A laptop or a notebook is a portable personal computer with a clamshell form factor, suitable for mobile use.

1. LAPTOPS

2.  Introduction
 Components
 Advantages
 Disadvantages

3. INTRODUCTION
 Laptops are becoming as common as your cellular phone, and
now they share the hardware industry as that of desktop
computers with a number of configurable options. The features,
the price, the build quality, the weight and dimensions, the
display, battery uptime or that matter, the ease of the trackball.
Earlier, there were hardly any configurable options available but
today, we have a variety of laptops n different configurations with
the process and just about anything you want.
 Companies such as Intel, AMD, Transmeta and nViad, to name
only a few, are making laptops a hype and reality. Intel and AMD
have brought out technologies such as speed step to preserve
battery power in laptops.
 If you are on the move all the time, you probably need a laptop
that can do all the things that you will not be able to do all the
things that you will not only able you to create documents,
spreadsheets and presentations, but also send and receive e-
mail, access the web and may be even play music CDs or watch
a DVD movie to get that much deserved break. You need laptop
that is also study enough to take the bumps and joints in its
stride while you are on the move.

4. Components
 The basic components of laptops function identically
to their desktop counterparts. Traditionally they were
miniaturized and adapted to mobile use, although as
of the present decade an increasing number of
desktop systems use the same smaller, lower-power
parts which originally evolved for mobile use. The
design bounds on power, size, and cooling of laptops
limit the maximum performance of laptop parts
compared to that of desktop components, although
that difference has increasingly narrowed over recent
years.

5. Advantages
 Size: Laptops are smaller than desktop PCs. This is beneficial when
space is at a premium, for example in small apartments and student
dorms. When not in use, a laptop can be closed and put away.
 Low power consumption: Laptops are several times more power-
efficient than desktops. A typical laptop uses 20–120 W, compared to
100–800 W for desktops. This could be particularly beneficial for
businesses (which run hundreds of personal computers, multiplying the
potential savings) and homes where there is a computer running 24/7
(such as a home media server, print server, etc.)
 Quiet: Laptops are often quieter than desktops, due both to the
components (quieter, slower 2.5-inch hard drives) and to less heat
production leading to use of fewer and slower cooling fans.
 Battery: a charged laptop can continue to be used in case of a power
outage and is not affected by short power interruptions and blackouts. A
desktop PC needs a UPS to handle short interruptions, blackouts and
spikes; achieving on-battery time of more than 20–30 minutes for a
desktop PC requires a large and expensive UPS.[52]
 All-in-One: designed to be portable, laptops have everything integrated
into the chassis. For desktops (excluding all-in-ones) this is divided into
the desktop, keyboard, mouse, display, and optional peripherals such as
speakers.

6. Disadvantages
 While the performance of mainstream desktops and laptop
is comparable, and the cost of laptops has fallen less
rapidly than desktops, laptops remain more expensive than
desktop PCs at the same performance level. The upper
limits of performance of laptops remain much lower than
the highest-end desktops (especially "workstation class"
machines with two processor sockets), and "bleeding-
edge" features usually appear first in desktops and only
then, as the underlying technology matures, are adapted to
laptops.
 For Internet browsing and typical office applications, where
the computer spends the majority of its time waiting for the
next user input, even relatively low-end laptops (such as
Netbooks) can be fast enough for some users. As of mid-
2010, at the lowest end, the cheapest netbooks—between
US$200–300—remain more expensive than the lowest-
end desktop computers (around US$200) only when those
are priced without a screen/monitor. Once an inexpensive
monitor is added, the prices are comparable.