A laptop is a type of small personal computer (PC) that has a battery and can be carried around. It has a screen that can be closed like a lid attached to a keyboard and a type of mouse, usually a trackpad or mouse button with clickable buttons. Laptops were conceptualized and developed in the 1970s, but it wasn’t until the 90s that they became cheap and commonplace.
The appeal of a laptop was (and is) that you can have most of the processing power of a home computer with the added ability of taking it with you anywhere you go. All laptops include a built-in battery that can last for a number hours as well as a power cord that can be plugged into an outlet to charge the battery or just keep the computer running. Laptops can also have other connected devices via USB and other ports, such as a real mouse, camera, and headphones.
All laptops have a very similar design, but there are many different types of laptops that are good for different purposes. Netbooks and the recently popular Chromebooks are designed more with portability in mind than power, and are mainly used for accessing email and the internet. Higher end laptops are designed to be as powerful as desktop computers and are able to run all the same applications and games a desktop can. These are meant more to replace a desktop than to add an additional computer so users can just have one computer they can take anywhere. Recently, a new class of touch-screen laptops have been released that combine the power and functionality of a laptop with the convenience and usability of a touch screen.
Laptops were originally a supplement to desktop computers, but as technology increases and supply costs decrease, laptops have become as powerful and even more powerful than the common PCs, with only the high-end PCs trumping the laptop. For this reason, it is likely that laptops will continue to grow and revolutionize as desktop computers are used by only power users and businesses that need the power without the portability.
Brands of Laptops
- Acer
- Apple
- Asus
- Dell
- HP
- Lenovo
- Samsung
- Sony
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