Chapter 9: Understanding Laptops

1. D. Laptop service manuals can be obtained from the manufacturer’s website. It’s very rare that paper service manuals are shipped with the laptop. Pressing F1 while in Windows will open Windows Help, and pressing F2 on many laptops during the system boot will take you into the BIOS.

2. B. By and large, compromises always must be made when comparing laptops to desktops. Although laptops can be used as desktop replacements, their performance is almost always lower than comparably priced desktops.

3. A, B. The components of an LCD screen are the inverter, screen, and backlight. The video card is also a key component of the LCD system. A CRT is a different technology than LCD.

4. C. The Touchpoint point stick was released with the IBM ThinkPad series of laptops.

5. B. A DC adapter converts the DC output from a car or airplane accessory power plug into the DC voltages required by your laptop.

6. C. MicroDIMMs can have 144 or 172 pins.

7. C. USB is used most often in laptops as an expansion bus for external peripherals. Although parallel and PS/2 allow for connection of external peripherals, they are not as flexible or widely used for expansion as USB.

8. C. Mini PCI IIIA uses a 124-pin card edge connector, as does Mini PCI IIIB. Mini PCI standards IA, IB, IIA, and IIB use 100-pin stacking connectors.

9. C. Network cards are available in PCMCIA forms. If your network card fails or you need an upgrade, you can easily install an external PCMCIA NIC.

10. B. A Type II PC Card is the type used most often for expansion devices like NICs, sound cards, SCSI controllers, modems, and so on.

11. A. The ExpressCard bus brings USB 2.0 and PCIe to the small-form-factor computing industry. CardBus supports USB 1.1 and PCI only. Mini PCI is PCI, not PCIe.

12. C. Before removing external hardware, you should click the Safely Remove Hardware icon.

13. B, D. The PC Card architecture has two components. The first is the Socket Services software, and the second is the Card Services software.

14. A. A docking station made specifically for its associated brand and model of laptop can host desktop components permanently, regardless of whether the laptop is attached to the docking station. When the laptop’s portability is not required, but instead use of the desktop components is the priority, attaching the laptop to the docking station makes such components available to the laptop without separately attaching each component.

15. D. The processor can reduce how fast it’s working, which is called throttling, to help conserve battery life.

16. B. Think of wattage as a “bucket” of power that the attached device can draw on. A bigger bucket simply holds more power but does not force the power on the device. Less wattage is not advised, however. Voltage can be thought of as the pressure behind the power to the device. Anything but the proper voltage is dangerous for the device. When you replace a laptop’s AC adapter, you should match the voltage ratings of the original adapter. This also means you should use an adapter with a fixed voltage if that matches the characteristics of the original; otherwise, obtain one that automatically switches voltages at the levels needed.

17. C. Battery calibration for Li-ion batteries allows the powered device to drain the battery’s power before recharging. Battery exercising is the initial charging and discharging of nickel-based batteries so that they will function as expected. You should never short a battery’s terminals, and replacement is a last resort when any battery has reached the end of its life.

18. D. Laptop hard drives commonly have a 2½″ form factor. The most common form factor for desktop hard drives is 3½″. Laptop hard drives use the same drive technologies as their desktop counterparts, such as serial and parallel ATA. As with desktop hard drives, laptop hard drives are available in both solid-state and conventional varieties. Unlike desktop hard drives, laptop hard drives do not have separate power connectors.

19. B. Mini PCI cards have either a 100-pin stacking connector or a 124-pin card edge connector. Type II cards have a 100-pin stacking connector. Mini PCIe cards have 52-pin card edge connectors.

20. C. The SODIMM and MicroDIMM are the common laptop small-form factor memory standards. Of the two, MicroDIMM is smaller.