Sunday, November 8, 2009

Just the Facts about Laptops

By Matthew Kerridge

Whether you are using your laptop for work, school or play, there is no arguing that they are astoundingly convenient tools. Rather than spending the majority of the work day in a cubicle or at home, we can now get our work done from virtually everywhere.

It is hard to believe that it was not until the past few years that your average consumer could consider purchasing a laptop for recreational use. Interestingly, the history of the affordable laptop is intimately related to the long road toward manufacturing a laptop that could be given to needy families by philanthropic organizations. The same technology used by those organizations is in the more affordable laptops of today.

When it comes to computing on the go, laptops are particularly useful for accessing the internet wirelessly. Just over the course of a few short years, nearly every city has been covered by a hodgepodge of free wireless access points to get online. While it is important for users of these free wireless hot spots to remember that they are surfing on an open network and to take basic security precautions, the growing network of wireless internet in urban areas is one of the many reasons that a growing number of people are learning how get most of their work done anywhere they choose.

Extended warranties have been the butt of plenty of jokes over the years, but the joke might be on you if you ignore this option without considering the consequences. Due the compact nature of the many critical components to a laptop, it is much easier for these types of computers to break down than other devices. While extended warranties for laptops might come with a large price tag of their own, they can be well worth the money to protect an expensive computer.

The most exciting development in affordable laptops during the last couple years has been the explosion of netbooks onto the market. Netbooks are simply very basic laptops that have only the hardware and software that is necessary to get online and complete general tasks. However, a growing number of applications are now available on the internet in the form of cloud computing that makes installing and running large software packages increasingly unnecessary.

Given the nature of portable computing, it is critical that users regularly backup there hard drives in order to avoid a costly loss of important data. Laptops are considerably more vulnerable to damage or theft when they are used on the go, and it only takes a moment to lose all of your work due to an accident. Thankfully, the external hard drives that are now on the market make backing up your system a total snap.

For individuals who only use their computers for general applications, it might make sense to make the transition to just using laptops for their home computing. After all, there is little difference in surfing the internet or completing office tasks on a laptop or a personal computer, and the portability of a laptop makes them far more convenient. On the other hand, most of today's computer users still need at least one computer in their home with a higher storage capacity and more memory, and it is unlikely that laptops will be able to handle high end computer games for some time to come. - 22787

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