Laptops For Seniors For Dummies

Introduction

Computers for consumers have come a long way in just 40 years or so. They’re now at the heart of the way many people communicate, shop, and learn. They provide useful tools for tracking information, organizing finances, and being creative.

Personal computers were originally big boxy desktop affairs that took up a lot of space and weren’t easily portable. You set it up in one location in your house and that was pretty much it — unless you had an extra 30 minutes to spare to move it. Nowadays, though, desktop PCs are on the wane, and most people are switching to laptops. A laptop is easy to transport, so you can keep it with you as you move from kitchen table to back porch to bedroom as easily as you would carry a book or magazine.

Up until now, you might have been too busy to jump in and learn the computing ropes, but you now realize how useful and fun working with a computer can be. In fact, for seniors, a computer opens up a world of activities and contacts they never had before. And perhaps, like many people, you’ve decided that a laptop is the way to go.

About This Book

This book can help you get going with a laptop quickly and painlessly. It’s specifically written for mature people like you — folks who are relatively new to using a computer and want to discover the basics of buying a laptop, working with software, and getting on the Internet. In writing this book, I’ve tried to take into account the types of activities that might interest a 55-plus-year-old who’s discovering the full potential of computers for the first time.

Foolish Assumptions

This book is organized by sets of tasks. These tasks start from the very beginning, assuming you know little about computers, and guide you through the most basic steps in easy-to-understand language. Because I assume you’re new to computers, the book provides explanations or definitions of technical terms to help you out.

All computers are run by software called an operating system, such as Windows, macOS, or Linux. Because Microsoft Windows–based personal computers (PCs) are the most common type of computer, I am assuming that you have a laptop PC running Windows (or are planning to get one after you read Chapter 1).

Windows 11 is the latest version, but many people still use Windows 10, so I cover both in this book. There are also various types of mobile computers available, such as tablets and smartphones, but this book doesn’t cover them.

Windows is updated periodically, and each time there are minor feature changes. This book is based on the mid-2022 versions of Windows 10 and Windows 11. You may encounter minor differences between what you see on-screen and what you read about in this book, but they should not prevent you from getting things done.

Icons Used in This Book

Sometimes, the fastest way to go through a book is to look at the pictures — in this case, icons that draw your attention to specific types of useful information. I use these icons in this book:

Warning The Warning icon points to something that can prevent or cause problems.

Remember The Remember icon points out helpful information. (Everything in this book is helpful, but this stuff is even more helpful.)

Tip The Tip icon points out a hint or trick for saving time and effort or something that makes using your PC easier to understand.

Technical Stuff The Technical Stuff icon marks background information you can skip if you like, although it may make good conversation at a really dull party.

Beyond the Book

In addition to the material in the print or e-book you’re reading right now, this product comes with some access-anywhere goodies on the web. Check out the free Cheat Sheet for a checklist for buying a computer, computer care and maintenance tips, and Windows keystroke shortcuts. To get this Cheat Sheet, simply go to dummies.com and type Laptops For Seniors For Dummies Cheat Sheet in the search box.

Where to Go from Here

Whether you need to start from square one and buy yourself a laptop or you’re ready to just start enjoying the tools and toys your current laptop makes available, it’s time to get going, get online, and get computer savvy.

Part 1

Get Going!

IN THIS PART …

Buy a laptop

Set up your laptop

Buy and set up a printer

Chapter 1

Buying a Laptop

IN THIS CHAPTER

Bullet Understanding computer types

Bullet Getting an overview of hardware

Bullet Understanding the roles of input and output devices

Bullet Appreciating operating systems and applications

Bullet Deciding on a laptop type

Bullet Comparing display types

Bullet Evaluating your storage options

Bullet Considering your Internet options

Bullet Shopping for your ideal laptop

If you’ve never owned a laptop computer and now face purchasing one for the first time, deciding what to get can be a somewhat daunting experience. There are lots of technical terms to figure out and various pieces of hardware (the physical pieces of your computer such as the monitor and keyboard) and software (the brains of the computer that help you create documents and play games, for example) that you need to understand.

In this chapter, I introduce you to the world of activities your new laptop computer makes available to you, and I provide the information you need to choose just the right laptop for you.

Remember as you read through this chapter that figuring out what you want to do with your laptop is an important step in determining which one you should buy. You have to consider how much money you want to spend, how you’ll connect your laptop to the Internet, and how much power and performance you need.

What Is a Laptop?

A personal computer (PC) is a computer designed to be used by one person. The word personal helps distinguish PCs from a variety of other computer types, everything from the powerful servers that calculate trajectories at NASA to the computer chip that controls the temperature in your refrigerator.

There are two basic categories of PCs: those that are easily portable and those that aren’t. The more portable models are laptops (sometimes called notebooks), and the less portable ones are desktops. This book focuses on laptops, but there’s a lot of similarity between the two, so even if you have a desktop PC (or want to have one), you can still learn a lot from this book. In this book, I use the terms computer and laptop more or less interchangeably, because all laptops are computers.

Desktop PCs are big and rather heavy; you can’t just throw one in a briefcase and hit the open road. But you tend to get more features and power for your money with a desktop, and they’re easy to repair and upgrade. Desktops can have very large external monitors, which is good news if your eyesight isn’t great and you need a big screen.

Laptops are lightweight and easy to handle. They can run on battery power for hours at a time, so you can use one anywhere — like in the passenger seat of a car, or in the middle of a national park. The built-in display, keyboard, and pointing device mean there are no cables to get tangled or come unplugged, too. Because there is less space for fans, laptops sometimes run hot to the touch. Laptops tend to be more expensive for the same hardware capabilities, though, and more difficult (read: expensive) to repair. Most laptops have very limited upgrade possibilities.

Laptops come in a variety of sizes, mostly determined by the screen size (which is measured diagonally). The smallest mini laptops have screen sizes as small as 9; the largest ones have screen sizes of 17 and upward. Larger displays are easier to see, but larger laptops are also bulkier and heavier (sometimes as much as 8 to 10 pounds), use more power, and can’t run as long on a single battery charge. The smallest laptops may have undersized keyboards that are awkward to type on, and may have fewer features or less capability. For many people, a screen size of between 14 and 16 is a good compromise. Figure 1-1 shows a moderately sized model.

FIGURE 1-1

Many of today’s laptops (and some desktops) have touchscreens that allow you to interact with them using your finger or a digital pen. See Chapter 2 for advice on using a touchscreen computer.

A tablet is a small portable computer that consists of a flat tablet, like a pad of paper you might draw on, with a touchscreen. Tablets such as the iPad offer many basic computing capabilities and are extremely lightweight and portable. You can read books, check your email, play games, listen to music, watch videos, and more. A tablet can’t take the place of a real PC, though. It doesn’t have a real keyboard (although you can buy an add-on wireless keyboard if you really want one), so your finger on the touchscreen has to substitute for both keyboard and mouse. There’s no expandability or upgradability, and most tablets don’t even interface with common external devices like printers. Enjoy your tablet — or your mobile phone — but don’t expect it to have all the same capabilities as a PC.

What Can You Can Do with a Laptop?

Today’s computers can do some pretty amazing things. Not only can they connect you to the wide world of the Internet, but they can also run applications that let you store and organize photos, write your memoirs, make your own greeting cards, play all kinds of games, track your investments, and so much more. And a laptop lets you do all those things from almost anywhere you happen to be.

The following list walks you through some of the things a laptop computer will enable you to do. Depending on what activities are important to you, you can make a more-informed purchasing choice.

Keep in touch with friends and family. The Internet makes it possible to communicate with other people via email; share video images using built-in video recorders or webcams (tiny video cameras that capture and send your image to another computer); and make phone and video calls using your computer and Internet connection to place calls with services such as Zoom and Skype. You can also chat with others by typing messages and sending them through your computer using a technology called instant messaging (IM). These messages are exchanged in real time, so that you and your grandchild, for example, can see and reply to text or share images immediately. Part 3 of this book explains these topics in more detail.

Research any topic — from anywhere. Online, you can find many reputable websites that help you get information on anything from expert medical advice to the best travel deals. You can read news from around the corner or around the world. You can visit government websites to get information about your taxes and Social Security benefits, and go to entertainment sites to look up your local television listings or movie reviews.

Create greeting cards, letters, or home inventories. Whether you’re organizing your holiday card list, tracking sales for your home business, or figuring out a monthly budget, computer programs can help. For example, Figure 1-2 shows a graph that the Excel application created from data in a spreadsheet.

FIGURE 1-2

Pursue hobbies such as genealogy or sports. You can research your favorite team online or connect with people who have the same interests. The online world is full of special-interest discussion groups where you can talk about a wide variety of topics with others.

Play interactive games with others over the Internet. You can play everything from shuffleboard to poker and even participate in action games in virtual worlds. Love backgammon? Got you covered. Online bridge league? There are hundreds. Any game that you love offline, you can play online. You can play games with the computer, with total strangers, or (my favorite) with family and friends.

Share and create photos, drawings, and videos. If you have a digital camera or smartphone, you can transfer photos to your computer (called uploading) or copy photos off the Internet (if their copyright permits it) and share them in emails or use them to create your own greeting cards. If you’re artistically inclined, you can create digital drawings. Many popular websites make sharing your homemade videos easy, too. If you have a digital video camera or smartphone and editing software, you can use editing tools to make a movie and share it with others via video-sharing sites such as YouTube or by email. Steven Spielberg, look out!

Shop online and compare products easily, day or night. You can shop for anything from a garden shed to travel deals or a new camera. Using handy shopping site features, you can easily compare prices from several stores or read customer product reviews. Many websites, such as pricegrabber.com, list product prices from a variety of vendors on one web page, so you can find the best deals. Beyond the convenience, all this information can help you save money.

Manage your financial life. You can do your banking or investing online and get up-to-the-minute data about your bank account, credit card balances, and investments. For example, Figure 1-3 shows Quicken, an application that enables you to track and view all your bank accounts and investments in one place.

FIGURE 1-3

Get Up to Speed on Laptop Hardware

Your computing experience consists of interactions with hardware and software. I will explain both of those things, but let’s start with hardware. The hardware is all the tangible computer equipment — the parts you can see and touch.

Remember You should know a little something about computer hardware before you buy your first laptop because the various components are available in a variety of quality and performance levels, and the component choices affect both a computer’s price and its suitability for certain tasks.

Warning It’s not always a good value to buy a top-of-the-line laptop. In fact, unless you want to do something really specific and high-end, like professional graphic arts or movie production, high-end computers aren’t usually worth the price. If all you want to do is write letters, share photos, and surf the Internet, don’t waste your money. Get a moderately priced model that has the components you need.

In this and the next few sections, I break down the major hardware components you need to be aware of and explain how they affect your computing experience. When shopping for a laptop, you’ll see many different models with different amounts, speeds, and quality levels of the essential internal parts. The best internal parts cost more money, but offer better performance and perhaps will become obsolete less quickly.

There’s a laptop for every budget and every set of needs — with prices to match. Before making your purchase, you need to think about how you’ll use the laptop and what specs it should have in order to enable you to do all the things you want to do with it.

Nearly all laptops consist of a metal and plastic case with a keyboard on one side and some access panels and fan vents on the other side. Within the case is a collection of parts that make the laptop work its magic for you. All those internal parts are connected by a large circuit board inside the case called a motherboard.

There are three main functions of a laptop’s internal components:

Processing: A computer’s ability to receive input, perform an operation on it, and deliver output. The component in charge of processing is the central processing unit (CPU). It’s a small, high-tech semiconductor chip mounted on the motherboard.

Tip CPU speed is rated in billions of hertz (gigahertz). The higher the GHz, the faster the processor. Generally speaking, the faster your CPU, the faster most applications run. That’s not always true, though, because other components can cause bottlenecks, like slow Internet speeds, that can make a computer seem slow when its processor is just fine. The speed and features of the CPU make a big difference in the price of the laptop.

There are lots of highly technical features that distinguish one CPU from another, but you don’t need to worry about those for the most part; they’re mostly of interest to people who are a lot geekier than you. For a basic consumer laptop, any of the CPUs available in new PCs today will be fine.

Tip Unless you are a big-time gamer who is super-serious about kicking butt in some graphics-intensive game, or you are a filmmaker or a professional artist, any modern CPU should be fine for your needs. Don’t spend a lot of money on the fastest CPU available. Most people won’t notice the difference.

Memory: The computer’s ability to juggle the digital data that is active while the computer is running. Another name for memory is random access memory (RAM). Its capacity is measured in billions of bytes (gigabytes). A byte is a group of eight binary digits (bits).

Remember The more RAM a computer has, the more things it can do simultaneously. For example, a computer with a lot of RAM can run several complicated applications at once without bogging down. More RAM is better, but can also drive up the price of the system. The absolute minimum amount of RAM I would consider in a new PC is 8 gigabytes (GB). By the time you read this, though, the minimum might be higher — perhaps 16 GB. For the average home laptop user, the amount of RAM (memory) in the computer is the single most important performance factor. The more RAM, the better. So if your budget allows you to have a fabulous CPU or a greater amount of RAM, definitely go with the RAM.

Storage: The computer’s ability to keep a lot of data and many applications permanently on hand, ready to be copied into memory and used at a moment’s notice. Storage capacity is measured in gigabytes (billions of bytes) or terabytes (trillions of bytes). More capacity costs more. The more storage you have, the more applications can be installed on your computer, and the more data you can save (photos, documents, videos, and so on).

Every computer has at least one permanent storage component inside its case. Hard drives can also use different technologies, which offer different data access speeds. Traditional hard drives (often referred to as hard-disk drives or HDDs) use a mechanical and magnetic storage system; they are slower and cost less for the same amount of capacity. Solid-state drives (SSDs) use storage media that is technologically similar to RAM. They are faster, quieter, more reliable, and they run cooler — but they’re more expensive.

Technical Stuff UNDERSTANDING HOW COMPUTERS STORE AND USE DATA

Computers store all data and programs digitally — in other words, using digits. At their most basic level, computers employ only two digits: 0 and 1. A number system with just those two digits is called a binary system. Each individual stored digit is called a bit (which is short for binary digit).

Computers work with binary data in a variety of different ways. For example, memory chips like RAM hold data using capacitors that can either store or not store a tiny electrical charge. A stored charge is a 1, and a lack of stored charge is a 0. Data is stored in memory using patterns of charge/no charge. This type of data storage is called solid state because there are no moving parts.

Solid-state storage can be either temporary (dynamic) or permanent (static). For example, the main RAM in a computer system is dynamic RAM, which is only temporary storage. The data stays in dynamic RAM only as long as the computer remains powered up. The instant it loses power, all the capacitors revert back to 0 (no charge). Dynamic RAM serves as a temporary work area for the computer whenever it is powered up. In contrast, solid-state drives store data in capacitors that don’t lose their charge when the computer is powered down or if you unexpectedly lose electrical power.

There are other ways that some older kinds of permanent computer storage holds its data. For example, hard-disk drives store data magnetically, in patterns of positive and negative magnetic polarity. Optical discs such as CDs and DVDs store data in patterns of greater and lesser reflectivity on a shiny surface.

Input Devices: Putting Stuff In

Any computer system must provide at least one way for you to convey your wishes — in other words, to provide input. Almost all computers today offer at least two methods of accepting input: a keyboard and some type of pointing device.

A keyboard is similar to a typewriter keyboard. In addition to typing text, you can press certain key combinations to quickly issue commands for common activities such as selecting, copying, and pasting text.

Remember A laptop keyboard is built-in, and you can’t swap it out for a different one. (You can, however, connect a second, external keyboard to a laptop and use it instead of the built-in one.) There are some spiffy third-party keyboards you can get nowadays that have extra features and are designed to be more comfortable to use.

A pointing device is a device that moves an on-screen pointer (usually shaped like an arrow). A pointer enables you to point at what you want and then select it by pressing a button on the pointing device. On a laptop PC, a touch-sensitive rectangular pad (a touchpad) in front of the keyboard serves as a pointing device. You move your finger across the touchpad to move the on-screen pointer, and tap the touchpad to select things. Figure 1-4 shows a touchpad. You can also optionally connect other pointing devices, such as:

Mouse: A mouse is a little device about the size and shape of a bar of bath soap, with an LED and optical sensor on its underside. You slide the mouse across a flat surface with your hand, and that moves the pointer around on-screen. A mouse can be either wired (that is, have a cord that attaches to the computer) or wireless, operating via radio frequency (RF) signals.

FIGURE 1-4

Trackball: A trackball is like an upside-down mouse. It has a stationary base with a ball on top, and you roll the ball with your fingers to move the on-screen pointer.

Output Devices: Getting Stuff Out

It would be a pretty one-sided and unsatisfying experience if you never got anything back from your computer, right? The most common way a computer provides feedback is through the display screen. The display is the graphical panel where you see the operating system interface, the applications you run, the websites you visit, and the data files you create, such as documents, spreadsheets, and messages.

When a display is a separate unit from the computer, it’s often referred to as a monitor. Laptops have built-in display screens, but you can optionally connect external monitors to them, either as a replacement for the built-in display or as an extra screen.

A printer is another popular output device. A printer turns on-screen data to a paper copy that you can share with others. Chapter 3 covers printers in detail.

Yet another output device is a speaker (or a set of speakers). A computer speaker works basically the same way the speaker on your stereo system works — it enables you to hear the sound effects your computer generates as it operates, such as dings and beeps that accompany error messages. It also enables you to listen to music and watch videos that include sound using your computer. Laptops have built-in speakers, but you can optionally attach external speakers to use instead. Chapter 17 explains how to play music on your computer.

What Is Software?

Software is what makes computer hardware work and lets you get things done, such as writing documents with Microsoft Word or playing a game of solitaire. A computer uses two types of software: operating systems and applications.

All computers have an operating system (OS), which is system software that starts up the computer and keeps it running as you use it. Examples for laptop computers include Microsoft Windows, macOS (for computers made by Apple), and Linux (a free operating system popular with techie types). A lot of the upcoming chapters in this book explain how to interact with Microsoft Windows; I picked Windows to talk about in this book because it’s the overwhelming favorite, with something like a 95 percent market share.

Mobile devices like tablets and smartphones have different operating systems. The most popular operating systems for mobile devices are iOS for Apple devices (iPhones and iPads) and Android for most other phones and tablets.

The operating system is responsible for the graphical user interface (GUI, which is pronounced gooey). The pictures, text, menus, boxes, and other items you see on the computer’s screen are all part of the GUI. It also handles various housekeeping tasks like saving and opening files, talking to the hardware on your behalf, and starting and exiting applications.

An application (sometimes called an app or a program) is software that does something that’s directly useful or beneficial to the person using the computer. For example, Microsoft Word is an application that helps you write letters and other documents, and Microsoft Edge is a web browser application that helps you view web pages.

Each operating system comes with a few basic apps. For example, Microsoft Windows comes with