Laptops Are Getting More Popular

Posted on: September 12th, 2008

Here’s the picture of my shop on Sep 12th, 2008 around 3:30am. I couldn’t sleep so I worked.

You can see 6 laptops on this picture. One of them is mine (that’s the one connected to the big monitor – used as a second screen), one had a bad hard drive, one was infected, one has a dead motherboard (that’s the one with the black screen) which I saved the data from onto DVDs, one needed just minor adjustments, and one would not start up because a memory card from a camera broke inside the card reader slot – kind of an unusual case.

Laptops are definitely getting more popular as their prices dropped to the affordable zone. For $400 you can get a basic laptop which has ample speed to run most everyday application – as long as you select your application well and don’t overload it with bloated, ineffective software.

I’d like to add a couple observations and words of cautions for you when considering buying a laptop.

If you don’t need to move your computer around get a desktop system, because:
Laptops are fragile, you can drop them and they might not work after that
They can be stolen quite easily. Especially if you travel with your laptop make extra sure that you don’t leave your laptop unattended. Don’t leave them in a car either where they can be seen from outside.
When you get a laptop don’t skimp on getting an external hard drive and setting up a backup system to regularly back up your data. That extra $100 will save you from a lot of headache in the future. Why? Hard drives are still with moving parts (the new Solid State Drives are still prohibitively expensive and provide much lower capacity) and because laptops are moved around, bumped here and there, get overheated, etc. The hard drives in them are at least twice as likely to fail than the desktop hard drives – but don’t interpret this as saying that a desktop computer doesn’t need backups – they do need them, no matter how high-end they are.
Laptop hardware repairs are a lot more expensive. The reason: they are much less modular than desktop computers. Almost everything is integrated onto one big circuit board – the motherboard. Many times a simple thing like a broken power connector can ruin the motherboard and the repair is costly! It costs nearly as much to replace a motherboard in a laptop as getting a new laptop.
We actually don’t repair laptop hardware problems other than: hard disk, memory (RAM), screen replacement and CD/DVD drive replacement. The reason is that it would require special equipment and a lot of time to diagnose motherboard problems.
Another word of caution: If you buy a Sony laptop be prepared to reach deep into your pocket if anything needs to be replaced. I’ve seen parts that were 10x the price of other laptops’ similar part (namely a CD burner/DVD combo $700 instead of $70).

Some tips for you if you have a laptop:

Take good care of the power supply. That mainly means don’t twist and bend the cord, don’t put stress on it if possible. It’s not hard to replace but it might damages your laptop, especially if there is an undue stress where the cord plugs into the laptop.
Make sure that the computer has good ventilation. Most laptops suck the air in from the below and blow it out on the side. If you put the laptop on, let’s say, a bed it will block the air holes as the computer sinks into the soft material. This will overheat the computer quite quickly. They have a safety mechanism that will shut the computer down when the processor reaches a temperature limit but this might cause software corruption and gradual damage to other parts of the computer.

Well, I hope this was some use to you and will help you when buying, or owning a laptop.