Nothing.
But they’re not laptops.
If you have a strong lap, they can definitely be a laptop.
Not comfortably or very usably, but nonetheless…
So what? wolfpup was comparing the difference between “real” computers and “smartphone” computers. Desktops and laptops are both in the “real” category here.
What’s funny is that at my work, the laptops we’ve been getting the last few years tend to get very hot. VERY hot. As in, they can at least make you very uncomfortable if you actually put it on your lap without some kind of insulation in between like a pillow or whatever.
I warn my customers not to take the word “laptop” literally.
Which, unfortunately, may make some laptops even hotter, to the extent of thermal failure, because resting some laptops on a soft surface blocks air intakes necessary for cooling.
It’s good advice to not actually use a laptop on your lap unless you have a flat firm-surface laptop desk.
Yeah, it depends on the surface. The vents/fans are on the sides so blocking the bottom is of course fine, otherwise it wouldn’t even be safe on a desk or table, but if it’s on something plush enough to wrap around and block the sides then you can damage the computer.
Those flat laptop desks are nice, I bought one for my wife some time back and she uses it daily.
More pertinent to the point, laptops and desktops are functionally identical for the applications I was discussing. At various points in my various computer upgrades, my newest laptop was substantially more powerful than my older desktop PC. And in my previous job, I’d take my work laptop into the office, plug it into the docking station that had a large monitor and full-size keyboard and mouse, and presto, a desktop PC!
Damn, there was a nun in my elementary school who insisted it was pronounced this way (she was Irish – does that make a difference?). But even at 9 yrs old I knew it was WRONG. Fer crissakes, look at how it’s spelled!
This is English, spelling is only loosely correlated to pronunciation.
Exactly, and yet I never hear anyone pronounce it miss-chee-vou!
.Hear, hear!! That one is a shoo-in for the Misconstrued Idiom Hall of Fame!
I remember George Carlin had a riff about language re: cough, through, dough etc.
As did Gallagher.
Nah, it’s the same word.
I remember the first time I heard someone pronounce it the French-ified way; it was on the radio and they used a very exaggerated accent and an ironic tone of voice. Like how people say Tar-ZHAY for Target. After that I started hearing it around more and more and I figured that the people hearing it just assumed that was the correct pronunciation because they hadn’t heard it spoken aloud before, or if they had, this must be the proper pronunciation.
It’s actually “hommage” in French. Google says that’s pronounced HO-mazh, but with a slightly different “o” sound that I don’t know how to write with the phonetic alphabet.
That one doesn’t really bug me since either word makes logical sense in the phrase. Just as long as it’s not “free rain”.
I appreciate free rain, here in western Washington the rain tax would be so expensive.
For careful writers, “viable” means “capable of living or living successfully under particular environmental conditions”; by extension, it may mean “feasible” or capable of working successfully. I believe “cromulent” would be more appropriate here.
It would be /ɔ.maʒ/. No “h” sound, and as much as there would be any accent, it would lean a little more into the second syllable than the first.
They did the mash
They did the Molar Mash