Notebooks can provide an identical experience to that of a desktop, including support for a big-screen monitor, standard keyboard, mouse, printer, scanner, and more. You can attach one or more external hard drives to a notebook, as well, and some notebooks have multimedia ports that output to your video or audio equipment.
Furthermore, virtually all notebooks today have Wi-Fi chips and some have built-in mobile broadband chips, as well as Ethernet and USB ports, making them network-ready.
Many manufacturers make docking stations and port replicators, which enable you to plug your peripherals, like external monitor, printer, drives and others into a stationary base that you can leave behind when you take the notebook on the road. Using one of these turns a 10-minute process into a 30-second treat and ensures you’ll be untangling fewer wires when you return.
If you are purchasing new peripherals along with your PC, consider wireless hardware that can connect with your notebook via Wi-Fi, Infrared, or Bluetooth. Make sure your notebook supports Infrared or Bluetooth if you take this approach. Unlike Wi-Fi, these two wireless technologies are far from ubiquitous in notebooks.
When you use your notebook with an external monitor, you’ll probably
have three choices: use the external monitor without the notebook’s display, extend the Desktop across both, or replicate the Desktop on both. Replication may sound pointless, but it can enable two people to watch the same DVD or review the same document from a few feet apart. With the new Wi-Fi monitors being released, dual view will become possible at a much greater range.
If you use an external monitor, as well as an external keyboard and
mouse, you may be able to close your notebook while in use to prevent dust intrusion. Before you take this step, make sure your notebook doesn’t vent heat through the keyboard and adjust your power settings so that closing the lid doesn’t send the notebook into Sleep mode when you are running your laptop on AC power. To access
the power settings in Windows Vista, click Start, Control Panel, Hardware And Sound, and Power Options.
Finally, when you are at home, run your notebook on AC power as much as possible. Each charge and discharge cycle on your notebook’s battery pack erodes the life of the lithium batteries somewhat, so running on AC power when practical maximizes overall battery life. In fact, if you leave your notebook plugged in for long periods of time, consider removing the battery pack and running on AC power only. Leaving the battery in place offers the distinct advantage of giving you automatic battery backup in case of a power failure. However, over time it will reduce the life of your notebook’s
batteries.
Depending on your needs and budget, some considerations may steer you away from notebooks. In recent years, they have become much
more powerful and less expensive. Nevertheless, they are still more expensive than their equivalent PC counterparts, especially in the upper-performance ranges. If you are a game or video fanatic, a notebook that will slake your thirst for speed and power will cost considerably more than a desktop equivalent.
For example, Alienware’s Area-51 m17x notebook is a monster gaming machine with an equally monster price. For that stratospheric price, you gain a top-of-the-line Nvidia GeForce graphics card with a dual GPU configuration, up to 1GB of dedicated for graphics memory, an Intel Core 2 Extreme processor, a 17-inch widescreen display, and up to 1TB of storage in a RAID 0 configuration.
A notebook such as this is a superior performer, not only for gaming
but also for HD video editing, 3D rendering, and any graphics and processor intensive tasks. In average operation, it will be a speed demon. The bad news for notebook buyers? Alienware’s similarly equipped desktops start in the $1,200 to $1,400 range.
With that said, if the description above left you reeling, or you are not
a serious gamer or video editor or a professional graphic designer or
drafter, you don’t need this much muscle. At the lower end of the spectrum, the price differential between notebooks and desktops is considerably less.
Another thing with notebooks is interior access. These enclosed systems generally cost more to have repaired or upgraded than their desktop counterparts. Space is at a premium in these babies, so parts are smaller and may be configured in such a way that getting to certain components requires more disassembly. Furthermore, on some of these models, if the monitor goes out you might as well replace the whole notebook. Fortunately, this is less of a problem than in previous years, notebook repair and monitor replacement is easier and less expensive now than ever.
Oddly enough, a final important downside to using a notebook as your
primary PC can be weight. Although some of today’s notebooks weigh
less than 2 pounds, a few of the most full-featured ones now weigh more than 20 pounds. If you want so many bells and whistles that the model you love compares to a concrete block, you might as well stick with a desktop.
This does not mean you cannot find a great notebook that is light enough for travel. At a reasonable price, which under $1,000, you can buy a midweight model that is plenty good enough for home use. It may also have better battery life than some lighter-weight models.
That’s one of the reasons business-centric, presentation-optimized
models are often the heaviest units, they need great performance for
a long period of time.
Notebooks as primary PCs aren’t for everyone, but many users who love them. Many report that once they switched to a notebook-only solution, they found themselves taking their PC on the go more frequently, enhancing recreation options and enabling greater work
productivity. On the other hand, if you believe electronics have insinuated themselves too heavily into our lives, you’ll probably hate the idea. A notebook as a desktop can streamline your life or add another ball and chain; it’s all in your perspective.
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