LAPTOP

History

Laptops began from a desire to have a full-featured computer that could be easily used anywhere. Their predecessor was called the luggable. These all-in-one systems could be easily transported, but were heavy and usually were not battery powered. The CRT was one of the major reasons luggables were so large and heavy, but the use of a full-size desktop motherboard with room for ISA expansion cards was another size factor.

It was the transition to LCD and plasma displays that permitted the luggable to shrink in size and become the first real laptop, though at first still without internal batteries. Battery technology improvements and the introduction of smaller devices such as the 3.5-inch floppy disk permitted a gradually more compact and sophisticated complete portable system.



Advantages

Laptop computers are very comfortable & useful on vacation.
The main advantage of laptops over their larger desktop counterparts is the inherent portability. Another advantage is the laptop's ability to operate on battery power in the case of a power outage and less energy consumption.



Performance

A modern mid-range HP Laptop.For a given price range (and manufacturing base), laptop computational power has traditionally trailed that of desktops. This is partly due to most laptops sharing RAM between the program memory and the graphics adapter. By virtue of their usage goals, laptops prioritize energy efficiency and compactness over absolute performance. Desktop computers and their modular components are built to fit much bigger standard enclosures, along with the expectation of AC line power. As such, energy efficiency and portability for desktops are secondary design goals compared to absolute performance.

For typical home (personal use) applications, where the computer spends the majority of its time sitting idle for the next user input, laptops of the thin-client type or larger are generally fast enough to achieve the required performance. 3D gaming, multimedia (video) encoding and playback, and analysis-packages (database, math, engineering, financial, etc.) are areas where desktops still offer the casual user a compelling advantage.

With the advent of dual-core processors and perpendicular recording, laptops are beginning to close the performance gap with desktops. Intel's Core 2 line of processors is efficient enough to be used in portable computers, and many manufacturers such as Apple, Lenovo and Dell are building Core 2 based laptops. Also, many high end laptop computers feature mobility versions of graphics cards, eliminating the performance losses associated with integrated graphics.