Dan Gookin - Laptops For Dummies

The laptop lets you take your work with you when you travel. It lets you experience the reality of using a computer on an airplane (which isn't as cool as it sounds).

Setting up a computer in a college dorm room in the 1980s was the sure sign of being a nerd. Today, not setting up a laptop computer in a college dorm room is the sure sign of being a social outcast. I implore future students to pester their parental units early — say, starting in the second grade — to ensure that they leave for college armed with the best portable computing power possible.

No, I’m not being silly. Some colleges require students to arrive with laptops in tow. Those institutions may even publish laptop guides so that campus compatibility is guaranteed and issues such as viruses and spyware are dealt with before classes start. My advice: Follow those guidelines. Look for a laptop based on the school’s recommendations. But there’s still more you need to do.

Be sure to prepare a college-bound laptop for the onslaught of malware. See Chapter 19for vital information about laptop security. Also see Chapter 20for dealing with another college laptop issue: theft. You’ve probably spent a lot of time preparing for college; you should prepare the laptop for college as well.

Thanks to the fees charged by the miniaturization lab, laptops are generally more expensive than their desktop counterparts. They're also more expensive to fix. Forget about upgrading the hardware. Laptops are easily stolen. The battery life never lives up to the printed specifications. It's tough to get work done on a jet or in a café unless you’re really, really motivated to do so — ack! These are but minor quibbles.

You can dither about whether to get a laptop or a mobile device, à la the iPad. It’s a legitimate debate: If all you want to do is read email, browse the web, engage in the social networking thing, take pictures, watch films, or listen to music, you don’t need a laptop. Sure, the laptop can do all that, but if you don’t plan to create anything or do anything else requiring a full-on PC, get a laptop or tablet PC instead.

The best computer you can buy is the one that does what you need it to do. To find this computer, you must familiarize yourself with some issues and deliberately ignore others.

When it comes to spending your money on a useful computer, especially a laptop, feel free to ignore these items:

Slick marketing campaigns:You’ll never be as cool as the person in the ad, no matter how much effort you put into it. As a tool, a laptop is judged by whether it offers features that you need, not by how nifty its advertising looks.

Brand name:Too many people consider brand name first and don't even know which components they need. Similarly, you don’t need to buy a laptop from the same manufacturer as the one who made your desktop PC. As long as the laptop runs the software you need, you’re fine.

Low price:An abundance of cheap laptops are available. In haste, you may buy a laptop, thinking that you’re getting a deal — but get stuck with a brick instead.

High price:It’s easy to be duped into believing that the most expensive laptop is the best. Buying too much is not a wise buying decision.

Throughout laptop history, five key items have been vital to the laptop-choosing decision:

Weight:Nearly all laptops weigh between 2 and 7 pounds. The heavier laptops, the notebooks, have more features, such as a larger display or a numeric keypad next to the keyboard. The lighter models, the tablet PCs and subnotebooks, don’t necessarily have fewer features; they might actually have more lightweight or advanced features, which makes them more expensive.

Size:Most laptops are thinner than an inch. Tablet PCs are the thinnest. Subnotebooks are the smallest.

Display:Recently, manufacturers have discovered that people love the larger screen on a laptop — even though the larger display adds to the laptop's size and weight (and consumes more battery power). For a laptop being used at one location and only rarely going on the road, a huge display is wonderful. If you want portability, though, and a longer battery life, consider a smaller display.

Touchscreen display:If the laptop advertises itself as a tablet PC, or a convertible notebook, it has a touchscreen display. You can use your finger to manipulate the touchscreen. If the laptop comes with a digital stylus or pen, all the better.

Battery life:Despite their manufacturers’ claims, most laptops run anywhere from three to five hours unplugged. Subnotebooks and tablet PCs hold the record, with many of them lasting as long as ten hours. Regardless, it’s possible and necessary to manage the laptop’s power; see Chapters 10and 23.

Stuff that's important to the overall weight of the laptop — the power brick and cord, keyboard cover, extra batteries, portable storage, and other gizmos — aren’t included in the basic tonnage calculation. Keep these items in mind when weight is important to you.

Convertible laptops, especially those with a twisting-folding lid, are thicker than standard laptops because of the extra circuitry required for their touchscreen displays. See Chapter 7.

If you desire both a large display and portability, consider getting an external monitor for your laptop. This way, you can enjoy the big, roomy screen when the laptop is at your workstation and still have the portability you need when taking the laptop on the road.

A computer system is composed of two parts: hardware and software. When you buy a new laptop, you probably pay more attention to the hardware. This approach is understandable, but it isn’t the reason you bought the device: Laptops, like all computers, exist to run softwar e. If you want a laptop that does everything you need, I recommend looking for software first and then finding hardware to match that software.

The main program that controls your laptop is the operating system . It’s the computer’s brain, giving the laptop its personality and giving you, the human, a way to control the computer.

For nearly all PC laptops, the operating system is Microsoft Windows. This book is specific to Windows 10, which has been around since 2015. Given that most laptops last perhaps six years at the most, my guess is that all PC laptops today run Windows 10.

There’s no special laptop version of Windows. The operating system offers features specific to laptops with touchscreens, but otherwise it’s the same Windows you would use and dislike on a desktop computer system.

If you have an older laptop that runs a previous version of Windows, please back up your data and consider buying a new laptop at once!

See Chapter 8for more information on Windows.

Laptop computers run the same software as desktop computers. Most major computer applications, such as Microsoft Office, are commonly used on laptops and might even come preinstalled. Just about everything you can run on a desktop PC runs on a laptop.

Laptops are okay for playing computer games, but you need to ensure that your laptop has the graphics horsepower to run high-end computer games, such as Call of Duty or Mass Effect . Such hardware makes the laptop larger, which is good because those games benefit from a bigger display.