Custom built laptops tend to be fairly pricey. But the desire for one is quite understandable. After all, most people spend a considerable amount of time on their computers. It’s natural that people would want those devices to mirror their personality. Or that people might want their laptops to adapt to some of their unique usage patterns. But it’s actually fairly easy to customize some of the more popular laptop brands, such as Asus, to match or surpass full custom builds.
The first step in customizing a laptop should always be drivers. One can’t expect to have driver support for every device out there. But updating some of the basic hardware drivers creates a solid foundation on which to build later changes. The chipset itself is one of the single most important part of any laptop. As such, one should look for the appropriate drivers early on in the customization process.
For example, consider an Asus laptop with a z390 chipset. One would want to ensure it has proper Asus z390 drivers. But it’s not just a matter of matching drivers to chipset. One would also ensure that the Asus z390 drivers were up to date. It’s quite common for hardware manufacturers to ship products before proper software support is in place. This results in software updates often bringing huge leaps in overall performance. It can also open the door to new levels of customization.
Now that new drivers are in place one will be able to expert better performance from peripherals as well. Desktop computers are typically upgraded by adding components internally. A general tower design for desktop systems usually leaves quite a bit of room for additional hardware. This isn’t the case with laptops though. Even a custom laptop isn’t going to have much room for expansion within the case itself. However, a laptop can be easily upgraded through external peripherals.
One of the more common examples of this upgrade process is an external hard drive. External drives can be extremely small these days. And one can even make them fully bootable. This means that an entire operating system or environment could be stored on a small external drive. One might also make use of virtualization.
One of the reasons why it’s important to update chipset drivers is that this can impact performance of virtual machines. This allows the main operating system to run additional instances of an operating system. This can range from sharing a central kernel between Linux instances to having two versions of Windows running in tandem. If one is using an additional hard drive then it’s fairly easy to partition out resources between internal and external storage.
Vinyl can also modify an Asus laptop’s appearance in two important ways. The first is by using vinyl character overlays on the keyboard. This gives one the ability to modify one of the largest areas on the laptop. It can create an effect that’s absolutely unique to one’s individual preferences.
One can also use vinyl skins to change the laptop’s casing. A custom printed skin is usually quite inexpensive. And one can create the overall design from scratch. This essentially means unlimited creativity in changing around a laptop’s external appearance. And it’s inexpensive enough that one could essentially just switch out the skin on a regular basis.
In the end the only real limit to customization is one’s imagination. The previous tips offer up a good foundation. But how one builds upon it comes down to individual preference. There’s a whole world of customization out there. And this is true on both a hardware and software level. It’s just a matter of considering what one wants to accomplish with the overall design.
