online resources. For example, during the development of this project, I ran into a bug that I had no idea where it was even after 2 hours. It becomes obvious that I cannot solve this problem by myself. Therefore, I went to the internet for help, and I soon realized that the problem was caused by the misuse of "radio type input". Without the help from the internet, it would be extremely hard for me to find out and fix the bug. On the internet, there contain intellectual works from millions of people around the world, thus learning from it would help a lot.

What's next for Find Your Laptop Choice

To add the "desktop advices" section into the website, where people can search for how to build their own desktop, what should they use to build it, what should be the components, and etc. In this way, the content of the website will no longer be limited to laptops, so there will be more people benefiting from it.

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