It is less talked about, roughly all are the same and perhaps they are no longer fashionable objects but laptops are far from setting and almost everyone has at least one.
A laptop has several advantages over a desktop fixed PC: they are small, portable in a bag or inside a backpack and also work without power, on battery power. In another article I had written several tips on what to look at when buying a new laptop indicating that the limited life of the batteries is the main defect of these PCs.
A laptop can therefore request some additional software tools compared to a desktop PC, in order to manage specific components such as the battery, to prevent it from getting too hot, to better use the touchpad or the mat to move the cursor with your finger, to protect it against attempts to steal and to use the computer around.
In this article a small list of 10 programs dedicated to laptops that allow you to better manage your notebook or netbook.
1) Touchfreeze is a small tool that I have already talked about that is worth reproposing for its usefulness.
It allows you to disable the touchpad on the laptop or netbook automatically while writing so, not to make involuntary typing errors by moving the cursor or clicking keys because you touch the touchpad with your hand.
2) AutoSensitivity is a program to control the sensitivity of the touchpad and mouse. You can then set a lower sensitivity to move the cursor (the arrow on the screen) more slowly. The speed of the cursor moved by swiping the finger on the touchpad may differ from the sensitivity set for the mouse.
3) Scrybe is used to enable gestures to launch programs and open websites. For example, you can configure a gesture to be performed by touching the touchpad that opens the navigaweb.net site or to open Google. You can therefore specify that by moving your finger from left to right and then down, you launch Chrome. Scrybe is extremely configurable so you can run computer commands with a simple gesture. Scrybe works with most modern Synaptics touchpads (whose new drviers include it) that are installed on most laptops and netbooks, it is also optimized for the new multi-touch touchpads (those that support two-finger touch) and it works on Windows 7 and Windows 10.
4) To have Multitouch support on the mouse pad as it happens on Macs, no external tool is needed because it is a feature built into the Synaptics drivers. To verify that your touchpad is Synaptics (almost all laptops have this device) you need to see if there is the relative option tab in the mouse properties (control panel).
With the new Synaptics drivers you can integrate Scrybe and enable two-finger scrolling, zooming and other functions similar to those of a multitouch screen of Android smartphones.
Two-finger scrolling can also be enabled by installing a tool (only for Synaptics touchpads) called TwoFingerScroll, very easy to use that does not change the driver settings.
5) SharpKeys is instead a different program already seen in the past, to change the operation of the keys on the keyboard and remap them or even disable them .
Smaller laptops have small keyboards so getting used to may not be as painless. Modifying the special keys and assigning them custom actions can be very convenient.
6) Aerofoil is one of those programs to optimize the battery life of a laptop better than you can do with the Windows 7 energy saving settings.
7) BatteryBar is a tool that shows the battery life on the desktop, estimating the remaining time in a much more precise way, also on the basis of the history.
8) Open Hardware Monitor, on the other hand, is a useful program for controlling heat and temperatures on the computer.
Another excellent program for a complete hardware control of the pc is HWInfo32.
9) Prey is a kind of pc anti-theft device that is easy to set up, free and very smart. Prey does not protect the computer from thieves but if it is stolen or moved, it is possible to check its position to find the laptop (if it connects to any wifi network).
In addition to Prey there are also other anti-theft programs for laptops .
10) VeraCrypt allows you to encrypt an area of the hard disk and password protect all the data inside it which is very important for a laptop that can be left unattended. I had talked about VeraCrypt as the best program to protect the data of USB sticks or disks.
If you use other specific programs for laptops that are worth mentioning, let me know in a comment.
A laptop has several advantages over a desktop fixed PC: they are small, portable in a bag or inside a backpack and also work without power, on battery power. In another article I had written several tips on what to look at when buying a new laptop indicating that the limited life of the batteries is the main defect of these PCs. A laptop can therefore request some additional software tools compared to a desktop PC, in order to manage specific components such as the battery, to prevent it from getting too hot, to better use the touchpad or the mat to move the cursor with your finger, to protect it against attempts to steal and to use the computer around.
In this article a small list of 10 programs dedicated to laptops that allow you to better manage your notebook or netbook.
1) Touchfreeze is a small tool that I have already talked about that is worth reproposing for its usefulness.
It allows you to disable the touchpad on the laptop or netbook automatically while writing so, not to make involuntary typing errors by moving the cursor or clicking keys because you touch the touchpad with your hand.
2) AutoSensitivity is a program to control the sensitivity of the touchpad and mouse. You can then set a lower sensitivity to move the cursor (the arrow on the screen) more slowly. The speed of the cursor moved by swiping the finger on the touchpad may differ from the sensitivity set for the mouse.
3) Scrybe is used to enable gestures to launch programs and open websites. For example, you can configure a gesture to be performed by touching the touchpad that opens the navigaweb.net site or to open Google. You can therefore specify that by moving your finger from left to right and then down, you launch Chrome. Scrybe is extremely configurable so you can run computer commands with a simple gesture. Scrybe works with most modern Synaptics touchpads (whose new drviers include it) that are installed on most laptops and netbooks, it is also optimized for the new multi-touch touchpads (those that support two-finger touch) and it works on Windows 7 and Windows 10.
4) To have Multitouch support on the mouse pad as it happens on Macs, no external tool is needed because it is a feature built into the Synaptics drivers. To verify that your touchpad is Synaptics (almost all laptops have this device) you need to see if there is the relative option tab in the mouse properties (control panel).
With the new Synaptics drivers you can integrate Scrybe and enable two-finger scrolling, zooming and other functions similar to those of a multitouch screen of Android smartphones.
Two-finger scrolling can also be enabled by installing a tool (only for Synaptics touchpads) called TwoFingerScroll, very easy to use that does not change the driver settings.
5) SharpKeys is instead a different program already seen in the past, to change the operation of the keys on the keyboard and remap them or even disable them .
Smaller laptops have small keyboards so getting used to may not be as painless. Modifying the special keys and assigning them custom actions can be very convenient.
6) Aerofoil is one of those programs to optimize the battery life of a laptop better than you can do with the Windows 7 energy saving settings.
7) BatteryBar is a tool that shows the battery life on the desktop, estimating the remaining time in a much more precise way, also on the basis of the history.
8) Open Hardware Monitor, on the other hand, is a useful program for controlling heat and temperatures on the computer.
Another excellent program for a complete hardware control of the pc is HWInfo32.
9) Prey is a kind of pc anti-theft device that is easy to set up, free and very smart. Prey does not protect the computer from thieves but if it is stolen or moved, it is possible to check its position to find the laptop (if it connects to any wifi network).
In addition to Prey there are also other anti-theft programs for laptops .
10) VeraCrypt allows you to encrypt an area of the hard disk and password protect all the data inside it which is very important for a laptop that can be left unattended. I had talked about VeraCrypt as the best program to protect the data of USB sticks or disks.
If you use other specific programs for laptops that are worth mentioning, let me know in a comment.
