Living with a laptop: pitfalls to avoid

There’s no denying that, for most everyday computing tasks, notebooks win hands down over desktop PCs in terms of their portability and ease of use.

Yet despite notebooks having arguably been around for as long as the desktop PC (the Osborne 1 portable was launched in 1981, the same year as the IBM PC), it’s only in the past 12 months that they’ve really caught up with desktops in terms of numbers sold in the UK.

The main driver for increased laptop sales has, perhaps unsurprisingly, been lower prices. With models available from around £300, they’re not now limited to deep-pocketed executives and business users.

Many people will now have had some experience of using a notebook, but if you’re one of those who’ve never owned a laptop before, there are a couple of things to be aware of before you start out in the world of mobile computing.

Easy to set up

First of all, one of the great attractions of a notebook is the ease of setup – take it out of the box, plug it in and it will (usually) be up and running straight away.

No spaghetti of wires to connect up, no clearing out your office or study to find a place to install it.

But if you’re replacing a desktop PC, you might find it’s not quite as straightforward connecting up your printers, scanners, joysticks and other assorted peripherals, especially if your old PC lived under your desk.

Dragging out all the old cables and connectors can be a chore, particularly if you want to take advantage of your notebook’s portability and use it around the house – it’s no fun reconnecting everything every time you want to print or scan a document.

One way around this is to use a universal USB docking station or port replicator, such as those from Targus.

Costing around £50-£100, you can connect your USB, parallel, Ethernet or serial devices to these permanently, and just plug the dock into your notebook’s USB port when you need the peripherals. Some models also have PS/2 and VGA ports so you can connect a keyboard, mouse and a monitor.

Power problems

Another potential gotcha lurks in the notebook’s power system. AC power adapters and batteries don’t last forever; and to be safe, don’t bank on them lasting the lifetime of the notebook.

It’s worth considering buying spares with your new notebook, as a couple of years down the line you might have great trouble finding replacements.

Some brands are better than others in this respect; for many years, any IBM notebook power adapter would work with any IBM notebook, but this is the exception rather than the rule, and it’s best to assume the worst.

Finally, the major downside of notebooks is the cost of repair. They’re not designed for user maintenance, and they can be expensive to fix when core components break.

So it’s worth investigating the cost of insurance cover once the standard warranty expires – for example, we found a two-year extended warranty for a one-year-old £699 laptop from Warranty Ex for about £126.

This article is part of a group test on £699 notebooks. Others are:
Intro and Editor's Choice
Acer Aspire 9503EWSMi 
AJP M551G-E
Elonex Prowire 153
Evesham Voyager A215
Fujitsu Siemens Amilo M 6450G
Hi-Grade Notino C5515-1700
HP Compaq nx6125 (EK157ET)
Mesh Pegasus 3070
MV Sirius+
The next level - improving laptop performance
Living with a laptop: pitfalls to avoid