2.1 What’s inside a computer?

If I were to buy a laptop today, I would need to think about the following kinds of hardware options:

• size and weight of the machine
• quality of the display
• processor and its speed
• memory and storage capacity

Three years ago I built a desktop gaming PC. I had to purchase and assemble and connect:

• the case
• power supply
• motherboard
• processor
• internal memory
• video card with a graphics processing unit (GPU) and memory
• internal hard drive and solid state storage
• internal Blu-ray drive
• wireless network USB device
• display
• speakers
• mouse and keyboard

As you can see, I had to make many choices. In the case of the laptop, you think about why you want the machine and what you want to do, and much less about the particular hardware. You don’t have to make a choice about the manufacturers of the parts nor the...