[gui-talk] Notebooks and laptops

[Baracco, Andrew W]

Hello George,

First of all, I think that the terms notebook and laptop are used
interchangibly. my first question would be, why do you want to buy a
laptop?  Do you plan to travel with it?  Are size and weight a
consideration? Are you cramped for space?  Pricewise, a desktop computer
is a better buy.  A laptop with the same specs as a desktop will cost
more, and it is easier and cheaper to upgrade a desktop, and there are
components of a laptop that cannot be upgraded.  The first difference
you will notice is the keyboard.  A laptop keyboard generally has fewer
keys, and you use a function key in conjunction with the keys on the
right side of the keyboard to emulate the numeric keypad on a desktop
machine.  You can buy laptops that have a full keyboard, but to
accomodate this, they are bigger and heavier, and not as portable. They
are often referred to as desktop replacements.  If you do not feel
comfortable with the laptop keyboard, you can add a USB full keyboard,
or a USB numpad.  JAWS has a laptop keyboard layout, where, for example,
the Caps Lock key doubles as the JAWS key.  

One thing that I have noticed with laptops is that they seem to run
slower.  My Dell laptop with 1 GB RAM seems to run much slower than my
Dell desktop with half the RAM.  Perhaps this is because the RAM is
shared with the video adapter, and there may be something I can do with
that.  Also, Dell seems to install a bunch of stuff that loads at
startup.  I have gone into MSCONFIG and unchecked many things, but I am
afraid to uncheck some things that I am not sure what they do.  I would
recommend that you get at least 2 GB of RAM, and opt for a separate
video adapter.  

You mentioned audio.  One thing that I have found is that the audio
sounds crappy coming through the laptop's built in speakers, but
acceptable through headphones or powered speakers.  I would strongly
recommend investing in a good set of powered speakers.  Audio is usually
onboard the motherboard, but there are USB sound cards available.  I
have not done any testing to see if an external sound card sounds better
than the onboard audio with speakers.  As for brands, I think it's kind
of like asking which is better, a Chevy, Ford, or Dodge.  The Chevy
owners will say that the Chevy is best, etc.  I tend to stick with Dell
because I've owned several of their computers, and used them at work,
and have had an overall good experience, but you will find people who
will say that about Gateway, Sony, Toshiba, HP, etc.  I didn't even
touch on the choice of CPU's, etc.  If your needs are basic, you don't
need to shell out a fortune for a quad core processor.  Just make sure
that you have a lot of RAM, and a big hard drive, at least 200 GB, if
you plan to store a lot of audio on the machine.  Because laptops tend
not to be as durable and reliable as desktops, backing up is even more
important.  You can buy USB external hard drives, some of which will
work off of the computer's power supply, so you might want to invest in
one of these and back up your laptop's contents periodically.

Hope this helps.

Andy


-----Original Message-----
From: gui-talk-bounces at nfbnet.org [mailto:gui-talk-bounces at nfbnet.org]
On Behalf Of George Cassell
Sent: Tuesday, October 16, 2007 8:06 PM
To: NFBnet GUI Talk Mailing List
Subject: [gui-talk] Notebooks and laptops

I am considering buying a notebook computer.  I've always had and used a
desktop model in the past, so this will be something different for me. 
Thus, I have some questions for the list.

Is a notebook and a laptop computer the same thing?

I'm looking for a "basic" computer; something to surf the net, do
e-mail, play audio, etc.  What should I bee looking for?

I'm particularly concerned about audio.  I'll be running Jaws, and want
excellent sound from the system when I play music.  What should I be
looking for, and what should I be looking out for?

I have virtually no need for video, except in rare circumstances, so I
don't want to waste money on the video section at all.

What brands, makes and models should I be considering, and why?

-- George



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