10 Cool Things to Do with a Laptop

Desktop or Laptop?

• Productivity Tips

Some of us take our laptop computers with us everywhere: to work, to school, to the local coffee shop, and even on vacation. With computing power available to us at all times, it's tempting to work even when we should be enjoying the beach or taking a well-deserved break at home. With a little bit of thought, however, there are plenty of things you can do with a laptop that will actually end up improving your leisure life instead of draining it away. In this article, we'll introduce you to a few ideas that can help you get the most from your laptop.
1. Watch movies while traveling. With a DVD drive on your laptop, you have everything you need to take movie entertainment with you when you travel, on your work commute, or out on the porch. Just buy or rent a movie you like, and pop it into the drive. The movie will start automatically. Just remember to wear earphones to avoid annoying your fellow passengers or others in the vicinity.
2. Connect to your wireless network. Being able to access the Internet as well as printers, shared files like music or video, and other resources at home is a great convenience. The combination of a laptop and a wireless network is all you need. See our article "Build a Home Network" to learn how to get started building the network and "Share Files Between Computers" to learn how to share printers and files over the network once you've built it.
3. Play games anywhere. Computer games are a great pastime, and laptops let you take them with you. Laptops are certainly not the only way to play games on the road, but they're a great option, and there are plenty of choices for every taste, from puzzles to shoot-em-up adventures. See "Your Many Options for Mobile Gaming" for more information.
4. Catch up on the news. Using an RSS (rich site summary) newsfeed reader, you can subscribe to free news services and other Web-based content that will automatically download to your computer so you can read it at your leisure. Depending on the RSS reader you choose, downloading can occur even when you're not connected to the Internet, so you can catch up whenever you have a spare moment. For more information, see the RSS Primer at www.whatisrss.com.

5. Answer email on the train, plane, or passenger seat of a car (don't try this while driving). Most people who work in an office environment get so much email that it's challenging to keep up with it all. Reading and responding to those messages on the go helps get that task out of the way, and with most email programs you don't even need to be connected to the Internet to respond to messages. When you press the Send button, the message will go to your emails outbox and send automatically when you're connected later.
6. Do maintenance wherever you are. OK, this one is boring, but most of the maintenance jobs you really need to do on your computer take quite a bit of time unattended. In other words, the computer needs a lot of time to do the job, but you can be doing something else while it churns away. For more information about the kinds of regular maintenance you should be doing, see "Regular Computer Maintenance".
7. Build music playlists on the go. If you use an MP3 player to listen to music while you're in the car, exercising, or even at work, you already know that playlists make your world better, because you don't need to manually select songs or just listen to whatever comes up in a random "shuffle" mode. Being able to make playlists when you have some spare down time while traveling, commuting, or wherever is a great convenience, and you can load them to your MP3 player on the spot.
8. Download pictures from a digital camera or digital video camera. When you're on vacation or at a family event, gathering everyone around the tiny viewfinder screen on your camera to look at the pictures or video you just took isn't a very good experience. By synchronizing the camera with your laptop, you can share the pictures and videos much better, and even email copies to other people on the spot. A laptop also comes in handy when you run out of space on your camera or digital video camera. Traditional laptop hard drives store much more information than a memory card so you can download your photos, erase your memory card and start over.
9. Work from the backyard. Ah, the good life-sipping lemonade (or your beverage of choice) while you catch up on work, browse the Web, or play a game is a great way to take advantage of a nice day. Stay in the shade, though, because laptop screens are notoriously hard to read in direct sun. And be careful by the pool!
10. Give presentations on the road. Using a program like Microsoft Office PowerPoint or OpenOffice Impress, you can create great-looking presentations to show clients, students, and others. This is a great capability for salespeople, realtors, public speakers, teachers, or anyone else who needs to create dynamic presentations.
For unleashed computing, look for laptops with Intel Inside®.