Datasheet

computer. The upper part may have a few indicator lights, LEDs, or a miniature
LCD screen displaying information about its status, and some of the most cur-
rent machines offer miniature video cameras in the top lip of the frame.
The lower part is where all the action is: the motherboard and its microproces-
sor, the memory, the hard disk, a CD or DVD drive (on most modern machines),
or the latest: a Blu-ray drive (a high-capacity, high-resolution version of a DVD).
And because a laptop is, at heart, an everything-in-one-box device, the lower
part also includes components ordinarily separated from a standard home or
office PC: the keyboard, a pointing device, and a set of tiny speakers.
Take a quick tour of the basic components:
 Screen: Your porthole into the computer. You can read the news, write the
Great American Novel, juggle numbers in a spreadsheet or database, wield
a digital paintbrush, or sit back and watch a movie, the news, or a baseball
game. Virtually all modern laptops use an LCD of one design or another.
 Keyboard: The primary means for entering our own information into the
computer, by hunt-and-peck or fast-as-the-wind speed typing. It’s not the
only way, of course: Many of us get information into our machines from the
Internet, from e-mail, from CDs or DVDs, or over a wired or wireless net-
work from another user.
 Buttons, lights, and indicators: What’s the point of having all these bells
and whistles if you don’t have flashing or glowing lights and a passel of
special-purpose buttons with unusual icons? There are some that are
pretty obvious: on/off and a rotary volume control wheel or a pushbutton
that electronically turns the sound up or down, for example. And there are
some that must have made sense to some designer some time, but don’t
seem to have anything to do with any task you ever need to perform.
Here are some indicators you may find on a modern machine:
 Power button: On and off, of course, but also (on many machines) the
pathway to Sleep or Standby modes. Many machines also provide one or
more indicator lights that tell you whether the laptop is on or asleep, run-
ning on power supplied by the AC adapter or the battery, and deliver a
report on the power level of the battery. On some machines, a little low-
power-draw LCD screen delivers the same information in the form of an
icon or text message.
 WiFi on/off switch: Controls the activation of the wireless transmitter and
receiver hardware in a modern laptop. You’ll also have to instruct the oper-
ating system to use the wireless facilities. On most laptops a little indicator
light tells you when hardware is powered up.
 Multimedia controls: Yes, it’s a serious business machine, even if you
catch me watching a DVD of
Airplane at 35,000 feet over the Atlantic. Many
Checking Out Basic Hardware 3
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