A lot of times when we feel like we need a change in the scene, a little change in the how we usually work. Our ideas and creativity feels like stuck and not really blooming the way it should be. You know you feel good and ideas often flows from outside of the house or where we work. Yet, we just don’t seem to have the necessary access to our work machines. With the modern mind in innovations, solution to this has come in past decades and now, it is even more powerful.
What are portable computers?
Let’s shine some light on the portable computing devices. Every portable devices share some common features. For the output a LCD screen is used whose display size varies. All of them are powered by DC electricity supplied from batteries when not plugged into an AC outlet. We should know that there is quite a distinction between portable computers and mobile devices. Mobile devices deserve their own chapter. But this distinction is also changing since mobile devices out now are quite as powerful as those portable computers and facilitates lot of the same features.
Portable computers are also known as notebooks, laptops with commonality being a LCD monitor, keyboard, touchpad etc. Typically a laptop functions as full-fledged stand alone computer. There is a catch here. There is always some sort of trade-off come along with a portable device.
The most common trade-offs for these portable devices are price, weight, size, battery longevity, computational power, input devices, ports, drives, support for hardware upgrades, storage capacity, durability and the quality of warranty or support programs. But finding the best portable devices for you is not much of a big deal as long as you know what kind of work you are going to perform on the device.
Common types of laptops on the market
A desktop replacement of a traditional laptop has massive screen, spacious keyboard, dedicated graphics card, latest high-end mobile processors, enough hard drive space, multiple ports and optionally may come in with an optical drive although, having an optical drive is outdated now since pretty much everything has gone on the Internet. With this kind of laptop, you are basically thinking of the power first and portability on the second. This kind of laptop does everything a desktop computer would do and do not comprise the same computational power of a desktop.
There are Gaming laptops, which typically come in with attractive design, topped-up with the latest and high-end processors, monster graphics card, RAM, SSDs, large and high quality display. These laptop’s keyboards are often highly customizable.
And there is also Chromebook. This is a portable computer running on Google’s Linux-based Chrome operating system. Chromebook typically features experience focused more on Web applications which uses virtually unlimited data storage in the cloud and relies lot on SaaS ( Software As A Service ). Chrome books have a good reputation for being lightweight and cheap since they withdraw lot of the load off the machine.
Current categories of laptops
If we talk about category, portable device’s category changes over time. Some of the category was ideal a decade ago, which do not even exist now. With these in mind, let’s look at some of the most available categories you may come across.
2-in-1s
These are computers with a touchscreen which falls somewhere between a laptop and tablet or tablet to laptop. Not to be confused with tablet only.
Convertibles
This kind of laptops, converts itself into something. Confused? For instance, it can convert itself into a tablet. Some of these convertibles also have removable screens. With this you are able to detach the screen from rest of the laptop. There are also other kind, where you have a special hinges which enables you fold the entire device up and can be used as a tablet. This one is called rotating screens. With the one where you are able to detach the screen, you will lose any contact with the base. Essentially you have a tablet.
Hybrid laptop/ tablet
These are often the kind of device with the form factor of a tablet. This is designed to work in conjunction with a detachable keyboard, which may not always come in with the device. Some of these keyboards may come in as soft/ pliable covers for the tablet, others are built like small traditional keyboard. You may also hear the term slate used to describe these hybrid or tablet and designed to use with a special kind of pen called stylus.