No matter what type of laptop you buy, you’re going to want it to last for several hours or more when it’s running on battery power. 
If it doesn’t, you may find that you can’t use your laptop on the go or that you lose information if you don’t keep an eye on the battery level. However, there are some things you can do to increase your laptop’s battery life. Here are a few of them.
• Turn down your screen’s brightness. Most newer laptops automatically dim the screen when on battery power.
• Turn off your Wi-Fi and/or Bluetooth connections if you aren’t using the internet.
• Look at your laptop’s power options to be sure they’re set appropriately. For example, you may want to set your laptop to turn off the hard drive and screen after several minutes of inactivity. Put your laptop in stand-by mode if you won’t be using it for an hour or so, but have it hibernate if you will be away from it for a longer period of time.
• Disconnect USB devices and other external hardware. Using your laptop’s touchpad instead of using a USB mouse will also save power.
• Turn down or mute your speakers.
• Install programs to your hard drive instead of running them off of CD/DVD.
• Shut down scheduled tasks such as virus scans. You can also save on power by turning off Auto-save.
If you need to make hard copies of anything you do on your laptop, you’re going to need a printer. This is especially true if you’re a college student or if you use your laptop for business. When it comes to buying a printer for your cheap laptop, there are a few things to keep in mind.
• Do you need to print in colour? You can often buy black and white printers for much less, especially if you’re looking at a laser printer. If you won’t need to ever do anything in colour, you may be able to get a good deal on a simpler printer.
• Do you need a portable printer? Some companies make very small printers designed to work specifically with laptops. You can pack up these printers and take them with you. If you’ll need to print while on the go, you might want one of these. They work very well for people who set up their laptops at trade expos or other types of conferences and need to print things for potential customers.
• Do you need a laser printer or an inkjet printer? Laser printers are more expensive, but the toner lasts longer. If you’re a small business owner, it may be an investment worth making. Most standard users, however, won’t need an expensive laser printer.
• Will the printer work with your laptop? Check to make certain the printer works with the operating system, and make certain it will connect to your laptop. Most new laptops and new printers use USB cables, but older printers use the larger serial cable. Newer laptops generally don’t have a connection for this.
When purchasing a cheap laptop, you may be asked if you want to look at docking stations or port replicators. If you don’t know that much about laptops, you may have no idea what the sales representative is talking about.
A docking station is a device that you actually plug your laptop into. It features extra ports, connections, slots, and even some drive bays. Some are about the size of a laptop (and are often called a media slice), while others are a little larger. More or less, a docking station is meant to give your laptop all of the connections that a full PC has. You simply set it up on your desk and plug your laptop into it when you’re working at home. You can attach a larger monitor, a full-sized keyboard, an external hard drive, and other devices, including printers and scanners, to the docking station. This way, you don’t have to unplug any of these things when you want to take your laptop on the road. A docking station isn’t really a necessity, but it is nice if you use your laptop as your primary computer since you don’t have to plug and unplug cables all the time.
A port replicator is basically a scaled down, smaller version of a docking station. It only features additional ports, including USB, video, and memory card slots. One form of port replicator that is very popular is often called a USB hub. You plug one end of the hub into a USB port, and the other end features four (or even more) USB ports, allowing you to effectively turn one port into many. Port replicators are useful because laptops usually don’t have room for a large amount of ports. Some port replicators, like the USB hubs, are very small, while other port replicators may be about the same size as a docking station.
One reason many people purchase a laptop is so they can access the internet anywhere. To that end, they need to have some way of connecting to the internet. When it comes to cheap laptops, you may have one of several different ways of getting online, depending on how new the laptop is.
The first and most common way of connecting to the internet is via a wireless card. Many of the newer laptops have these cards built in, and all you have to do is make certain they’re turned on (there’s usually a small switch to press to enable or disable the wireless card). Older laptops, though, may have an actual card that you have to insert into one of the slots on the laptop. These cards do the exact same thing as a built-in wireless card does. In fact, some people never remove them from their laptop.
Another way of using your laptop without an actual cable is to purchase a USB wireless card. The only real difference between these and the type of card discussed above is that they plug into a USB port instead of a specific slot. In fact, many of the newest computers no longer feature a slot large enough for one of the older type wireless cards, so you may have to get a USB wireless card if you need one.
Finally, the last option for getting online with your laptop is the least fun. Laptops do feature an Ethernet port, so you can plug your laptop directly into your modem or router. While this takes away the portability of the laptop and ties you down, it does work. This limits your ability to access the internet in some places, though, because you may not always find a port to plug in to.
