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Laptop
A laptop is a portable personal computer with a clamshell form factor, suitable for mobile use. They are also sometimes called notebook computersor notebooks. Laptops are commonly used in a variety of settings, including work, education, and personal multimedia.
A laptop combines the components and inputs as a desktop computer; including display, speakers keyboard, and pointing device (such as a touchpad), into a single device. Most modern-day laptop computers also have a webcam and a mic (microphone) pre-installed.[citation needed] A laptop can be powered either from a rechargeable battery, or by mains electricity via an AC adapter. Laptops are a diverse category of devices, and other more specific terms, such as ultrabooks or netbooks, refer to specialist types of laptop which have been optimised for certain uses. Hardware specifications change vastly between these classifications, forgoing greater and greater degrees of processing power to reduce heat emissions.
Portable computers, originally monochrome CRT-based and developed into the modern laptops, were originally considered to be a small niche market, mostly for specialized field applications such as the military, accountants and sales representatives. As portable computers became smaller, lighter, cheaper, and more powerful and as screens became smaller and of better quality, laptops became very widely used for a variety of purposes
Desktop replacement
A desktop-replacement computer is a large laptop which is not intended primarily for mobile use; they are bulkier and not as portable as other laptops, and they are intended for use as compact and transportable alternatives to a desktop computer. They were traditionally intended to provide the approximate capabilities of a desktop computer, with a similar level of performance, but since around 2010 the distinction in performance between mainstream desktop and laptops have disappeared. The distinction lives on in size: desktop replacements are larger and (typically) heavier than other classes of laptops. They are capable of containing more powerful components and have a 15" or larger display.
Their operation time on batteries is typically shorter than other laptops; in rare cases they have no battery at all. In the past, some laptops in this class use a limited range of desktop components to provide better performance for the same price at the expense of battery life, although the practice has largely died out.
Up until the early 2000s, desktops were more powerful, easier to upgrade, and much cheaper than laptops, but in later years laptops have become much cheaper and more powerful than before, and most peripherals are available in laptop-compatible USB versions which minimize the need for internal add-on cards.
The names "Media Center Laptops" and "Gaming Laptops" are used to describe specialized notebook computers, often overlapping with the desktop replacement form factor.
Subnotebook
Main article: Subnotebook
A subnotebook or ultraportable is a laptop designed and marketed with an emphasis on portability (small size, low weight and often longer battery life). Subnotebooks are usually smaller and lighter than standard laptops, weighing between 0.8 and 2 kg (2 to 5 pounds); the battery life can exceed 10 hours. Since the introduction of netbooks and ultrabooks, the line between subnotebooks and either category has been blurry; netbooks are in essence a cheap subcategory of subnotebooks, and while some ultrabooks have a screen size too large to qualify as a subnotebook, most ultrabooks are also subnotebooks..
To achieve the size and weight reductions, ultraportables use 13" and smaller screens (down to 6.4") Most subnotebooks achieve a further portability improvement by omitting an optical/removable media drive. In the past, they often had relatively few ports but with the move to standardize on USB and HDMI this distinction has largely vanished.
Similarly, in the past they often employed expensive components designed for minimal size and best power efficiency, and utilized advanced materials and construction methods, but over the past several years these techniques and parts have become mainstream and there is often little distinction besides screen size.
The term "subnotebook" is generally reserved to laptops that run general-purpose desktop operating systems such as Windows, Linux or Mac OS X, rather than a mobile-device-specific OS such as Windows CE, iOS, Palm OS or Android (although in a few cases devices marketed as laptops have used those operating systems). At present, two cases, Windows RT and the Chrome OS, tend to blur the branding; there is little to distinguish the smaller ChromeBook models from any reasonable general definition of subnotebooks.
At Computex 2011 Intel announced a new class for ultraportables called Ultrabooks. The term is used to describe a highly portable laptop that has strict limits for size, weight, battery life, and have tablet-like features such as instant on functionality. Intel estimates that by the end of 2012, 40 percent of the consumer laptop market segment will be Ultrabooks. Since then, the term has entered general parlance for thin-and-light notebooks, regardless of whether they can legally be sold as "Ultrabooks" under the trademark.
Netbook
Main article: Netbook
Netbooks are a market segment of laptops that are inexpensive, light-weight, economical, energy-efficient and especially suited for wireless communication and Internet access. Hence the name netbook (as "the device excels in web-based computing performance"). The term came to prominence in the late 2000s, and is largely obsolete as of 2013, although a few of the least powerful lightweight notebooks retain that branding.
With primary focus given to web browsing and e-mailing, netbooks are intended to "rely heavily on the Internet for remote access to web-based applications"[21] and are targeted increasingly at cloud computing users who rely on servers and require a less powerful client computer. A common distinguishing feature is the lack of optical disk (i.e. CD, DVD or Blu-ray) drives. While the devices range in size from below 5 inches to over 12 inches, most are between 9 and 11 inches (280 mm) and weigh between 0.9–1.4 kg (2–3 pounds).
Netbooks were mostly sold with light-weight operating systems such as Linux, Windows XP and Windows 7 Starter edition.
Netbooks had a few disadvantages. In order to limit weight and cost, the first products introduced to the market utilized very small early-generation solid-state drives for internal storage instead of traditional hard disks, lowering storage space tremendously—typical sizes were between 8gb-16gb at a time when typical low end laptop hard drives were 120-160gb—and unlike modern solid state drives, offered little to no performance benefit over rotational disk. Hard disk drive technology and form factors have since been adapted to fit into netbooks providing more hard drive space without much increase cost, a key point of a netbook. Another issue with netbooks is expansion. In order to produce small, inexpensive laptops, netbooks generally lack significant upgrade ability, and the Atom processors used in most netbooks tend to have their own limits.
A majority of netbooks only have a single memory slot and will not recognize any amount beyond 2 GB of RAM. This limits the capabilities of the netbook beyond basic functionality (internet, e-mail, etc.). Finally because of their size and cost compared to typical subnotebooks, netbooks almost always have a slower CPU
In 2009, Google announced an operating system called Google Chrome OS for this market and in 2011 the Google Chromebook was released running on the Google Chrome OS; while Google has never advertised the ChromeBook machines as a netbook they are in many ways a present evolution of the concept.
The big breakthrough for netbook computers did not happen until the weight, diagonal form-factor and price combination of < 1 kg, < 9", < U.S. $400, respectively, became commercially available in around 2008.
Rugged laptop
Main article: Rugged computer
A rugged/ruggedized laptop is designed to reliably operate in harsh usage conditions such as strong vibrations, extreme temperatures, and wet or dusty environments. Rugged laptops are usually designed from scratch, rather than adapted from regular consumer laptop models. Rugged laptops are bulkier, heavier, and much more expensive than regular laptops, and thus are seldom seen in regular consumer use.
The design features found in rugged laptops include rubber sheeting under the keyboard keys, sealed port and connector covers, passive cooling, superbright displays easily readable in daylight, cases and frames made of magnesium alloys that are much stronger than plastic found in commercial laptops, and solid-state storage devices or hard disc drives that are shock mounted to withstand constant vibrations. Rugged laptops are commonly used by public safety services (police, fire and medical emergency), military, utilities, field service technicians, construction, mining and oil drilling personnel. Rugged laptops are usually sold to organizations, rather than individuals, and are rarely marketed via retail channels.
Convertible laptop
See also: Tablet computer
Typical modern convertible laptops have a complex joint between the keyboard housing and the display permitting the display panel to swivel and then lie flat on the keyboard housing. Tablet laptops also contain touchscreen displays alongside the traditional touchpad.
Typically, the base of a tablet laptop attaches to the display at a single joint called a swivel hinge or rotating hinge. The joint allows the screen to rotate through 180° and fold down on top of the keyboard to provide a flat writing surface. This design, although the most common, creates a physical point of weakness on the laptop.
Some manufacturers have attempted to overcome these weak points by adopting innovative methods such as a sliding design in which the screen slides up from the slate-like position and locks into place to provide the laptop mode. Newer iterations of tablet laptops are of hybrid design. Hybrid tablets incorporate a removable keyboard base allowing the user to easily choose between functioning as a laptop with the keyboard attached or as a slate device utilizing the touchscreen alone.
A variant of notebook has 2 screens, inner screen is usual as notebook and the outer screen (back to back with inner screen) can be used as tablet which can be a mirror from inner screen or even both can run different applications together.
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