page_title: Laptop
section_title: Advantages
hierarchical_section_title: Laptop / Comparison with desktops / Advantages
caption_attribution_description: English: Jimmy Wales accessing Wikipedia.
context_page_description: A laptop, is a small, portable personal computer with a "clamshell" form factor, typically having a thin LCD or LED computer screen mounted on the inside of the upper lid of the clamshell and an alphanumeric keyboard on the inside of the lower lid. The clamshell is opened up to use the computer. Laptops are folded shut for transportation, and thus are suitable for mobile use. Its name comes from lap, as it was deemed to be placed on a person's lap when being used. Although originally there was a distinction between laptops and notebooks, as of 2014, there is often no longer any difference. Today, laptops are commonly used in a variety of settings, such as at work, in education, for playing games, web browsing, for personal multimedia, and general home computer use.
  Laptops combine all the input/output components and capabilities of a desktop computer, including the display screen, speakers, a keyboard, data storage device, sometimes an optical disc drive, pointing devices, with an operating system, a processor and memory into a single unit. Most modern laptops feature integrated webcams and built-in microphones, while many also have touchscreens.
context_section_description: Portability is usually the first feature mentioned in any comparison of laptops versus desktop PCs. Physical portability allows a laptop to be used in many places—not only at home and at the office, but also during commuting and flights, in coffee shops, in lecture halls and libraries, at clients' locations or at a meeting room, etc. Within a home, portability enables laptop users to move their device from the living room to the dining room to the family room. Portability offers several distinct advantages:
  Productivity: Using a laptop in places where a desktop PC cannot be used can help employees and students to increase their productivity on work or school tasks. For example, an office worker reading their work e-mails during an hour-long commute by train, or a student doing their homework at the university coffee shop during a break between lectures.
  Immediacy: Carrying a laptop means having instant access to information, including personal and work files. This allows better collaboration between coworkers or students, as a laptop can be flipped open to look at a report, document, spreadsheet, or presentation anytime and anywhere.
  Up-to-date information: If a person has more than one desktop PC, a problem of synchronization arises: changes made on one computer are not automatically propagated to the others. There are ways to resolve this problem, including physical transfer of updated files (using a USB flash memory stick or CD-ROMs) or using synchronization software over the Internet, such as cloud computing. However, transporting a single laptop to both locations avoids the problem entirely, as the files exist in a single location and are always up-to-date.
  Connectivity: In the 2010s, a proliferation of Wi-Fi wireless networks and cellular broadband data services (HSDPA, EVDO and others) in many urban centers, combined with near-ubiquitous Wi-Fi support by modern laptops meant that a laptop could now have easy Internet and local network connectivity while remaining mobile. Wi-Fi networks and laptop programs are especially widespread at university campuses.
  Other advantages of laptops:
  Size: Laptops are smaller than desktop PCs. This is beneficial when space is at a premium, for example in small apartments and student dorms. When not in use, a laptop can be closed and put away in a desk drawer.
  Low power consumption: Laptops are several times more power-efficient than desktops. A typical laptop uses 20–120 W, compared to 100–800 W for desktops. This could be particularly beneficial for large businesses, which run hundreds of personal computers thus multiplying the potential savings, and homes where there is a computer running 24/7 (such as a home media server, print server, etc.).
  Quiet: Laptops are typically much quieter than desktops, due both to the components (quieter, slower 2.5-inch hard drives) and to less heat production leading to use of fewer and slower cooling fans.
  Battery: a charged laptop can continue to be used in case of a power outage and is not affected by short power interruptions and blackouts. A desktop PC needs an Uninterruptible power supply (UPS) to handle short interruptions, blackouts, and spikes; achieving on-battery time of more than 20–30 minutes for a desktop PC requires a large and expensive UPS.
  All-in-One: designed to be portable, most 2010-era laptops have all components integrated into the chassis (however, some small laptops may not have an internal CD/CDR/DVD drive, so an external drive needs to be used). For desktops (excluding all-in-ones) this is divided into the desktop "tower" (the unit with the CPU, hard drive, power supply, etc.), keyboard, mouse, display screen, and optional peripherals such as speakers.
caption: Wikipedia co-founder Jimmy Wales using a laptop on a park bench
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