How can you live without a laptop?

Think back even a few years and picture a public place, a railway station, shopping mall or café – and it is quite hard to remember a time before the place was littered with people all tapping away on portable computers. Mobile computing has become the hottest growth area of technology these days and whether using a laptop to check email and do your banking or for something more elaborate like buying handmade flowers from Thailand, a portable PC has become the must-have device of choice for the average consumer. As tech kit has become cheaper and cheaper to manufacture, and components have become less expensive to procure, so the price of the average business laptop has dropped markedly. Not all that long ago it would be common to see the average consumer sat in a shopping mall café having a cup of coffee and reading the newspaper – today they are more likely to be using their portable PC to browse items like hand-made flowers online and see if they are cheaper to buy direct from the manufacturer in Thailand than they are from the outlet or shop in the mall. With the average satellite laptop today weighing in at a lightweight 2kg or so, it has never been easier to browse the web and shop online while on the move. The Internet continues to be a source of shopping bargains and thanks to wireless computing also becoming ubiquitous, it is now possible to shop just about anywhere.

Rugged yet impressive

Best value to be had

Along with the ever-present mobile phone, the portable PC has grown to become the most popular consumer technology device around in the world today. The device can do all the things that an iPod or portable MP3 player can do plus of course much more besides. Thanks to the increasing use of miniaturisation and the lowering of the price of key laptop components like microprocessors, the price of portable PCs has come down dramatically in recent times. As such there has never been a better time to invest in your first one or to think about upgrading an existing home laptop. All the components involved in mobile computing – wireless cards and GPRS cards particularly – have come down in price, meaning that mobile web browsing to allow oneself to invest in hand-made flowers from Thailand is now a possibility for everyone. Not just have the machines become cheaper to purchase however, the look and feel of the devices has also evolved too. Where once needing to include a 3kg battery pack with a laptop meant that the device was effectively too heavy to be carried around for long, today the sleek and tiny machines like a netbook can weigh in at a barely believable 1kg or so. These tiny machines are intended for browsing and online shopping rather than work and business, but they still come complete with an 8 gigabyte hard drive and powerful processor. This kind of mini portable computer is ideal for the shopper on the move.

Toshiba NB200-110

Bye bye big monitor and printer

It used to be that the average homeowner would have a huge desktop machine as their home PC, complete with massive, space-consuming monitor and ever-whirring tower CPU and drive. This typically dominated a fair chunk of a room or office, meaning of course less room for displaying nice things like hand-made silk flowers! However the increase in popularity of the laptop computer has sounded something of the death knell for bulky home PCs, and fewer and fewer people are today buying them. Far better, say most consumers, to have a portable device at home which lets you shop for your favourite silk flowers from the comfort of your armchair or even out in your back garden. Wireless computing is a real boon to the home PC user and shopper, since by including a wireless router in partnership with your home broadband line you can have web access all around your house. If you are not sure how to set this up, then there are plenty of laptop support phone lines and websites around to help even the most novice user. What this means for the home Internet shopper is that they are able to browse and surf for their favourite products, like Thai hand-made flowers, where they like, when they like. A modern, lightweight laptop is the very latest in convenience and modern Internet business is also far more secure than it used to be. Modern online shopping is a pleasure and not a fraught business like it used to be.

Superb lightweight camera

So what is ‘multimedia’?

This is the new, catch-all term for the numerous different entertainment types which typically involve some level of online interaction. Be it playing the latest computer and video games, downloading music or podcasts from iTunes or downloading the very latest movies, a modern laptop is the one device which pulls this whole world together. Which is not to mention that the device is also a home photo and movie studio thanks to simple software which can turn the most amateur into an auteur. Hooking up ones portable PC to a digital camera means that the photos you have just taken of beautiful hand-made silk flowers from Thailand can be emailed to friends or uploaded to a website in a matter of seconds. Or how about using a digital camcorder to film the same silk flowers or take footage of your kids and then share that with friends and family all around the world? The multimedia possibilities are endless. Speaking of kids, if you have them then the chances are that they will be clamouring after a gaming laptop at some point, a device which lets them play the latest online games over the web with and against their friends. Multimedia is a word that you will continue to hear more and more, as technological convergence means that users become more and more aware of the possibilities involved, while also become more demanding as users themselves. The modern laptop lets the user enjoy the best of all worlds in a small and compact device.

Perfect portable gaming computer