It Takes a Discerning Eye to See Through Laptop Lingo

Third, a few Windows machines now include a separate, simpler software environment that you can run instead of Windows when you only want to watch a movie or listen to music. That eats up a little more disk space of its own. (It also should induce no small amount of angst at Microsoft, which has worked for years to make Windows the environment of choice for watching movies and listening to music.)

CD-burner drives long ago became standard on laptops as well as desktops -- aside from the very cheapest models -- but DVD-recordable drives are often an option. They are worth considering, if only to make it easier to back up your data.

Most non-Apple laptops include a slot for the memory cards used in digital cameras, handheld organizers and cell phones, but -- unlike on desktops -- these slots rarely accommodate every card format. If your portable gadgets use SD Cards, the most popular type, you should be fine. Otherwise, you'll have to check the fine-print specifications for a laptop to see what cards it does accept.

Communication and expansion -- how you get data in and out of the machine -- are, by contrast, refreshingly straightforward to decipher. The more USB ports, the more gadgets you'll be able to plug in, from printers to a digital camera to a digital-music player. A FireWire port can accept an iPod or a camcorder, should you want to make some home movies on the laptop. A modem, Ethernet jack (for a wired network) and WiFi (for the wireless kind) are all pretty much standard.

The only options to ponder here are Bluetooth, which can link a laptop wirelessly to some newer cell phones and handheld organizers, and a PC Card slot, which you'll likely need only if you plan to use a cellular data service such as Verizon Wireless's BroadbandAccess.

You can ignore the typical software bundle, as most (Apple's excluded) leave out such essentials as spyware defenses, a decent photo album program and a modern Web browser. Fortunately, those three items are all free downloads.

Finally, there are the manufacturers' service and support policies. Everybody offers a minimum period of warranty coverage when you can call for help and not be charged, but those periods vary -- by default, Dell's warranty runs only 90 days on some models. Afterward, how much you'll pay can be all over the map. Most companies charge a "per-issue" fee -- you pay once to get a problem solved, no matter how long that takes.

Gateway, however, earns a dishonorable mention for charging $2.95 a minute for out-of-warranty calls.

As an option to these a la carte fees, vendors are pushing service contracts and warranty extensions. It's comforting to think that, by paying an additional $300 or $400, you've eliminated all risk from your computing purchase.

But you'll also wind up spending a large fraction of the computer's value in the process. And at some point, the laptop will outlive its usefulness anyway. Unless you think you're going to abuse the laptop heavily, you're better off setting that money aside for the next computer -- or spending it to get whatever the vendor left out of your current machine.

Living with technology, or trying to? E-mail Rob Pegoraro atrob@twp.com.