Considering a laptop?

My friend showed up for our meeting the other day with his Styrofoam coffee cup in tow. Printed right across the top was the warning, “Caution! Contents may be hot.”

Clearly, in our litigious society, one cannot be too careful when dealing with the public. I suppose it is for this reason that computer manufacturers will not sell you a “laptop”. You can confirm this by visiting their websites. They are happy to sell you a “notebook”, but the term “laptop” implies that you could use the computer on your lap, which you often cannot. Many laptops, I mean notebooks, soon become too hot on your thighs for extended use.

Despite the potential for danger to sensitive areas of the anatomy, sales of laptops are increasing exponentially, while desktops (or should we say “floortops”) are flat or declining. There are several reasons for this trend. One is that the cost difference is narrowing. If you add the cost of an LCD monitor to the base price of a desktop computer, the cost of buying a laptop is not that much greater – especially if you watch for sales.

Another reason is the increasing benefits of portability. Of course, the advantage of having your files with you when you travel seems like a no-brainer, but with a Wi-Fi enabled laptop, you can also access the Internet almost wherever you go. At the fast-food restaurant where I bought a dollar hamburger the other day, I was invited to use its Wi-Fi connection for free. And what self-respecting hotel does not offer a similar amenity to its guests?

Of course, there are some drawbacks to laptops. A laptop is more fragile, and if it breaks, a laptop is more expensive to repair. In addition, if you outgrow your current model, a laptop is harder to upgrade. However, from the standpoint of usability, perhaps the most common complaint about laptops is battery life. Depending on the quality and the age of its battery, a laptop may be able to run between one and four hours without being plugged in. Of course, an intense computing activity like watching a DVD will tend to shorten the time the battery will last. Many a traveler has discovered this when the battery died just as the movie reaches the denouement.

You may be able to extend the life of your laptop’s battery by 20 percent or so simply by reducing the brightness of the display. Most laptops have an easy way to adjust brightness with a few key strokes. If your environment is not so bright as to overwhelm it, selecting a dimmer screen might just allow you to get all the way through your movie (or finish up your work).

USB and FireWire devices can drain some power, so unplug the ones you don’t need to get maximum battery life. The same is true of a Wi-Fi card. If you are not using a wireless connection, you can stay unplugged longer by disabling it temporarily.

If you must leave your laptop on while it is idle, don’t let your screen saver drain the battery. Click on Start, and go into the Control Panel to find your Display settings. Select Blank as your screen saver, and shorten the time as much as you can tolerate before the screen saver is activated.

You can also use the Control Panel to modify the Power Options for your laptop. For example, you can fine tune power consumption by specifying the time before the hard drives stop spinning, how long before the display turns off, and when the computer will enter Standby mode.

Most laptops also have a Hibernate mode that can be manually activated from the keyboard. Hibernate is an even deeper “sleep” state than Standby, and will therefore prolong the battery even better. It takes a little longer for a laptop to wake up from hibernation, but not as long as a cold reboot.

If you don’t already have one, current trends indicate that you will eventually be using a laptop instead of a desktop computer.