Our laptop computers are getting smaller and smaller,
and our society is becoming much more mobile.
So it makes perfect sense to think that we might want to
move from our older desktop computer into
something like a laptop.
But there are a number of considerations you should keep
in mind if you're planning to make the transition from a
desktop machine to a laptop machine.
On the laptop, you don't have the same amount of room
available that you have on a desktop for typing.
So the laptop keyboard is going to be a lot smaller than
the one that you normally work with on a desktop computer.
This keyboard also takes a number of functions and
doubles up their capability, usually with something like a
function key, so that if you need to turn on and off the
wireless, you hold down the Function key and press F2.
If you want to move between a connected device for a monitor
and the internal LCD, you would use Function and F8 on
this particular laptop.
Notice that the number pad that normally you would have
on a desktop computer is now built-in with
these function keys.
So if you're somebody that uses a lot of the number pad
functionality, that may be something that you have to
give up or work around when you're working in a laptop
environment.
It's obvious that a laptop is a much smaller computing
environment, and the same thing applies to the storage
that we would use inside of these laptop devices.
You can see, for instance, desktop hard drive-- this is a
three terabyte hard drive on the left, and on the right
hand side is a 320 gigabyte, 2 and 1/2-inch drive that
commonly is used in a laptop computer.
You usually don't see the laptops with as many options
for large amounts of storage because the storage itself is
a bit of a smaller form factor.
If you were to look a little bit closer, you can even see
they take up a lot less room.
It makes sense to have a much smaller storage device in a
laptop because you don't have all of that room available.
Just keep in mind that you may not have as much storage as
you're used to having on a desktop computer.
Of course, we don't have the same amount of room for memory
on our laptop devices, either.
So we commonly see the memory modules on a laptop in this
SO-DIMM form factor.
That's SO-DIMM stands for Small Outline Dual In-line
Memory Module.
And there are a lot of different versions of this
that we've seen through the years, for DDR
and DDR2 and DDR3.
You can see there are different sections in the
memory so that we can fit it into the keys that is in the
proper memory slots on our computer.
This is also one that has a lot of different pins and a
lot of different formats.
So if you're planning to buy memory for your laptop, make
sure you get exactly the right kind of memory that correlates
to the model of laptop that you own.
Now that our laptops are getting much smaller, it's
becoming more and more unusual to see one with an optical
drive built into the laptop itself.
Optical drives tend to be relatively large considering
the size of the laptops we're working with these days.
You really have to find the right model laptop if you
require an internal optical drive like this one.
It's very common to perhaps put something else in that
slot as well.
Some laptops even allow you to swap out a optical device with
a floppy drive or even with a separate hard drive device,
just so there's options and modularity on your laptop and
portable device.
You can get these optical devices to do practically
everything for you.
If you're in a mobile type of environment and you need to be
able to burn DVD-ROMs or CD-ROMs, this might make a lot
of sense to have in your laptop device.
And you can do all of that in that mobile platform just by
installing or having available one of these optical drives.
Not all laptops come with a wireless card available, or
maybe you would like to upgrade the type of wireless
interface that you have in your laptop.
There's usually a cover on the bottom of laptops that allow
this where a slot will be available that also has the
wires that you would plug in for the antennas that you
would use for the wireless communication.
You would simply install the wireless card very similar to
other expansion devices and make sure that you plug into
the leads on the card those antenna connectors that are
generally going around the top of your LCD monitor so that
you get the best possible signal when you're using the
wireless network.
There are two common standards you will see for those
internal card interfaces that you would plug into a laptop.
One is this Mini PCI format.
This is a wireless card.
You can even see the leads for the antennas
on the top of that.
And you can see, it's about six millimeters wide, the Mini
PCI express much smaller.
It's one that takes up less room.
This is also a wireless card, but notice that it takes up a
lot less form factor.
And if you have one of the newer laptops that's much
smaller, it may opt to have one of these Mini PCI Express
adapters just so you're saving that much more room inside of
a laptop case.
These days a lot of the screens that we have for our
desktops are already LCD.
And we have the same thing on our laptops.
This Liquid Crystal Display gives us the ability to get a
nice crisp display at very high resolutions.
But it's very fragile.
That's something we didn't have to worry about on our
desktop machines because we weren't moving
the desktops around.
But a laptop is going around and moving a lot of places.
It can be in a backpack.
It can be in a carry case.
You have to be very careful, though, because these LCD
displays are very, very fragile.
Make sure that you have a good case so that when you carry
around your laptop, you're not going to damage any part of
the LCD display.
Also keep in mind on the LCD display, the
resolutions are fixed.
If you're going to be changing away from the default
resolution of the LCD display, you may notice that some of
the information on the screen is blurry or not as crisp as
it normally is at its native resolution.
So you can sometimes purchase your laptop with different
native resolutions.
And you'll want to find the one that fits best for what
you were trying to do with your mobile device.
The power supply for a desktop computer is a big box that
sits inside of the case.
We obviously don't have that kind of room on a laptop.
So most of the power supply sit outside
of the laptop itself.
They're usually these large power bricks we call them
because they're so big.
And they're responsible for taking the alternating current
coming out of the wall and converting that to a direct
current that the laptop can then use.
Usually, these will allow for an auto-switching, sometimes
it's a fixed input going in.
So depending on what source you're using and what country
you happen to be in, you want to be sure that the power
supply you're using will use the proper type of input.
If we look at this power supply, you can see that this
power supply allows for either a 100-volt input
or a 240-volt input.
So you've got options.
No matter where you happen to travel in the world, you can
use the same power supply.
If you're using a third-party power supply, you may see that
there's a switch on it that will switch
between 100 and 240 volts.
Make sure you use the right voltage when you're plugging
into that wall outlet.
Obviously, on a laptop, we can move away from the wall outlet
and take our laptop on the road.
We don't have to always be plugged into a power source.
And we're able to do that because our laptop has
batteries inside of it.
Some of the early types of batteries that we used on our
mobile devices was Nickel-Cadmium, or NiCd.
These older batteries are rarely use these days, but
they were able to handle very deep discharges.
You could really use every bit of that battery and still
charge it back up again.
Unfortunately, relatively expensive and, from an
environmental perspective, these were not very good
batteries to have.
You rarely see these used for consumer
electronics these days.
A common replacement for NiCd batteries was the Nickel-Metal
Hydride, or the NiMH batteries.
These batteries suffered from problems if they were ever
over-discharged, and you could not charge them
up again after that.
And when you set them on the shelf.
They tended to decrease the amount of charge very
rapidly over time.
So they were not the perfect type of battery to use, which
is why a lot of our consumer electronics these days are
using lithium ion batteries.
Lithium ion batteries have an advantage that they don't have
what some of the older batteries
had as a memory effect.
That means that you can discharge just a little bit of
a lithium ion and then charge it back up and it doesn't lose
any of its capacity because of that.
One of the problems with lithium ion, though, is that
it loses a little bit of its capacity every you charge it.
So over time, you'll notice the battery has lower and
lower and lower amounts of capacity.
And, ultimately, after a number of years, you may find
yourself replacing that lithium ion battery because it
just can't hold a charge any longer.
If you're moving from a desktop to a laptop, one of
the things that you don't have any more is a desk.
There's nowhere to have that physical mouse.
So a lot of the mouse functionality is built right
into the keyboard.
You can see a track pad that's right on the keyboard Itself.
Maybe the mouse is this little tiny piece that sits right in
the middle of all the keys itself so that you're able to
use your finger to move the mouse around on the track pad,
or put your finger on this mouse movement device to be
able to move the mouse around the screen without having
something that you would put next to the computer or slide
around on the desktop.
Our desktop computers are generally encased in metal,
but our laptop computers tend to use plastic.
This type of plastic is very durable, but
it's also very light.
Because we're moving these devices around, it certainly
makes sense to have a plastic case rather than the much
heavier metal case.
This plastic around the laptop is also very durable,
and it has to be.
The laptop is banging around inside of our computer case.
We're pulling it out on a plane.
It's being banged around there.
We need to be sure that this case protects everything
that's inside of the laptop.
Because it's plastic, it's also a relatively inexpensive.
So we don't have to add a lot of additional cost to the
laptop just to make sure everything is protected
wherever we happen to take it.
Most of our laptops are also going to have speakers built
into them to give us at least some feedback and some output
from music or videos that we might have
on our mobile devices.
But because the speakers are so small, they're not the
highest quality that you might expect.
Generally we would plug in additional external speakers
if we really needed something high-fidelity.
Or we'd plug in our earphones.
But if you're in a room and you simply need to demonstrate
a capability, show a small clip, this may work perfectly
for what you're trying to do.
These days, the laptops generally have both a left and
a right channel, so you are getting stereo
feedback from that.
Some of our laptops, especially the larger ones,
might even have underneath the device a subwoofer itself,
which gives us a little more clarity and a little better
sound out of such a small device.
On our desktop computers, we use standard-sized
motherboards because we have plenty of room, plenty of real
estate, to put those standard ATX motherboards or BTX
motherboards right in that motherboard case.
But a laptop is not standardized.
Practically every motherboard you're going to find is
proprietary.
It's built just for that particular laptop model.
And that makes it very difficult to replace these.
First you have to get an exact replacement from the
manufacturer.
And because everything is generally connected onto this
motherboard, we have to dismantle the entire laptop
case, remove the motherboard, replace it, and then put
everything back together again.
The CPUs that you would find in a laptop computer are very
different than the CPUs that you would find
in a desktop computer.
A desktop computer, for instance, does not need to
move anywhere, so it doesn't need to be extremely small.
And it doesn't have to worry about power management.
A laptop is often just running on batteries, so you don't
want a CPU that is going to use up all of that battery
time even if it's just sitting there idle.
You also have a lot of integrated features on a
laptop CPU.
The video displays and components can be built into
the CPU itself.
Your memory controller can be built into the CPU.
And that means that you don't need additional components on
your motherboard to be able to handle those functions.
On a desktop computer, you generally have a socket that
allows you to remove the CPU and replace and then sometimes
upgrade that CPU on the desktop.
Laptop computers don't generally
allow you to do this.
They're often connected hard-wired to the motherboard.
And it's not very easy to replace one.
Even if it does allow it, it generally doesn't allow you to
upgrade it.
They build these laptop motherboards for a specific
function with a specific CPU, and you don't have a lot of
options for changing any of those out.
On a desktop computer, you have plenty of room to cool
that CPU, and you have plenty of power to put towards the
CPU process.
But on a laptop, it's a very confined area.
You don't have a lot of capabilities for cooling that
device, and you also don't have the ability to power it
all the time.
So you'll find that the CPUs on a laptop are often a little
bit slower than what you might find available
on a desktop computer.
And it's because we have to keep the size small and the
heat down to a minimum that usually dictates just how fast
that CPU is going to be able to go.