by Salvador Whitfield
Everyone, it seems, has a laptop today, and if you don't have one, you probably are thinking of buying one. As if it were not difficult enough to select from the numerous types and brands of laptops out there, then you are confronted with the accessories. Of the thousands of accessories out there, it can be daunting to figure out what you really need for your laptop. Obviously, it depends upon your needs and plans with your computer, but there are five essentials you might start with first.
If you are going to use your laptop at home with any kind of frequency, you will want to think about getting an external keyboard and pointing device (mouse). Why? Well if you have ever tried typing on a laptop for any more than an hour, you know that your neck, shoulders, and wrists can start to feel fatigued, to say the least. The solution is to purchase an external keyboard, which you can likely just plug into the back of your laptop, as well as a mouse. Then, for use in the office, raise the screen up with books or risers of some sort to make looking at the screen a little more ergonomic. You can even buy accessory swivel stands for your lap top.
Second, you will likely want to connect other things to your laptop when home, like a printer, perhaps a DVD player, or even a CD burner. This can add up to a lot of wires, and thus a lot of clutter to hook in and unplug when you want to take your laptop out of the office or settle back in. To prevent this problem, you are going to love having a docking station.
A figment is a product of somebody’s imagination; it has such characters as his thought impresses upon it. That those characters are independent of how you or I think is an external reality. There are, however, phenomena within our own minds, dependent upon our thought, which are at the same time real in the sense that we really think them. But though their characters depend on how we think, they do not depend on what we think those characters to be. Thus, a dream has a real existence as a mental phenomenon, if somebody has really dreamt it; that he dreamt so and so, does not depend on what anybody thinks was dreamt, but is completely independent of all opinion on the subject.
—Charles Sanders Peirce (1839–1914)
A docking station basically turns your laptop into a desktop computer when you are home. When you are ready to take it away, you simply take it out of the station and off you go.
Another option along the same lines is a port replicator, which contains computer ports. You connect your peripherals to the replicator and then to your laptop. When you want to take your laptop away, you simply unhook the one port replicator, rather than each individual device.
The third essential for your laptop isn't as exciting as some other accessories, but you will be glad you have it, an external hard drive. It's not fun, it's not exciting, but the morning you wake up and your laptop won't turn on will be the day you are thrilled you decided to get that external hard drive.
A tip to go along with your new external hard drive: always pack it separate when you go on a trip. If you lose your bag with both the backup drive and the laptop in it, you're toast.
My position is a naturalistic one; I see philosophy not as an a priori propaedeutic or groundwork for science, but as continuous with science. I see philosophy and science as in the same boat—a boat which, to revert to Neurath’s figure as I so often do, we can rebuild only at sea while staying afloat in it. There is no external vantage point, no first philosophy.
—Willard Van Orman Quine (b. 1908)
A fourth essential will allow you to hook up everything you need. Make sure you go out and get an external USB hub. You see, most desktop computers come with several, as many as 8 or 9, USB ports. However, since laptops are smaller, they often only have a couple of USB ports. The hub will usually include four or more ports and will connect through one of your laptop's USB ports, making them very easy to use.
Fifth, think about worst case scenarios. You probably got your laptop so you could do work out of the office, out of your home, or wherever you need to, right? Well, since you will be out and about, you will definitely want to think about insurance for your laptop. The manufacturer's warranty usually won't cover anything beyond parts, and an extended warranty will not cover theft, even though it may cover you for breakage or fire.
There are a thousand different accessories out there for your computer. Some of them you might need others you might not. It all depends on what you plan to do with your laptop as well as where you plan on doing it. However, these five things are essential to making your laptop as functional to you as possible. While there may be some variation to what you need, most of these items will be useful to anyone who owns a laptop, no matter what the primary or secondary uses of this portable computer might