Laptops For Dummies®, 7th Edition
Published by: John Wiley & Sons, Inc., 111 River Street, Hoboken, NJ 07030-5774, www.wiley.com
Copyright © 2021 by John Wiley & Sons, Inc., Hoboken, New Jersey
Published simultaneously in Canada
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Library of Congress Control Number: 2020952025
ISBN: 978-1-119-74027-8; 978-1-119-74028-5 (ebk); 978-1-119-74029-2 (ebk)
It’s lightweight, high-tech, and portable; the product of years of research, a longtime dream of engineers and scholars, something people all over the world crave. It’s wireless. It’s about communications. And it will help you become the ultimate mobile computer user. Of course, I’m talking about this book: Laptops For Dummies.
This is the seventh edition of Laptops For Dummies, updated and spiffed up for the latest in PC laptop hardware and software as well as for Microsoft’s latest operating system, Windows 10.
This book covers your portable computer from laptop to lap-bottom, inside and out, on the road or resting at home. The information here runs the gamut, from introducing your laptop to making your first wireless connection at your favorite swanky cybercafé. You’ll find this book useful whether you want to go laptop shopping or you consider yourself an old hand.
I’m glad that you’re still reading this introduction. Most people stop reading after a few paragraphs, or they don’t even bother reading the introduction. Consider yourself special.
This book covers laptop computing, from buying and setting up to going on the road, from networking and the Internet to power management and security and everything in between. There’s a lot of laptoppy advice to be had between this book’s yellow covers.
I don’t intend for you to read every chapter in sequence. That’s because this book is organized as a reference: Find the tidbit of information, the knowledge nugget you need to know, and then be on your merry way. Everything is cross-referenced, so if you need to look elsewhere in the book for more information, you can easily find it.
In writing this book, I assume that you may know a bit about computers, as most folks do today. But you may be utterly fresh on the idea of portable computing. Despite what they tell you, a laptop computer isn’t merely a desktop computer with a handle attached. There’s more to it, and this book is here to show you the ropes — and to let you take full advantage of what the laptop has to offer.
Let me jump to the conclusion that you're a human being, not a cleverly disguised owl. Furthermore, either you own a laptop PC or you want to buy one. You may already have a desktop computer, or perhaps you had a laptop a long, long time ago and noticed that things have changed.
I use the word laptop to refer to all types of portable computers, from the traditional notebooks to the teensy Ultrabooks. A new category is the 2-in-1 laptop, which is more like a tablet. Those are covered here as well and fall under a general category that I term tablet PCs. Any laptop with a touchscreen display is a tablet PC, and I wax eloquently on that topic in Chapter 7.
This book assumes that your laptop is PC-compatible, that it runs the Windows operating system. The current version is Windows 10, which is a great operating system for laptop users. This book doesn’t cover older versions of Windows, nor does it cover using Linux, which is fun but way too nerdy.
This book doesn’t describe the basic operations of a computer, Windows, or your software. I've tried to keep the information here specific to the portable aspects of the laptop computer. Beyond that, if you need more information about running your computer, any standard PC or Windows reference works fine.
The Tip icon notifies you about something cool, handy, or nifty — or something that I highly recommend. For example: “Never make a bar bet with a guy wearing a bowtie.”
Don't forget! When you see this icon, you can be sure that it points out info you should remember or something I said earlier that I'm repeating because it's important and you'll likely forget it anyway. For example: “There is no need to touch the electric fence a second time just to be sure that it’s on.”
Danger! Ah-oogah! Ah-oogah! When you see the Warning icon, pay careful attention to the text. This icon flags something that’s bad or that can cause trouble. For example: “The enormous sea monster slithering toward your village won’t be using the legal system to settle its grievances.”
This icon alerts you to something technical, an aside or a trivial tidbit that I simply cannot suppress the urge to share. For example: “My first laptop was a steam-powered, 8-bit 6502 that I breadboarded myself.” Feel free to skip over this book's technical information as you please.
You can start reading this book anywhere. Open the table of contents and pick a spot that amuses you or concerns you or piques your curiosity. Everything is explained in the text, and stuff is carefully cross-referenced so that you don't waste your time reading repeated information.
My email address is dgookin@wambooli.com. Yes, this is my real address. I reply to all email I receive, and you’ll get a quick reply if you keep your question short and specific to this book. Although I enjoy saying hi, I cannot answer technical support questions or help you troubleshoot your laptop. Thanks for understanding.
You can also visit my web page for more information or as a diversion:
www.wambooli.com
This book’s specific support page can be found at
www.wambooli.com/help/laptops
There you’ll find updates, as well as frequent blog posts with laptoppy information, tips, and tricks.
The publisher also maintains a support page, complete with updates and such. You can visit the publisher’s website at dummies.com. To search for specific information related to this book, including the bonus online Cheat Sheet, search for Laptops For Dummies from the site’s main page.
Enjoy your laptop computer. I'll see you on the road!
Part 1
IN THIS PART …
Discover how the modern laptop came to be.
Learn how to buy a new laptop that’s just right for you.
Chapter 1
IN THIS CHAPTER
Understanding portable computing
Reviewing laptop history
Discovering modern laptops
Getting to know the subnotebooks
Recognizing the tablet PC
One summer day, in his 42nd year, Eugene noted how pleasant the weather was outside. He was inspired to attach wheels to the room-size, vacuum tube computer. Then he and the other three computer scientists, despite their utter lack of muscle tone, pushed the 17-ton beast out of the lab to work outside. It was this crazy notion that sparked the portable computer revolution.
Today the revolution continues. Computers are not only shrinking — they’re becoming more portable. Their names represent a pantheon of portable PC potential, including portables, laptops, notebooks, netbooks, convertibles, and tablets. Indeed, portable computing has a rich history, from the first dreams and desires to the multitudinous options now available.
You can’t make something portable by simply bolting a handle to it. Sure, it pleases the marketing folk, who are interested in things that sound good more than things that are practical. For example, you can put a handle on an anvil and call it portable, but that doesn’t make it so.
My point is that true portability implies that a gizmo has at least these three characteristics:
In the history of portable computing, these three things didn’t happen all at once, and definitely not in that order.
The desire to take a computer on the road has been around a long, long time. Back around 1970, when Bill Gates was still in school and dreaming of becoming a chiropodist, Xerox PARC developed the Dynabook concept.
Today, you'd recognize the Dynabook as an eBook reader, similar to the Amazon Kindle: The Dynabook was proposed to be the size of a sheet of paper and only a half-inch thick. The top part was a screen; the bottom, a keyboard.
The Dynabook never left the lab, remaining only a dream. Yet the desire to take a computer on the road wouldn't go away. During the three decades after the Dynabook concept fizzled, many attempts were made to create truly portable computers.
The first successful portable computer was the Osborne 1, created by computer book author and publisher Adam Osborne in 1981. Adam believed that in order for personal computers to be successful, they must be portable.
His design for the Osborne 1 portable computer was ambitious for the time: The thing needed to fit under an airline seat — and this was years before anyone would even dream of using a computer on an airplane.
The Osborne 1 portable computer, shown in Figure 1-1, was a whopping success. It featured a full-size keyboard and two 5¼-inch floppy drives but only a teensy, credit-card-size monitor. It wasn't battery powered, but it did have a handy carrying handle so that you could lug around the 24-pound beast like an overpacked suitcase. Despite its shortcomings, 10,000 units a month were sold; for $1,795, you got the computer plus free software.
The Osborne computer was barely portable. Face it: The thing was a suitcase! Imagine hauling the 24-pound Osborne across Chicago's O'Hare Airport. Worse: Imagine the joy expressed by your fellow seatmates as you try to wedge the thing beneath the seat in front of you.
Computer users yearned for portability. They wanted to believe the advertising images of carefree people toting the Osborne around — people with arms of equal length. But no hipster marketing term could mask the ungainly nature of the Osborne: Portable? Transportable? Wispy? Nope. Credit some wag in the computer press for dreaming up the term luggable to describe the new and popular category of portable computers ushered in by the Osborne.
FIGURE 1-1: A late-model Osborne.
Never mind its weight. Never mind that most luggable computers never ventured from the desktops they were first set up on — luggables were the best the computer industry could offer an audience wanting a portable computer.
In the end, the Osborne computer’s weight didn’t doom it. No, what killed the Osborne was that in the early 1980s the world wanted IBM PC compatibility. The Osborne lacked it. Instead, the upstart Texas company Compaq introduced luggability to the IBM world with the Compaq 1, shown in Figure 1-2.
The Compaq Portable (also called the Compaq 1), introduced in 1983 at $3,590, proved that you could have your IBM compatibility and haul it on the road with you — as long as a power socket was handy and you had good upper-body strength.
Yet the power cord can stretch only so far. It became painfully obvious that for a computer to be truly portable — as Adam Osborne intended — it would have to lose its power cord.
The first computer that looked even remotely like a modern laptop, and was fully battery powered, was the Radio Shack Model 100, shown in Figure 1-3. It was an overwhelming success.
FIGURE 1-2: The luggable Compaq Portable.
FIGURE 1-3: The Radio Shack Model 100.
The Model 100 wasn’t designed to be IBM PC compatible, which is surprising considering that PC compatibility was all the rage at the time. Instead, this portable computer offered users a full-size, full-action keyboard plus an eensie, 8-row, 40-column LCD text display. It came with several built-in programs, including a text editor (word processor), a communications program, a scheduler, and an appointment book, plus the BASIC programming language, which allowed users to create their own programs or obtain BASIC programs written by others.
The Radio Shack Model 100 was all that was needed for portability at the time, which is why the device was so popular.
Before the dawn of the first true laptop, some ugly mutations slouched in, along with a few rejects from various mad scientists around the globe. I call them the lunch bucket computers because they assumed the shape, size, and weight of a hardhat’s lunch box. The Compaq III, shown in Figure 1-4, was typical of this type of portable computer.
The computer industry's dream was to have a portable computer that had all the power and features of a desktop computer yet was about the same size and weight as the Model 100. One of the first computers to approach this mark was the Compaq SLT, back in 1988, as shown in Figure 1-5.
FIGURE 1-4: The Compaq III.
FIGURE 1-5: The Compaq SLT.
The Compaq SLT was the first portable computer to resemble a modern laptop: A hinged lid swings up and back from the base, which contains the keyboard. This design is known as the clamshell.
Feature-wise, the SLT had what most PC desktop users wanted in a portable system: a full-size keyboard, full-size screen, floppy drive, and 286 processor, which meant that the computer could run the then-popular DOS operating system. The computer lacked a hard drive.
Weight? Alas, the SLT was a bowling ball at 14 pounds!
What the Compaq SLT did was prove to the world that portability was possible. A laptop computer was designed to feature everything a desktop computer could and to run on batteries for an hour or so. Believe it or not, consumers were delighted.
Just because the marketing department labeled the computer a laptop didn't mean that it was sleek and lightweight. For a while there, it seemed like anyone could get away with calling a portable PC a laptop, despite the computer’s weight of up to 20 pounds — which is enough to crush any lap, not to mention kneecaps.
In the fall of 1989, NEC showed that it could think outside the laptop box when it introduced the UltraLite laptop, shown in Figure 1-6.
The UltraLite featured a full-size screen and keyboard but no disk drives or other moving parts! It used battery-backed-up memory to serve as a silicon disk, similar to today’s solid-state drives (SSDs). The silicon disk stored 1 or 2MB of data — which was plenty back in those days.
As was required of all laptops, the UltraLite featured a modem, and it could talk with a desktop computer by using a special cable. Included with the UltraLite was software that would let it easily exchange files and programs with a desktop PC.
The weight? Yes, the UltraLite lived up to its name and weighed in at just under 5 pounds — a feather compared to the tumid laptops of the day. And the battery lasted a whopping 2 hours, thanks mostly to the UltraLite's lack of moving parts.
FIGURE 1-6: The NEC UltraLite.
As technology careened headlong into the 21st century, it became apparent that computer users were desperate for three things from their laptops — in addition to the basic PC compatibility, portability, and communications features that had long ago been deemed must-have items:
Over time, all these qualities were achieved — at a price. Today, the holy grail of a lightweight, PC-compatible laptop that boasts a long battery life isn't elusive; it’s just expensive!
The modern PC laptop is dubbed a notebook. It can sport a full-size keyboard and numeric keypad but often has a compact keyboard. The notebook weighs in anywhere from 2 to 6 pounds, and the battery lasts somewhere between 4 to 6 hours.
The rest of the typical notebook offers features similar to a desktop PC: fast processor, lots of memory, plenty of storage, LCD screen, wireless networking, and so on. Putting all these features into a laptop computer gives you today’s notebook.
Human laps aren't getting any smaller. Human eyes can comfortably read text that’s only so big. Most important, human fingers have trouble with keyboards that are too tiny. Despite these limitations, a popular notebook category is the subnotebook, which is the smallest, lightest, and most portable type of laptop.
Several kinds of subnotebooks are available, such as the Ultrabook, the netbook, and the Ultra Mobile PC (UMPC). Each of these offers compromises on the notebook design, primarily to accommodate for the smaller size and weight. Figure 1-7 illustrates a typical netbook computer from the 2000s.
FIGURE 1-7: A netbook PC, circa 2008.
Computer manufacturers have long attempted to create the electronic equivalent of a pencil and pad of paper — a very expensive pencil and pad of paper. What they seek is a portable computer with a monitor but no keyboard. A digital stylus is used to write directly on the screen.
Over the years, this digital triptych has had various names attached to it: the PenGo computer, the Apple Newton, Pen Windows, and eventually the tablet PC.
The tablet PC can be one of two things. First, it can be a traditional laptop or notebook, but one that features a touchscreen interface. The screen can even bend and twist to cover the keyboard. This type of system might also be called a convertible laptop.
An even lighter and thinner version of the tablet PC exists, such as the Microsoft Surface, shown in Figure 1-8. These computers are essentially laptops without a keyboard, though a keyboard is often included as a type of cover; it’s shown attached in the figure.
FIGURE 1-8: A tablet PC.
Tablet PCs can offer pen input by using a digital pen or stylus, or your stubby human finger. This device effectively brings the laptop quest full circle to a pad of paper and pencil, although fully entrenched in the digital realm.
The ancients used something called a tabulae ceratea to write temporary messages. Every Greek or Roman schoolboy took with him to class a folding wooden tablet. Its insides were coated with a black wax. Using a stylus (basically a stick), the student would write into the wax, again and again. Oh, we've truly come such a long way.