Hi everyone, Daniel here from TwinBytes again with another tech-torial for you.
This time a continuation on the video series of Tech-Knowledgy, which is based on a
book that I wrote ten years ago now, and it still holds a lot of valuable
information today and helps with understanding a lot of the basics of the
computers. So it's kind of like the in-between Dummies guide and a technical
manual. So you can learn to ask the right questions, buy it, fix it, or how to
ask an expert. Just as it says on the cover there. So in this video I'm
covering another part of chapter one which is about laptops versus desktops,
and peripherals versus components. So the purpose is to help you in understanding
terminology, which is important because you got to ask the right question the
right way, if you want to get the right answer. So in this video we're gonna be
talking about why you might want to purchase a laptop versus a desktop or
vice versa, and what the difference is between peripherals and components and
why you might even care about that. If you're interested in buying a copy of my
book as well, it's free. I'm giving it away the copies that are remaining while
supplies to last. You just pay the shipping and I will get that out to you.
So you can comment below or you can contact me through my website and I will
get you a copy that book. Alright, thanks so much and stay tuned...
okay so let's talk about laptops versus desktops.
So one of the things is
laptops seem to be selling a lot more than desktops and people just like the idea
of a laptop, and I think like anything else in life, people just go with the flow.
They go with the herd, they follow like sheep. So because everyone else is
saying get this. This is the best thing! Everyone else buys it and if you ask
them why? Like, well, that's what everyone else is doing. So I'm just getting the
same thing. So you got to understand why do you want a laptop and why would you
want a desktop instead of a laptop? So it's important to understand the
difference in these. So one of the things you can even see in the picture here, is
that with the laptop it takes up a lot less real estate on your desk. So the
screen the keyboard the mouse and the speakers are all built into this one
little self-contained unit that you can pick up with one hand and carry it
around and sit outside with it even if you want to. Whereas with a desktop
computer, of course you're stuck at that desk wherever everything is set up.
So besides the portability of it, there's a few things to remember and one of the
biggest things that I always remember telling everyone first of all is, going
with a laptop, you got a greater chance of it being dropped.
Because you're carrying it around or damage from carrying it around
and throwing it in your laptop bag and throw it in the car seat beside you as
you get in and out of the car. A greater chance of it being stolen, and because
it's so much easier to grab a laptop ofcourse than a desktop with all of the
separate components; and overheating because it's all self-contained in this
tight little area. It has no room for airflow, where a desktop computer in a
case has a big area for ambient temperature and
more fans, a lot better cooling, and a desktop ofcourse also has the ability
to replace parts easier. A laptop, usually you can still replace bad memory and a
bad harddrive, but sometimes they make it very difficult to get at and you need to
hire a computer technician that knows what they're doing to be able to
carefully open up the computer without damaging it.
So now looking at the desktop system.
There's two different types now. You'll find some that are an
all-in-one system, which means it just looks like the screen, which is the one
on the left. The the one on the right you can see there's a screen and then
there's a tower or a box; and that contains your hard drive, memory, and all
the components in there like a video card, network card, everything you plug
into the keyboard mouse all plug into that, and the monitor plugs into that box.
Now with that system, if the screen were to go on that, you just could go to
any store and buy a new screen, but the one on the left, because the screen and
the computer box are all one piece, you can't just go out to any store and pick
up another screen yourself. You'd have to hire somebody to open this thing up, pull
out the LCD and replace that, which can be done, but ofcourse that's gonna cost
you more because you're paying for parts and labor. Unless you want it to attempt
to do it yourself, which you have to be careful about electrostatic discharge
and all that sort of thing. Now with those all in ones, you do have a
external keyboard and mouse. So if the keyboard or mouse goes, that's no big
deal, it's the same story. Just go to the store and buy another one of those.
But the biggest thing is the screen going. If the screen goes it's the whole computer
and you need to either replace the whole computer or hire somebody
and pay parts and labor to have that replaced. The components inside, it's easy
enough still to usually just replace a hard drive that's dying or that you want
to upgrade or to add more memory. But if you wanted to add other components to
the computer, you can't do that with those all in ones, whereas with a tower
usually there's extra slots available, you can add additional cooling, add
additional hard drives, DVD drives, and so on. So something else looking at now is
the difference with peripherals and components.
Now the peripherlas here you can see are external devices, such as your monitor.
If it's not an all-in-one computer, it's a separate monitor to plug into your tower.
Your mouse and keyboard and printer those are all peripheral devices,
or external devices. Even an external hard drive a USB drive that you use to backup
- that's a peripheral device. And it just plugs into the computer and usually are
all self detected and doesn't require any kind of drivers to be installed or
any special help from a technician to set that up for you. Although oddly
enough I get a lot of clients that ask me to help them replace something even
like a monitor, even though it's something they could plug in themselves,
they'd rather me do it, which I have no problem with, but these are things that
typically don't need a technician to do.
The other thing is looking at components.
Now the components are basically the guts of the computer. So you'll see like
going from the left here, we've got a CPU and those things though aren't as easily
replaced and they're hard to test. The only way to test and confirm is to just
replace it and see if the issue is resolved and that is expensive to do if
you're having to do it yourself. If you take it to a computer shop that has
these parts available to them, they can simply try out other
processors or CPUs and see if the issue is resolved, but they are easily replaced
as it shows on here it's just clamped down on top of the board.
Then we've got hard drives.
Those are the most commonly replaced component in a computer, because
they're the most commonly failed component. Hard drives are crashing all
the time and people are upgrading to solid-state drives as opposed to the
hard disk drive, and if you don't know the difference between those, really it's
like a solid-state drive, it holds all the information just like a hard disk
drive except it's like a big piece of memory, and can go really fast.
and the memory is what we have on the bottom left there, is the just a picture
of a small piece of memory stick that's from a laptop because it's shorter, and
that just helps with the system with running things as you're using them,
we're a hard drive stores the information after you turn off the
computer, the memory or RAM is going to clear everything that's on it as you
shut the computer off. Beside that we have a DVD drive which is easily
replaceable in a desktop computer. With a laptop it can be replaced as well
usually just as easily. They're just not something that you could go to a local
store and pick up for a laptop. Desktops definitely you could go in a local store
and pick up one of those. In the top right corner we got a video card and
those we've got especially gamers they're going out buying the most
expensive video cards they can buy and replace them on their own. It's easy
enough to just take out what's there and plop in a new one. You'll have to install
some software with it though to make that work, that's the only difference
between that and all the other components here, but it's something that
is not too difficult to do.
Looking at the difference between some things that are
external versus internal, something like a webcam
that at one point in time was only available externally that you'd have to
mount on the top of your desktop computer or your laptop and plug it into
a USB. Now they're built into the top of the monitors as you can see on the right
of laptops and even some desktop monitors as well, but they're more
commonly found in almost every laptop that you purchased today now because
doing video chats and video conferences are so common now that it's just
expected that when you buy a laptop you're going to get a webcam built into it.
With the desktop computers you're not gonna have that necessarily. So if
you did want to get a webcam built into your desktop monitor, make sure you pick
one that comes with it or you can just go and buy one separately that's
external and plug that in; and as a side note to this as well, you should get some
kind of a webcam cover. So some laptops have it built in, and some external
webcams have a cover built in as well that you can just slide, and it covers
the lens when the video is not in use. So whenever you're not doing any kind of
video chat and that sort of thing, have it closed, because if somebody were to
hack in your computer, they would be able to look at you through the webcam and
I've done videos on this before, it's so cheap and easy to do it and I've seen so
many people just cover it up even with a piece of tape or a sticky note or a
picture of some sort. Different creative means that I've seen that costs nothing.
But you can pick up some sliders fairly cheap and I offer some free to my
clients that come in to see me and just stick them on there and you just slide
it open when you want to use it, and slide it closed when you're done. So that
was just an extra little bit for security and privacy for you considering
a webcam. But at this point now you should know the difference
between components and peripherals, external versus internal, and why you
might want to get a laptop versus a desktop. Hopefully you found this very
basic tutorial helpful for you and there is a lot more information to come in the
series of this book that I'm putting out in a video format now. So I'd love to
hear your comments below, for those of you that find this helpful, and give it a
thumbs up if you did find it helpful, subscribe if you haven't already because
I've got all kinds of different content. This is just one type of video series
that I'm putting out, where I'm putting my book into video format. So I'd love to
get your feedback on it and thanks so much for watching, sticking around to the
end if you're still here, because I wouldn't be doing these videos without you.
Thanks so much and we'll see you in the next one. Bye for now.