AboutReviewed September 2026
About Geek With Laptop
Geek With Laptop is an independent reference site about laptops: how to use them, look after them and choose them, plus an archive of the consumer-technology stories this domain published between 2008 and 2013. It is edited by Marcus Hale, who has spent most of his working life setting up, fixing and buying laptops for other people and writing down what he learned so he would not have to explain it twice. His full profile, and how he checks each guide, is on the editor's page.
The site's history. geekwithlaptop.com launched in 2008 as a one-author technology blog under the tagline Almost two steps ahead of technology. It published laptop how-tos, comparisons, consumer-tech news, viral listicles and the author's own WordPress plugin and themes, and was widely linked for all of them. The original site went offline in the late 2010s. It relaunched in September 2026 under new editorial ownership. This site is not affiliated with the original author or with the later derivatives of the WordPress projects, and it does not distribute them; it keeps an accurate record because so many old links still point here.
The six sections. How-To covers the tasks a laptop is asked to do: connecting to a TV, taking a screenshot, getting back into a locked machine, running writing tools without sending text away. Laptop Care covers cleaning, heat, posture, batteries and backups. The Buying Guide explains how to read a spec sheet and choose a size or a gaming machine without a list of this month's models. Projects records the retired WordPress plugin and themes, and From the Archive revisits the 2008 to 2013 posts. The sixth section, added in September 2026, is the authorship record guides. A laptop is now also the place that proves a piece of work is yours: the version history a document editor keeps, the created and modified dates on files, the dated snapshots a backup drive holds, and the plain disclosure of what help was used. Those guides show where each record lives, how to read it, and how to present it when someone asks.
How a guide is structured. Every guide follows the same shape, so a reader who has used one can use any of them. A quick answer sits at the top. A key facts card lists the numbers and settings that matter, each with the year it was checked. The steps give the exact menu path or key combination for each operating system, written so they can be followed with one hand on the keyboard. A fixes list covers the failures readers report rather than the ones a manual anticipates. A short set of common questions handles the edge cases. Linked sources sit at the end, and the review date sits on the page where it can be seen.
How pages are written. Every guide leads with a quick answer, then gives exact steps with menu paths and key combinations, then covers the failures people actually report. Retrospectives follow one frame: what the post reported, what happened next, why it still matters. Where a fact depends on model or year, the page says so. Where the record is thin, the page says that too. Numbers carry a year. Sources are named in the text and linked in a Sources list at the end of every guide.
What kept honest means. The homepage promises practical laptop guides, kept honest, and that phrase has a working definition. Every number carries a year, so a figure checked in 2026 reads as a figure checked in 2026 and nothing more. Where the evidence is thin, the page says so rather than rounding a guess up to a fact. There are no model-of-the-month lists: a buying guide explains the decision and leaves the current product names to you, because a ranked list dated the month it was written is stale by the time a search engine finds it. Where a task is better done another way, the guide says that, even when it makes the page shorter.
What the site does not do. There are no affiliate links, sponsored placements, price widgets or advertising on any page as of this writing, and if that ever changes a disclosure will appear at the top of the page concerned. The site does not host software downloads. Health and safety pages summarise published research and are not medical advice. The password recovery guide covers regaining access to your own machine and nothing else.
The archive's rules. The 2008 to 2013 posts are revisited rather than reprinted. Each retrospective follows one frame: what the post reported, what happened next, and what the story looks like now. Where the original headline overstated things, the retrospective says so. Inbound links are preserved: the old address of every rebuilt post redirects to its retrospective, and the old addresses of posts that were not rebuilt redirect to the archive hub, so that no link from 2009 lands on an error page. Posts that carried few links and have no present-day angle are listed on the hub rather than recreated.
Reviews and corrections. How-to guides are re-checked when a major operating system release changes a menu path; each page shows its last review date. If a step no longer matches your screen, or a retrospective has a fact wrong, the contact page explains how to tell us. Corrections are published by updating the page and its review date. What the site records about visits is set out in the privacy policy, and the terms of use cover quoting and reusing the guides.
Imagery. The diagrams on this site are drawn in-house as vector graphics so they stay sharp at any size and follow the light or dark theme. Each section also has a feature illustration: a studio-style still life of laptop hardware on a workbench, made for this site with image-generation software and checked by the editor. They are illustrations, not photographs of real products, and they never show people, logos or screens. There is no stock photography. To start reading, go back to the Geek With Laptop homepage.