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to boot, buying an SSD is a must. In comparison, hard disks (HDDs) are slow and dated. You should use an HDD for storing your personal files and backing up your data, not for running Windows 10, games, and apps.

       Card slots (also known as expansion slots): Laptops have limited (if any) expansion slots on the motherboard. Desktops generally contain several expansion slots. Modern slots come in two flavors: PCI and PCI-Express (also known as PCIe or PCI-E). Many expansion cards, such as video cards, sound cards, and network cards, require PCIe slots. Of course, PCI cards do not fit in PCIe slots, and vice versa. To make things more confusing, PCIe comes in four sizes — literally, the size of the bracket and the number of bumps on the bottoms of the cards is different. The PCIe 1x is smallest, the relatively uncommon PCIe 4x is considerably larger, and PCIe 8x is a bit bigger still. PCIe 16x is just a little bit bigger than an old-fashioned PCI slot. Most video cards these days require a PCIe 16x slot. Or two.If you’re buying a monitor separately from the rest of the system, make sure the monitor takes video input in a form that your PC can produce. See the upcoming section “Screening” for details.

       USB (Universal Serial Bus) connections: The USB cable has a flat connector that plugs into your slots. USB 3 is considerably faster than USB 2, and any kind of USB device can plug into a USB 3 slot, whether the device itself supports USB 3 level speeds.USB Type-C (often called USB C) is a different kind of cable that has a different kind of slot. It has two big advantages: The plug is reversible, making it impossible to plug it in upside-down, and you can run a considerable amount of power through a USB-C, making it a good choice for power supplies. Many laptops these days get charged through a USB C connection.Make sure you get plenty of USB slots — at least two, preferably four, or more. Pay extra for a USB C slot or two. More details are in the section “Managing disks and drives,” later in this chapter.

       Lots of other stuff: You never have to play with this other stuff unless you’re very unlucky.

Here are a few upgrade dos and don’ts:

       Don’t let a salesperson talk you into eviscerating your PC and upgrading the CPU: Intel Core i7 isn’t that much faster than Intel Core i5, and a 3.0-GHz PC doesn’t run a whole lot faster than a 2.6-GHz PC. The same is true for AMD’s Ryzen 7 versus Ryzen 5.

       When you hit 8GB in main memory, don’t expect big performance improvements by adding more memory, unless you’re running Google Chrome all day with 42 open tabs, or putting together videos.

       On the other hand, if you have an older video card, do consider upgrading it to a faster card, or to one with more memory. Windows 10 takes good advantage of it.

       Rather than nickel-and-dime yourself to death on little upgrades, do wait until you can afford a new PC, and give away your old one.

       If you can't afford to buy a new PC, and you want more performance, do buy a new SSD. Install Windows 10 and all your apps and games on the SSD. No other hardware component delivers bigger performance improvements than the switch from HDD to SSD.

      

If you decide to add memory, have the company that sells you the memory install it. The process is simple, quick, and easy — if you know what you’re doing. Having the dealer install the memory also puts the monkey on his back if a memory chip doesn’t work or a bracket snaps. This is especially true for laptops.

      Inside a touch-sensitive tablet

      Although tablets have been on the market for more than a decade, they didn’t really take off until Apple introduced the iPad in 2010. Since the iPad went ballistic, every Windows hardware manufacturer has been clamoring to join the game. Even Microsoft has entered the computer-manufacturing fray with its line of innovative tablets known as Surface.

      The old Windows 7–era tablets generally required a stylus (a special kind of pen), and they had truly little software that took advantage of touch input. The iPad changed all that.

The result is a real hodge-podge of Windows tablets and many kinds of 2-in-1s (which have a removable keyboard, as shown in Figure 1-6, and thus transform to a genuine tablet), laptops, and ultrabooks with all sorts of weird hinges, including some that flip around like an orangutan on a swing.

      Courtesy of Microsoft

      FIGURE 1-6: Microsoft Surface Pro tablets typify the 2-in-1 combination of removable slates with tear-away keyboards.

As sales of Windows 10 machines plummets, the choice has never been broader. All major PC manufacturers now offer traditional laptops as well as some variant on the 2-in-1, many still have desktops, and more than a few even make Chromebooks!

I did most of the touch-sensitive work in this book on an ASUS ZenBook Duo (see Figure 1-7). Its secondary touch-based screen, called ASUS ScreenPad Plus, gives me on-the-go computing that I never experienced with traditional laptops.

      Courtesy of ASUS

      FIGURE 1-7: The ASUS ZenBook Duo used to update this book.

With a 10th generation Intel Core i7-10510U processor, 16GB of RAM, and a 512GB solid-state drive, the ASUS ZenBook Duo is the fastest, most capable laptop I’ve ever owned. It's a lot more powerful than many desktop PCs people buy. Its dual-screen configuration simply blows me away. With it, you can do multitasking that was never possible on a Windows laptop. To make things even better, it has an NVIDIA GeForce MX250 with 2GB of memory that works great for all kinds of professional use cases, including video editing and architecture. It has two USB 3.1 ports, one USB C, an HDMI output for high-definition monitors (or TVs!), and a MicroSD card reader. Another cool feature is the webcam with facial-recognition support, which makes it easy to sign into Windows 10 using your face instead of your password. Don't worry: Your face is not sent to Microsoft and is stored only locally, on your PC. The keyboard is illuminated so that I can see the keys during the night. This feature is useful when I work long hours, and I am often a night-owl when I get to write books like this one.

      

Of course, that kind of oomph comes at a price. That’s the other part — quite possibly the constraining part — of the equation. A couple thousand bucks for a desktop replacement is great, but if you just want a Windows 10 laptop, you can find respectable, traditional Windows 10 laptops (ultrabooks, whatever you want to call them), with or without touchscreens, for a few hundred.

      Microsoft’s Surface Pro (Figure 1-6) starts at $749 or so, without the keyboard. The Surface Laptop goes for $1000 and up, and it includes the keyboard. The Surface Book, which is both a laptop and a tablet, starts at $1600.

      That said, if a Chromebook or an iPad or an Android tablet will do everything you need to do, there’s no reason to plunk down lots of money for a Windows 10 tablet, ultrabook, or laptop. None at all.

      If you’re thinking about buying a Windows 10 tablet, keep these points in mind:

        Focus on weight, heat, and battery life. Touch-sensitive tablets are meant to be carried, not lugged around like a suitcase. The last thing you need is a

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