Upgrading & Fixing Laptops DUMmIES

rules designed by programmers, and some advanced designs can even

“learn” new rules and adapt existing ones based on experience gained

over time. But what’s missing (thus far) are consciousness and creativity.

Machines don’t know they’re metal, plastic, and silicon, and though a com-

puter can be taught to recognize the setting sun or a winsome smile, it

doesn’t feel awe or love or fear.

Improving Your Memory ...............................................................................

A zippy processor and a fantastically capable operating system and software

are great to have. So is a bottomless checking account and a body that doesn’t

quit, but we can’t all be that lucky.

In the best of all possible worlds, your laptop would have

The fastest microprocessor on the market

More than enough of the fastest RAM available

In the real world, though, you may have to make some compromises. So, here’s

my rule: Assume a choice between the fastest processor on the market and

not enough memory, or a merely adequate processor and an abundance of

RAM. Go for the memory.

Chapter 6: Brain Matters: Memory, Microprocessors, and BIOS ...............................

Mind over matter

Among the most creative minds to ever consider

the nature of a computer’s “mind” were Alan

Turing and Arthur C. Clarke. Turing was a British

mathematician who helped crack the German

Enigma code during World War II. In 1950 he put

forth the Turing Test as a way to judge computer

intelligence. One way to conduct the test: If a

subject at a monitor (it was a teletype in the first

proposition) cannot tell if he or she was com-

municating with a machine or a fellow human

being, then the machine had reached indepen-

dent intelligence and consciousness.

Coincidentally — or perhaps not — in that same

year novelist Clarke wrote a short story called

“The Sentinel,” which became the source

material for Stanley Kubrick’s classic science

fiction movie 2001: A Space Odyssey. In that

film — released in 1968 at the dawn of era of the

personal computer — the central computer of

the spaceship, a machine by the name of Hal,

seemed to lose its (his?) mind when confronted

with conflicting instructions. More than half a

century later, there’s yet to be a computer like

Hal that can say (and mean), “I’m afraid, Dave.”