This article was originally published in the Belton Journal.
Do you remember the old “luggable” computers? I remember such brands as Osborne, Kaypro, and believe it or not even Compaq was in the early fray of portable PC’s. I’ve had friends who worked at both Kaypro and Compaq back in the day. The name “Compaq” referred to the fact that their luggable was “compact” compared to their competition. With the advent of LCD displays, it became possible to integrate the display into a notebook-sized computer. Some of the earlier notebooks were quite expensive compared to desktop computers, and weren’t as powerful not to mention having very small screens. Nowadays there are notebooks that are very powerful and yet quite reasonably priced compared to desktop computers.
Even though there are some economical choices for laptops, they do tend to be a bit more expensive than desktops. This is somewhat offset by the fact that they come with a built-in display. However, unless you have a really huge laptop (more $$), the display is going to be a bit small. Most if not all laptops have a display connector that allows you to add an external display. This can be handy when you’re working from home or at the office, as you can usually set it up to use both the built-in and external displays which combine to provide a lot of display real estate. I have a 19″ external display that I use in my home office, which I couple with the internal display. The 19″ display is enough bigger and brighter that I tend to use it for the primary display, using the built-in display for windows that I need to watch, or as references. For instance I might have a second browser window, with information I need to write the Wizgidget article. I tend to have a zillion windows open all the time, so more display is better for me.
Another potential issue with the laptop is the keyboard/mousepad layout might not be the most convenient for you. I use one of those “ergonomic” keyboards that has the keys split into two groups — one for each hand — with the groups at a bit of an angle to each other and slightly elevated in the middle. This configuration allows me to keep my wrists straight when I type, which helps prevent carpal tunnel syndrome. If you aren’t a touch-typist, this won’t matter much as hunt-n-peck typists tend to move their whole hand rather than just their fingers when they type. My hands stay more-or-less still while my fingers “do the walking.”
One thing that I find especially helpful is the docking station. Unfortunately the lower-end laptops aren’t designed to be dock-capable although there are “universal” docking stations available that simply connect to your laptop via a USB cable. Some of them have display capability. My laptop has a dock: when I come home from a trip, I plop the laptop down onto the dock, which connects it to my ergonomic keyboard and mouse, external display, external speakers, network, power, and a host of usb-connected devices. It has the capability of housing a CD drive and a PCMCIA card device. There was a fancier dock available that could house an internal hard disk, that served as network storage even when the laptop wasn’t docked.