From Barnes & Noble

The Barnes & Noble Review
Buying a notebook PC? Get the right one. Already own one? Make the most of it. Dan Gookin’s Laptops for Dummies shows you how -- and you’ll have more than a little fun along the way.

Yup, this is the Dan Gookin whose legendary DOS for Dummies proved that computer books could be fun, all those years ago. But, more important, this book has the information you need to live happily ever after with your notebook. For instance: how to sweet-talk your battery into lasting all the way through that movie. How to use that nifty wireless connection (or set one up, if it didn’t come built in).

It’s packed with tips: retrieving email from the road, computing in cafés, sending and receiving faxes; making presentations; fixing crazed keyboards; and much more. If you’ve also got a desktop, Gookin offers step-by-step advice for keeping both computers in sync: how to establish a physical connection (or maybe even use that infrared port); fill your Windows Briefcase; access your desktop remotely (Gookin doesn’t like WinXP’s Remote Desktop, but offers a better, safer alternative).

Especially important: Gookin’s detailed coverage of security. Yes, firewalls, anti-virus, anti-spyware, and so forth. But folks often overlook the obvious: notebooks are ridiculously easy to steal. So Gookin offers a full chapter on protecting yourself: marking and registering notebooks, password-protecting critical data, using locks and other physical safeguards. He even covers secret software that’ll tell your notebook to phone home and reveal its location first time it’s connected to the Internet after it’s stolen. Just one of the things you didn’t know your notebook could do! Bill Camarda, from the February 2005 Read Only

From the Publisher

Laptops For Dummies, 3rd Edition shows you how to use your laptop to its fullest potential, from how to purchase a laptop and what to do when you first open the box to how to keep your laptop safe and running smoothly.

You will discover how to choose and purchase the right laptop for you, how to set up and maintain your laptop, customize user accounts, adding your laptop to networks, printing, and connecting to the Internet. In this updated and revised edition, find information about synchronizing with the desktop, coordinating email pickup between two machines, remote access to the desktop, networking, power management, storage, and especially laptop security. You’ll find out how to:

• Navigate all your laptop’s components
  
  
• Use keyboard shortcuts and a mouse
  
  
• Organize and manage files and accounts
  
  
• Print files and add your laptop to a network
  
  
• Properly equip your laptop carrying case with tools and resources
  
  
• Manage the power supply
  
  
• Add software tools to synchronize and update files between a laptop, a PDA, and a desktop or office server
  
  

In addition to the basics, find lists of ten battery tips and tricks, ten handy laptop accessories, and ten things you should keep in your laptop carrying case in Laptops for Dummies, 3^rd Edition, a convenient and handy guide!

Product Details

• Table of Contents
• Read a Sample Chapter

Table of Contents

Read a Sample Chapter

Laptops For Dummies

John Wiley & Sons

Chapter One

In This Chapter

* Searching for a portable computer

* Looking back at the history of the laptop computer

* Deciding if you need a laptop

From the time when the first computer was powered on in the early 1940s, users have craved mobility. I'm certain of it. Sitting in the lunch room, some guy with a crew cut, thick glasses, and a white lab coat popped up and said, "How 'bout we put wheels on the ENIAC? Then we could roll it out into the quad and work outside on a sunny day? Hey?" And so the dream was born.

This chapter provides an overview of the laptop computer concept. If you're uncertain as to what a laptop is, or how it can help you, then this is where you start reading.

The Power Cord Can Stretch Only So Far

Any computer can be mobile. The solution is simple: Just add a handle. I remember my first portable TV. It may have weighed over 40 pounds, but dangit, the thing had a handle, and therefore it was portable. Seeing that portability is often desired in a product, manufacturers were quick to add handles to everything, blessing products such as blenders, table saws, microwave ovens, and grand pianos with the gift of portability.

For computers, the desire to make it portable is a primeval one. It was a quest for the Holy Grail, but without a Holy Grail. That's because the true notion of whata portable computer is, and what it could offer, changed subtly over time.

The Osborne 1

The first successful portable computer was the Osborne 1, created by Adam Osborne in 1980. A computer book author and publisher, Adam believed that for personal computers to be successful, they would have to be portable.

Adam's design for the Osborne 1 portable computer was ambitious for the time: The thing would have to fit under an airline seat - and this was years before anyone would dream of actually using a computer on an airplane.

The Osborne 1 portable computer (see Figure 1-1) was a whopping success. It featured a full-sized keyboard, two full-sized floppy drives, but a teensy credit card-sized monitor. It wasn't battery powered, but it did have a handy carrying handle so you could lug the 24-pound beast around like an over-packed suitcase. Despite any shortcomings, they were selling 10,000 units a month (at $1,795 each, which included software - a first for the time). The cash was rolling in.

By late 1983, sadly, Adam's company floundered, suffering from the onslaught of the new IBM PC and its legion of compatibles and clones. Yet the Osborne 1 proved that computers could be portable. In fact, it founded a new class of computer: the luggable.

The luggables

The Osborne was portable, but not conveniently so. Heck, it was a suitcase! Imagine hauling the 24-pound Osborne across Chicago's O'Hare airport? Worse: Imagine the joy of your fellow seatmates as you try to wedge the thing beneath the seat in front you.

Despite the inconvenience, the computer world recognized the value of portability. And despite the print ads showing carefree people toting the Osborne around - people with arms of equal length, no less - no hip marketing term could mask the ungainly nature of the Osborne: Portable? Transportable? Wispy? Like it or not, the computer industry itself devised the unglamorous term luggable to describe that type of computer.

The luggables were an extremely popular class of computer. Never mind the weight. Never mind that most never ventured from the desktop that they were set up on, luggables were the best the computer industry could offer in the arena of portable computing.

The problem with the Osborne was not that it was a luggable. No, what killed the Osborne was that the world wanted IBM PC compatibility. The Osborne lacked that. Instead, an upstart Texas company called Compaq introduced luggability to the IBM world with the Compaq 1, shown in Figure 1-2.

The Compaq 1, introduced in 1983 at $3,590, proved that you could have your IBM compatibility and eat it on the road - or anywhere there was a power socket handy.

But yet, the power cord can stretch only so far. It became painfully obvious that for a computer to be truly portable - as Adam Osborne intended - it was going to have to lose that power cord.

The Model 100

The very first computer that even remotely looks like a modern laptop, and was fully battery powered, was the Radio Shack Model 100, shown in Figure 1-3. It was an instant, insane success.

The Model 100 was not designed to be IBM PC compatible, which is surprising considering that PC compatibility was all the rage at the time. Instead, it offered users a full-sized, full-action keyboard, plus a tiny 8-row, 40-column display. It came with several built-in programs, including a text editor/word processor, communications, a scheduler/appointment book, plus the BASIC programming language, which allowed users to create their own programs or buy and use BASIC programs written by others.

The Radio Shack Model 100 was really all that was needed for portability at the time, which is why the device was a such a resounding success.