Adapting to Plane and Car 424 Powering up down on the ground We used to call a car’s power outlet a “cigarette lighter,” back when they held circular devices that glowed red hot after a few moments of power, long enough to light a tube of tobacco that the user then inhaled. It all sounds so barbaric, doesn’t it? Today, many cars come with several outlets for use with adapters to power or charge cell phones, music players, GPS receivers, and laptops. Like an airline DC source, an automobile DC power outlet can generally deliver enough juice to run an electrical device like a laptop, but takes a long time to recharge batteries. And there is a chance of overloading the car system if you try to draw too much power; the vehicle’s electrical system is protected by fuses that can shut off the charger (or the engine, if you really overdo it). One other option is an AC power inverter, which converts the DC power from your car into 100 volts of AC, which can provide voltage to an AC adapter for your laptop (which then reconverts the power to DC). If that sounds like a fair amount of wasted power and possible danger from overheating, that’s because all of that is true. For most laptop users, a better solution is to use a direct DC connection. 31 140925-bk06ch02.qxp 4/8/08 12:49 PM Page 424 Chapter 3: Power-Management Utilities In This Chapter ߜ Turning down the power ߜ Making a power plan and checking it twice ߜ Customizing your personal battery demands C ar makers have faced a perplexing contradiction for many years: People want big, fast, and feature-filled vehicles . . . but they also want their vehicles to sip very daintily from the gas tank. It’s the same thing with laptop computers: You want large screens, fast microprocessors, and all sorts of doodads including DVD drives, WiFi communication, and much more . . . and you want your batteries to last for weeks between recharges. The answer, and I’m back to laptops now, is in two parts: proper hardware design (to minimize battery power demands) and software that manages the system intelligently. On modern laptops, the software is usually a combina- tion of specific tools offered by the manufacturer plus more general manage- ment as part of Windows XP or Windows Vista. Using Power-Management Utilities On my current Toshiba Satellite, the hardware interacts with the Windows Vista operating system to offer three preconfigured power plans. (In Windows XP these were called power schemes, which sounds a bit sinister, but means the very same thing.) You can also customize the settings; see Figure 3-1. The standard choices follow: ✦ Balanced. This setting tries to make everyone happy. It provides full per- formance when you need it and reduces power draw during inactivity. Microsoft rates it like this: Battery life ***, Performance ***. ✦ Power saver. If you really need to squeeze the most out of your battery (say you’re on a long airplane trip), this setting reduces power usage by slowing down system performance. In addition to adjusting hardware, power saver may also turn off some power-grabbing features of Windows Vista such as the flashy Aero interface. Battery life *****, Performance **. ✦ High performance. This plan maximizes system performance and responsiveness and has no conscience when it comes to devouring elec- tricity. If you’ve got important work to do in a short period of time, this is your sprinter. Battery life **, Performance ******. 32 140925-bk06ch03.qxp 4/8/08 12:49 PM Page 425 Using Power-Management Utilities 426 You can also customize the settings within each plan or scheme, and you can create your own group of settings. See Figure 3-2. Figure 3-2: Customize each power setting to meet your needs; make the biggest impact by adjusting display brightness and length of time before the display turns off during inactivity. Figure 3-1: The Power Options window on the Windows Vista Control Panel includes a choice among three laptop power plans. Some manufacture rs offer their own versions of this utility. 32 140925-bk06ch03.qxp 4/8/08 12:49 PM Page 426 Book VI Chapter 3 Power-Management Utilities Advanced Power Settings 427 Charging up Your Battery Options The most current CPUs and associated chipsets include advanced features that minimize the power draw when your machine is running on batteries. Some directly reduce the draw by shutting down or slowing components, while others indirectly save power by doing things like reducing the amount of generated heat. Available options include ✦ Setting the computer to go to sleep after a particular period of inactivity. ✦ Customizing the laptop’s reactions to presses of the power or sleep but- tons, or what happens if you close the running machine’s lid. Among the options are automatic sleep or hibernation modes or a shutdown of the system. ✦ Adjusting the LCD brightness. Bright screens burn more power; you may get by with a dimmer display, especially if you’re on an airplane and can use the overhead lamp to deliver some reflective light. ✦ Turning off the LCD after a period of inactivity. The system can sense that the keyboard or mouse or other devices have not been used and shut off the display; flicking a finger at the touchpad or the keyboard will bring it back to life. ✦ Shutting down the hard disk drive when you’re not using it. If you’re reading a screen or working on a document that is loaded from RAM instead of the hard drive, the system may be able to turn off the hard disk drive motor to save power. When you need it again, it may take a second or two to spin back to full speed. Be sure to consult your laptop’s instruction manual or onscreen help screens for advice on the best way to use your machine’s power-saving features. If you choose to switch between available power plans, try to think ahead. For example, change over from High Performance to Power Saver while the machine is running on AC power in your office, hotel, or the airport lounge. That way you lose less power in booting up on the plane or elsewhere away from wall current. Advanced Power Settings Many major laptop manufacturers offer an amazing panoply (that means a whole bunch) of customizations for your computer’s power demands. These advanced settings are available: ✦ From a separate Control Panel item 32 140925-bk06ch03.qxp 4/8/08 12:49 PM Page 427 Advanced Power Settings 428 ✦ A specialized utility program on the taskbar ✦ As an additional window added to the Edit Plan Settings window shown in Figure 3-2 On the Toshiba Satellite P205 I use as a sample machine, Toshiba allows me to choose between high-performance or more modest (and less power-draining) battery-optimized settings for components (including the cooling system, the hard disk drive, the WiFi adapter, selective shutdown of inactive USB ports, display brightness, and half a dozen other options). See Figure 3-3. On the computing side, you can instruct the computer not to waste power performing automatic disk indexing while the laptop is running on batteries (a good idea). And you can even turn down the standard speed for your laptop’s CPU when it needn’t rev at full speed. If you’re sharing a laptop with someone else, or if the IT department set things up, you may need to get administrator rights to make changes to preconfigured plans. Figure 3-3: On the Toshiba Satellite P205 sample machine, the manufac- turer has included advanced power saver settings for many individual components. 32 140925-bk06ch03.qxp 4/8/08 12:49 PM Page 428 Book VII Upgrading Your Laptop 33 140925-pp07.qxp 4/8/08 12:49 PM Page 429 Contents at a Glance Chapter 1: Adding RAM . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .431 Knowing How Much Is Enough 431 Using Your Brain When Buying Memory 435 Cramming Some RAM in a Laptop 439 Flashing for ReadyBoost Memory 443 Using ReadyBoost 444 Chapter 2: Adding or Replacing a Drive: Internal, External, CD, or DVD . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .447 Going Tiny, Laptop Style 448 Hiring, Firing, and Wiring 451 Replacing a Laptop Hard Drive 451 Configuring the BIOS and the Drive 456 Super-sizing Simply with External Drives 457 Giving Your Optical Drive a New Look 458 Chapter 3: Changing Your Input and Output Options . . . . . . . . . . . . . .459 Survival of the Fittest: USB Adaptations 459 Playing with FireWire 462 Pushing SATA out of the Box 463 Chapter 4: Going External with Printer, Network, and Special Peripherals . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .465 Connecting to a Printer 466 Connecting to a Scanner 467 Faxing from Your Lap 468 Adding an External Mouse or Keyboard 469 Knowing Which Network You’re With 470 33 140925-pp07.qxp 4/8/08 12:49 PM Page 430 Chapter 1: Adding RAM In This Chapter ߜ Tagging memory to GUI ߜ Purchasing more memory power ߜ Preparing for ReadyBoost I t’s time for analogy-orama. If the microprocessor is management and the hard disk is the warehouse, then memory is the receiving, sorting, and shipping department. I use this particular analogy because I want you to think of Random Access Memory (RAM) as the place where work actually gets done and where activity ceases when the lights are turned out. And I also want you to consider this: Once you have a laptop with a reasonably fast and capable microprocessor, the best way to get the most out of your machine is to give it a large amount of memory. I used to say that all memory was erased when the power was turned off . . . and that remains true for most RAM . . . but a few new technological wrinkles are in the area, which I get to later in this chapter. Let me put this another way: If you have a choice between a laptop with an adequate microprocessor and a full load of memory, or a machine with a supercharged CPU and insufficient RAM, go for more memory. (And, as I discuss in this chapter, if your machine is under-equipped in the memory department, you can almost always fix that if you spend some money on the problem.) Knowing How Much Is Enough Why do today’s laptops require so much memory? The answer is a GUI one. My original PC used only text and commands; today’s machines are almost entirely based on graphics and commands initiated through the graphical user interface most people call Windows. The price for that convenience is the need for lots of money; the good news is that the price of memory has plummeted over the years to a tiny fraction of what it once was. 34 140925-bk07ch01.qxp 4/8/08 12:50 PM Page 431 Knowing How Much Is Enough 432 More memory is better than less memory . . . up to a point. Giving your machine more work space means speeding up all the applications running on it, and making it easier to have more than one program open at a time. However, the sky isn’t the limit: Each motherboard and chipset design has an optimum, or maximum. If you exceed that amount of RAM, you could actu- ally end up slowing down your laptop: The processor may have too many places to manage data efficiently. Another downside to excess memory: It draws power from the battery and generates heat, which also uses power because it makes internal fans run longer and harder. Today, the recommended minimum amount of memory for a Windows Vista- based machine is 1GB of RAM (about 60,000 times more working space than the original PC), and I think that is insufficient by half: Go with 2GB. (If you’re running a laptop with Windows XP, the realistic minimum is 512MB, but I rec- ommend 1GB or 2GB.) Defining your terms Let me define a few critical terms in the context of this book: ✦ Memory: A chip or other form of hardware that can hold information. ✦ Random access memory (RAM): A form of that device that allows the processor to jump directly to a particular bit of data. A brand new, unshuffled deck of playing cards is arranged in a specific order: ace, two, three, four, and so on up to jack, king, and queen in each of four suits. In this new, unshuffled deck, if you wanted to get to the three of hearts, you would probably have to make your way through the 13 cards in the clubs suit, then the 13 in the diamonds suit, and then past the ace and deuce of hearts. Depending on the data’s complexity, it can take a long time to get past all the wrong data before getting to what you want. Memory for money I’ve bragged (or complained) about my personal history with the personal computer. But here is a point of reference: The first IBM PC, intro- duced in 1981, had a basic model that included just 16K of RAM. That was barely enough to hold the original Disk Operating System (DOS) and a few pages of text or numbers. I was among the first to buy one of the machines, and I was smart enough to shell out a whole bunch more money to equip my machine with a whopping 256K. (My cost? About $5,000.) 34 140925-bk07ch01.qxp 4/8/08 12:50 PM Page 432 Book VII Chapter 1 Adding RAM Knowing How Much Is Enough 433 Now consider opening that same deck of cards and laying them out face up on a desk. You could see at a glance where the three of hearts was sitting and you could reach right in and grab it without having to move past all the other cards. This is a form of random access memory. ✦ Storage: On your laptop, storage includes your hard disk drive; you might also store files on an external hard disk drive, on a recordable CD or DVD, or even on a flash memory key. Then imagine stuffing the deck of cards in a file cabinet along with ten other, older, shuffled decks as well as copies of every electricity, water, and cable bill you’ve ever received. In computer terms that is storage. Most storage, including standard hard disk drives and CD or DVD discs, isn’t as quickly accessible as RAM because a disk drive’s read/write head must wait for the sector on the spinning disk to move into position. And if the queen of hearts is located just past the three of clubs, the drive has to make one com- plete revolution to allow the system to pick them up in that particular order. ✦ Volatile: Retained only for as long as the memory chips receive regular supplies of electricity. When the power is turned off, the memory disappears. ✦ Non-volatile: Whatever is written to a hard disk, a CD or DVD, or other similar forms of storage is more or less permanent. It will stay there even when the power is turned off. (Why do I say “more or less permanent”? If the disk is purposely or accidentally erased, or damaged, the data can go away.) Finally, think of memory as temporary or transitory. Those face-up cards could be blown away by a gust of wind. More to the point, the standard form of laptop RAM is volatile. By contrast, storage is non-volatile. I talk about storage on hard disk drives, optical drives including CDs and DVDs, and other devices in Book VII, Chapter 3 of this book. The odd numbers of computer math A majority of people are lucky enough to have been born with an evenly divided set of ten fingers, and for that reason ancient mathematicians devel- oped a counting system based on tens. You call that the decimal system, from the Latin decimal meaning one-tenth. Quickly, class: 10 times 10 is 100, and 10 times 100 is 1,000. Easily done, right? Now the Greeks also worked with groups of ten in their math, but their lan- guage is Greek to them . . . not Latin. The Greek word (or prefix) kilo, abbrevi- ated as K, stands for 1,000; the word mega stands for 1 million; giga stands for 1 billion. So far, I’m speaking a familiar language: If I say I was paid two 34 140925-bk07ch01.qxp 4/8/08 12:50 PM Page 433 . screens for advice on the best way to use your machine’s power-saving features. If you choose to switch between available power plans, try to think ahead. For example, change over from High Performance. terms in the context of this book: ✦ Memory: A chip or other form of hardware that can hold information. ✦ Random access memory (RAM): A form of that device that allows the processor to jump directly. all the wrong data before getting to what you want. Memory for money I’ve bragged (or complained) about my personal history with the personal computer. But here is a point of reference: The first