The Evolution of the Laptop
Laptop
Time was that laptops and portable computers were the preserve of the business sector, and the place the average Joe was most likely to see them was being carried through an airport or train station by somebody wearing a suit. The rapid evolution of the technology industry and cheaper production of components like memory chips and hard drives has meant that a home laptop has become accessible to everyone, and has subsequently become an essential device which many people cannot live without. A common sight in shopping malls and cafés nowadays, indeed in any public place at all, is that of all kinds of people, young and old, sitting there and tapping away on a laptop. Wi-fi technology, the broadband Internet connection which operates over radio waves and means that people can access the web without the need to plug in network cables, has driven the phenomenon of ‘always on’, the practice of being able to be online, anywhere, all the time. The development and miniaturization of the technology is also evident in the scaling down of laptops, with many people now preferring to use a Netbook for all their online work. Netbooks are much smaller than most laptops, and as the name implies, are about the size of a paperback book. They weigh very little so are easy to carry around and although they are smaller in memory size than most laptops, Netbooks can still have 8 gigabyte hard drives and 1 megabyte of RAM, making them perfect for mobile Internet access.
Living the online life
There is now very little in everyday life which does not involve some degree of online activity. From banking to keeping in touch with friends and family via email, from paying your bills to buying Christmas and birthday presents, using the Internet has become almost as commonplace a daily practice as breathing or speaking. Plus of course this is not to mention the way in which the Laptop computer has revolutionised the world of work. Laptops have grown from being quite cumbersome and heavy devices in their early days to the sleek and slimline multimedia models which are near ubiquitous today. In personal life laptops have become the ‘do everything’ item, as people use them for keeping in touch with their friends, for storing and editing photos or as a business laptop. The increase in the size of hard drives has meant that users can store more of their personal information, photos, videos, music and movies locally and carry them everywhere with them. A multimedia laptop comes complete with all the required software for enjoying music, movies and photos, and they also have top class sound systems built in too. Home movies and holiday videos can be easily cut and edited on laptops, and a lightweight digital camcorder plugs easily in to the portable computer via a USB 2.0 port. Laptops now hook up to any external devices quickly and simply, so for managing music the user can integrate their iPod or MP3 player, likewise digital cameras are simple to plug in too.
Fast, easy to use and portable
As the portable computer has evolved, so the components which comprise them have also developed quickly as well. Where once the price of storage and hard drives meant that laptop computers were prohibitively expensive to most people, which kept them in the hands of corporations and business, storage is now cheaper than ever making laptops more affordable. Equally the price of producing RAM chips has dropped dramatically, meaning that high-speed Intel Centrino and Pentium chips are now available to make laptops faster than ever before. Whether browsing the web, using a package like Microsoft Office to generate work materials or even playing games online on a gaming laptop, laptops are now able to perform multiple tasks simultaneously with no discernible drop in performance. Gaming is one of the real growth areas of portable computer use, with friends getting together in one place to play online together, usually participating in MMORPGs, or massively multiplayer online role play games, like the phenomenally popular World of War craft. The rise in popularity of the laptop computer has been driven by its portability, and as laptops continue to decrease in size and weight, so more and more people are taking advantage of them to carry their entire life around with them wherever they go. Many people now even use their laptops as a mobile phone, as software like Skype and Voice over Internet Protocols (VoIP) have made it possible to use laptops as ‘soft phones’. VoIP allows users to make free calls over the Internet from anywhere in the world.
Support, extras and everything
Some people worry about their laptops incessantly, because they have so much of their life wrapped up in and contained on their portable. However this worry is unfounded, since today’s laptops are as reliable as they have ever been, finely designed and produced units which are backed up by outstanding laptop support from the manufacturer. Online support pages on laptop manufacturer websites offer all kinds of assistance, from troubleshooting to Q&As, from downloads of the latest driver updates to .PDF versions of user manuals. Also available are masses of information on warranty, repair, servicing and what to do should you have any problems at all with your laptop. Hand in hand with the upsurge in mobile Internet usage thanks to laptops has come the proliferation of information available on the web, so there is literally never anything you cannot find out that you need to know, no matter where you are. Mobile Internet through laptops and Netbooks has revolutionised the way people use the web today and indeed the way in which they live their life. It has perhaps reached a point now where many people have actually forgotten what their life was like before laptops were available. So whether you want to use Netbooks or a satellite laptop
, whether your thing is multimedia capable machines or more business-oriented laptops, your life can be improved and enhanced exponentially by having one. Once you get used to the always-on, carry-your-life-around-with-you everyday life, you will never look back.