How A Laptop Works And Its Components. Download our computer guide as eBook. See description

Download our free computer guide as ebook https://www.zorrocomputers.com/computer-troubleshooting-guide/

Full article is here: https://www.zorrocomputers.com/how-laptop-works

Every laptop big or small has these components:

• A processor
• Some memory (RAM)
• Hard drive (storage device, new laptops may have SSD storage)
• Screen
• Keyboard
• Various ports like USB, local network, SD card reader
• Wireless card
• Battery
• Cooling system
• Logic board also called the motherboard
The processor is the most important part of the laptop.

It is located inside the laptop on a motherboard. It does everything:

• Calculates arithmetic formulas
• Draws a picture on the screen
• Writes to a hard drive
• Uses memory and so on

The processor has many transistors (this is an electronics component that makes the logic work) something about a few millions. Despite this the processor is probably the most reliable part in the laptop – it rarely fails. If you start to repair laptops, you will notice that the processor can survive almost everything.

How it works. Basically, it operates with Boolean logic, i.e. zeros and ones. And those zeros and ones (bits) make bytes, i.e. 8 bit long is a Byte. So, the information on the laptop is basically zeros and ones. There is one exception about which I will talk later.

The first logic was implemented on a vacuum tube, and today, processors are light years away from its predecessor.
RAM or memory is very important in the laptop. Basically, this is temporary storage from where the processor takes information, works on it and puts back for storage. This memory is power dependent – if the power is turned off everything will disappear from it.


Today the RAM is crazy fast, and there is a lot. Two decades ago people were working on laptops that had 100MB of memory, and today 4GB RAM is a must. I will explain later what those numbers mean. And here is a guide on how to know RAM type.

Despite that the memory has similar transistor amount to the processor it is also very reliable. It rarely fails, and manufacturers give a lifetime warranty for the memory they sell.

RAM has no arithmetic processing units; it is cells where the processor can write and store information at its will. RAM stands for Random Access Memory.

The processor reads and writes to the RAM in parallel. So, any 8-bit byte will be written at once in a fraction of a second.

I must mention that everything in the laptop is synchronized with so-called clock. Today basically it is in GHz (Giga Hertz) range. So, it is really fast. Though, some parts of the laptop can’t keep up with this speed, so it works on lower speeds.
The hard drive has some mechanical parts and some electronics. Just because computers needed to store a lot of information, smart people come up with an idea to store it on a magnetic disc.



This is the same disk invented a long time ago (around 1957) and is used in today’s hard drives. One critical point that on the disk are stored not zeros and ones but a mix of recorded impulses that change the small magnetic particle alignment. Then the so-called head reads it, and smart algorithms decode it and convert it to zeros and ones.

So, it is complicated, but everything is done fast so we even not noticing anything unless when the hard drive fails, we can’t access the data.

Yes, the hard drive is not that reliable as the processor and memory. Though in an ideal scenario the hard drive would not fail for 100 years, in reality, due to its complicated construction, average hard drive life probably does not exceed seven years.

If compared to the processor the hard drive probably would fail 1000 times often.

Lately, a new breed of storage drives appeared called SSDs (solid state drives); as the name suggests, they have no moving parts and are based only on electronics – memory chips. At the moment, they usually have less capacity than HDDs and are expensive, but manufacturers are catching up, and I think they will be even cheaper than HDDs (electronics is much cheaper to make as mechanical parts).

Some people thought why not combine those both technologies in one drive. So solid state hybrid drives appeared (solid state hybrid drive – SSHD). The idea with these drives is they have memory chips to hold the data accessed most frequently and a normal HDD for data storage.

All three types of storage disks look almost the same and have the same form factor. But the SSD is usually in a plastic case. HDD and SSHD are manufactured in a metal case.

Видео How A Laptop Works And Its Components. Download our computer guide as eBook. See description канала Zorro Computers