Datasheet

of a set of interlocked tables and indexes of files. It’s all invisible to you,
but oh so important.
 Show a pretty (and simpler) face. For most users, this is what it’s all
about: Putting lipstick on an electronic pig. Those of us old enough to have
used computers before the introduction of Windows (or Apple’s Macintosh
operating system) remember that the screen was harsh and black. The
machine sat there stubbornly presenting nothing more than a command
prompt, a flashing dash that demanded that you, the user, tell it what to
do. It was your job to type in the proper command to launch a program,
format a disk, or copy or rename a file. The arrival of Windows put a
GUI
(pronounced gooey) on the screen: a graphical user interface. A mouse or
other pointing device was presented and allowed to click here, pick up and
move something there, and even draw on the screen. Beneath that GUI,
Windows translates it all into commands to the hardware and software.
Hitting the Internet
When laptops (and desktop computers before them) were developed, they were
thought of as independent islands. A
personal computer was meant to be one
person’s tool. But just as human beings are by nature social creatures, so too
have PCs evolved into interconnected members of a worldwide web of machines.
In fact, what once began as a sidelight — the interchange of electronic mail and
the ability to visit a collection of information at a “site” — has for many users
become the computer’s main purpose.
Laptop users have especially benefited from this evolution. As you go out on the
road, you can now take your home or business office with you; you can exist in
cyberspace and no one has to know where you are when you send or receive files,
information, or mail. Think of what cell phones have done in an even shorter
period of time: If I’m not at my desk when someone calls my office, the call is
forwarded to my cell phone and I can answer almost anywhere in the world.
Laptop users can gain access to the Internet in several ways: by using a dial-up
modem in connection to the
plain old telephone system (POTS); by WiFi inter-
change with a wireless point of access to a high-speed modem; or by connecting
(via wire or wirelessly) to an office or home network that includes a high-speed
cable or DSL modem.
Where exactly is this place called
cyberspace? The best definition I know of is
based around a technology more than 125 years old: If you and I were to speak
on the telephone, our conversation doesn’t take place where I am or where you
are. Our words, and the business we conduct, take place in a virtual world that
has no physical foundation:
cyberspace. (The word itself was coined by novelist
William Gibson in his 1984 book,
Neuromancer, and it referred to a vast network
20 Part 1: The Laptop Computer
03_240564-ch01.qxp 7/23/08 8:28 PM Page 20