Alexandre Guimaraes writes:

>    My old Toshiba went bang after 3 years of good services :-( I bought a 
> HP Compaq and the thing is faster than my desktop. It makes more sense to 
> use it instead of the desktop but some question arose...
> 
>    - What is best for the batteries ? Should I leave them inside the 
> Notebook or should I take them out when using external power ? What is best 
> for the Li batteries ??

Laptops have all had intelligent batteries and chargers for quite some
time now.  Just leave the battery in and it will receive the proper
float charge.  One of the big plusses about using a laptop over a
desktop is that you essentially have a built-in UPS with 1-5 hours of
run time.

>    - Has anyone tried to use a Notebook as a Desktop ? Will it last ? Will 
> the 24/7 usage I make on my desktop kill it sooner ?

The biggest thing that kills laptops is vibration and being banged
arround.  A laptop will most likely live a longer life if it simply
stays in one place on your desk.

>    - Does anyone can say if it is a bad idea and why ? I am quite 
> apprensive because I never thought about doing it before.. It is weird how 
> something that makes sense but with wich we have no previous experience can 
> be annoying..

About the only thing you need to worry about with laptops is heat.  If
you are running any long processor-intensive jobs on a laptop, the CPU
will get quite warm.  Now, theoritically, the laptop's thermal
management circuitry will throttle back the CPU to keep it within safe
limits, but I have heard of some cases where laptop CPUs have fried
during extended periods of extensive use.  If your laptop happens to
get hot on the bottom (as many do) it wouldn't be a bad idea to build
some sort of riser to insure that it gets plenty of airflow.  For
about $20-$30 you can buy a commercial riser that even includes a few
small fans.

As an aside, the Pentium-MMX 233 Mhz laptop that I bought in 1997 and
retired from active use in 2001 been running continuously since then
(several years now) as a media source in my bedroom.  I use it to play
streaming audio or a playlist from my main fileserver.  Because the
machine has never recovered properly from swap-to-disk-and-power-down,
she has actually been active the entire time.  Needless to say, I've
set the hard disk to spin down and the display to blank very quickly
after any activity.

-p.
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