Basic Laptop Hardware Tour
In This Chapter
- Getting to know your laptop
- Finding various connectors and holes
- Understanding mystery symbols
- Using your keyboard
- Using the touch pad
- Cleaning your laptop
For being such a small thing, your laptop is lively with all sorts of goobers
dotting its inside, outside, length, breadth, and width. There is so much
to look at, that I’ve devoted this entire chapter to exploring the various features
found on and about the typical PC laptop. So grab your laptop in one
hand, this book in the other, and be prepared to take your basic laptop hardware
tour.
- Hardware is the computer’s physical part, the stuff you can touch. The
software consists of instructions that makes the hardware do stuff.
- Not every laptop will have all the gizmos and pock marks mentioned in
this chapter. Some laptops will have even more! Consider this a generic
survey. For some items specific to your own laptop, the mysteries of
what they do may never be solved!
Your ’Round the Laptop Tour
Rules? We don’t need no stinkin’ rules!
When it comes to designing a laptop, the rules are simple: There are no rules.
Or it’s just that the rules are so vaguely defined that they seem to make no
sense to anyone.
For example, I’ve used laptops where the CD ejects on the right side and laptops
where the CD ejects on the front. The only place I’ve not seen CDs eject
from is the back of the laptop, which makes sense, or the left side, which is
just another universal snub at all the left-handed people out there.
(There are some laptops with separate CD and DVD drives on either side.
When both drives are open it makes the laptop look like a tiny airplane with
retractable wings!)
The following sections mull over some of the many goobers you’ll find clinging
to or embedded into your laptop’s sides (and perhaps even bottom).
A place for your CD/DVD
Please fetch your laptop and locate the spot where the CD or DVD is inserted.
Note that there are two types of CD/DVD drives. The first is the slot type;
the disc is inserted into a slot. At some point the computer “grabs” the disc,
pulling it all the way in. The second is the tray type; you push a button, and
a disc tray pops out of the laptop’s body, or the tray may pop out when you
use an Eject command in Windows. You pull the tray out the rest of the way
and pop the CD or DVD into the tray. Then you push the tray back inside the
laptop.
CD drives may be labeled as CD, Compact Disc, or CD-RW or CD/R-RW or
some combination of those. The word “disc” might also appear on the drive.
 DVD drives use the DVD logo (see margin).
Combination CD/DVD drives may use some combination of the logos.
And, of course, some drives may not use any labeling at all.
 Be aware of the method by which discs are inserted into the drive:
either slide in or pop-out tray.
- For the pop-out tray, be sure you find and recognize the tiny button you
press to eject the disc.
- It’s a good idea to use the Eject command in Windows to properly remove
a CD, specifically with the tray type of drive. In Windows, you open the
My Computer folder and click the removable disc’s icon. You then choose
File?Eject. Try it to get used to how it works. If you forget and just push
the button to eject the disk, the computer may become frustrated and
toss up an embarrassing error message.
Does Mr. Laptop have a floppy drive?
Most modern laptops don’t come with floppy drives. Good riddance! If your
laptop has one, then be sure that you can locate it on the laptop’s case. It will
be smaller than the CD/DVD drive opening, but essentially look about as big
as a floppy disk on edge. A small eject button can be found near the opening.
If you’re desperate to have a floppy drive on your laptop, then there are various
external drives you can purchase. Try to get a USB-powered drive, which
is more portable than the type of external floppy drive you have to plug in to
the wall.
And that’s all I want to say about floppy drives.
|
