What You Don’t Need
4
✦ An external CD or DVD drive or writer to upgrade your laptop’s facilities
✦ A video camera (often called a webcam) that can send an image of your
face along with your words
✦ A media reader to allow direct upload (or download) of images or music
to or from a digital camera or digital music device
✦ A set of more-robust speakers to give some oomph to the movie or
music you play
✦ An external monitor for use as a second display or an LCD projector to
put a presentation up on a silver screen
✦ An extra battery that sits beneath or alongside the laptop to solve the
problem of a very, very long airplane flight or travel in places where
electrical outlets are few and far between
What You Don’t Need
You don’t need these things to be qualified to read this book:
✦ Prior experience on the job
✦ Parental guidance
✦ An advanced degree in computer science (or an unadvanced degree, for
that matter)
Icons Used in This Book
Special icons in this book draw your attention to diamonds mixed in
amongst the pearls of wisdom. One icon even rings your chimes to warn you
of danger.
Stop! Here there be dragons. Well, not really dragons, but dangers and pit-
falls and problems that you don’t want to run into.
This icon suggests that you fail to forget, decline to overlook, and do not
lose recall of something important. Okay, these are things you should
remember.
This good stuff will save you time, make it easier to do your work, and other-
wise improve your quality of life.

Book IV: Using Common Applications
Here you find the news you can use about the most common software
installed on laptops. I concentrate on the most current version of Microsoft
Office, including Word, Excel, and PowerPoint. But fear not: The same
principles apply to older versions, as well as to competitive products from
other companies.
03 140925-intro.qxp 4/8/08 12:34 PM Page 5
How This Book Is Organized
6
Book V: Playing with Multimedia
Man and woman do not live by work alone; sometimes we get to steal a few
moments to play, or listen to music, or watch a movie. Here I discuss all
sorts of media, including using your laptop to broadcast your own video
and audio.
Book VI: Managing Your Power Supply
Footloose and fancy free, your laptop can carry its own source of power with
it to the beach (watch out for sand in the keyboard), on an airplane (beware
the flight attendant with the pitcher of coffee), and anywhere else you’d care
to take it (don’t let it out of your sight). In this book I discuss how to manage
your batteries and AC power supplies.
Book VII: Upgrading Your Laptop
Within the bounds of reason and the laws of physics, your laptop can be
more tomorrow than it is today. Here I tell you how you can add memory,
increase the size of the hard disk drive, and work with almost any kind of
external computing device.
Book VIII: Networking and Linking to the Internet
Your laptop is a marvelous device all by itself, but why limit yourself in that
way? Explore networking to other computers with wires and in all manners
of wireless communication. I tell you what you need to know about the
Internet, e-mail, and how to use your laptop as a telephone. Really.

Senator, I Do Not Recall That Incident 53
Drive, He Said 53
Calling the Experts to Your Aid 54
Explaining Repairs 59
Calling in the Special Forces 60
04 140925-pp01.qxp 4/8/08 12:35 PM Page 8
Chapter 1: Knowing What You
Want, Getting What You Need
In This Chapter
ߜ Comparing needs and wants
ߜ Knowing when the price is right
ߜ Deciding whether you’re an off-the-shelf or custom-fit person
I
know what you want: a screaming-fast laptop with a gigantic hard disk; a
zippy, high-resolution DVD drive; a sparkling widescreen display the size
of an opened phone book; a pair of speakers with a deep bass subwoofer;
and a full-sized, no-compromise keyboard.
Oh, and you want the whole thing to weigh three pounds, fit into a tiny
carry-on bag, and be constructed out of bulletproof titanium.
And the cost: You could get a desktop system with all of these qualities —
and more — for about $1,000. So you want to spend that much — or less —
for a small box to take with you on an airplane, a commuter train, or from
one room in your house to another.
Figuring Out What You Really Need
Before I gently introduce you to the economics of laptops, allow me to raise
a different question: What do you really need?
You need transportation to get from home to the supermarket and back, a
distance of 3.2 miles with a local speed limit of 30 miles per hour, a task that
could be accomplished in a 1989 Yugo GVX with a 55-horsepower hamster
cage of an engine, 0-to-45 miles an hour eventually, and a big badonkadonk

places.
And following close behind, Sandler’s second rule for laptop users:
✦ Whatever you buy today will immediately be outdated. Rapid obsoles-
cence doesn’t matter because the realistic useful life for a laptop (or
a desktop computer) is about 3.5 years. Capabilities go up month by
month while prices remain stable or decline over time. I bet you had
little understanding of how you would use a laptop three years ago;
your laptop needs three years from now will be different from today’s.
That doesn’t necessarily mean that your laptop will fall apart like a
one-horse shay after four years; a well-built machine may last for many
years. However, the pace of hardware and software advancements
usually makes today’s hot new product look very old and stale after a
few dozen moons have passed.
Now: Define the difference between your needs and your wants. You can get
what you want, but not without some compromises and challenges.
05 140925-bk01ch01.qxp 4/8/08 12:35 PM Page 10
Book I
Chapter 1
Knowing What You
Want, Getting What
You Need
Squeezing the Goods into Your Lap(top)
11
You might want to sit down and ask yourself some questions. (Be sure to do
this in a private place or people will think you’re acting a bit odd, or odder
than usual.)
✦ Is fast good enough or do I need super-duper turbocharged faster than fast?
(The latest and greatest microprocessors are marvelously zippy, but
most laptop users may never tax them to the fullest; word processors
and web browsers work just fine with a CPU a step or two below the

estate, but in the case of laptops (there’s a pun in there), the smaller the
plot, the more valuable it is.
05 140925-bk01ch01.qxp 4/8/08 12:35 PM Page 11
Squeezing the Goods into Your Lap(top)
12
Everything in a laptop is squeezed down and packed tightly. Single chips
now do the work that used to be performed by dozens of circuits, and new
microprocessor families can do their amazing calculations and manipula-
tions while sipping very shallowly from the cup of electrons in the
rechargeable battery that makes a laptop truly portable.
Today’s liquid crystal diode (LCD) displays have advanced from primitive
low-resolution monochrome (single color, like white-on-black or green-on-
black) to screens that can display millions of different shades at resolutions
meeting or exceeding anything you’re likely to find on a desktop.
Then the engineers have to figure out ways to protect the delicate innards
from damage while the notebook is on the move. They do this in a number of
ways including reinforced plastic cases, super-strong (and expensive) metal
cases, internal bracing, cushioning and shock absorbers, and other tech-
nologies. Among the highest-tech features: a built-in sensor that detects an
impending (or actual) tumble and retracts the read-write heads and shuts off
the vulnerable hard disk drive before impact.
Most quality notebooks are designed to survive falling off a desktop to the
floor at least once; in my experience, a more common field test is a tumble
from the exit chute of an airport X-ray machine. I’d suggest you do your
research in reviews and specifications and not conduct your own tests,
though. In this instance the best protection is a sturdy work surface and a
tight grip on your laptop at the airport.
Evolution
The first personal computers (like the original
IBM PC that I still have stuffed deep in a closet

Book I
Chapter 1
Knowing What You
Want, Getting What
You Need
Approaching a Laptop Purchase
13
And there’s one more element — you can call it a factor, as in the engineering
term form factor. That’s a fancy word for the laptop’s shape, dimensions, and
weight. The fanciest trick performed by computer designers is packing 30
pounds of computer, monitor, and accessories into a 5-pound box roughly
the size of a, well, notebook.
If you’re buying apples, you generally pay by the pound. If you’re buying
shelter, a mansion will always cost more than a trailer. But when it comes to
laptops, the economics are upside down. If you’re comparing laptops with
equal speed and capabilities, a two-pound laptop almost always costs more
than a five-pound model. (The rare exception: special industrialized or
militarized laptops intended for use in very dirty or rough environments.
These are built like armored tanks.)
Designers reduce weight in several ways:
✦ Using exotic construction materials like titanium or machined aluminum
for the cases and some internal structural components
✦ Making smaller, lighter motherboards based on continually tighter
integration of processors, chipsets, and other components
✦ Removing unnecessary appendages such as dial-up modems and floppy
disk drives
✦ Using new lightweight technologies for rechargeable batteries
✦ Bucking the trend toward supersize widescreen LCDs, and instead using
smaller and lighter displays
Approaching a Laptop Purchase