By Julian Prokaza on Friday, 16 November 2007
There's an article at ComputerWorld titled "10 things we hate about laptops"
that's all about the shortcomings of current laptop technology. Since it's
Friday and there's not much else to write about, we thought we'd take a few
minutes to go though the long, whiny list of stupid complaints and rebuff them
one by one.
1. Battery life still bombs
[Lee] oversees a team of 50-plus laptop-carrying doctors who sometimes are
forced to stop a patient exam and go search for an AC adapter cord so they
can continue making notes on the patient's records
If you need long battery life, buy a laptop with long battery life. We've
reviewed models with battery life in the region of ten hours - and that's a full working day (though perhaps not in a
doctor's case…). Recharging a laptop at the end of a day isn't hard and
there are ways to stretch
battery life still further. And besides, even lesser laptops let you swap
batteries when one is dead.
2. Laptops get banged up and broken
"A lot of these laptops are assembled in China, and let's face it, they
are flimsy," says Long Le, IT director at Atlas Air Inc.
Anything that's designed to be carried around is going to get banged up and
some laptops are more resilient than others. You wouldn't expect
a Smart Car to cope with being thrown around off-road, so why would you expect
a cheap, flimsy laptop to survive life in the field? If you need a laptop that
can cope with being banged around, buy
appropriately.
3. They're tough to fix and they die young
Not only do laptops live shorter (and more difficult) lives than desktops,
they definitely go down fighting…
A laptop that spends its life sat on a desk will last just as long as a desktop
PC - it's the moving around that causes problems. If you need to use laptops
(rather than desktops), then you simply have to accept that like so much in
business, their benefits aren't without cost.
4. They get lost
Laptops don't get lost, people lose laptops. Admittedly, it's impossible to
solve such a user problem, but hard disk encryption will mitigate the financial
losses associated from a lost or stolen laptop.
5. They're difficult to secure, digitally and physically…
Whether they're being hacked while using an insecure public Wi-Fi connection
or being stolen from the airport men's room, laptops are vulnerable to theft
in ways their deskbound cousins never are.
Apart from the fact that easier to lose or steal, laptops are no more difficult
to secure than a desktop. They run all the same software and can use all the
same network security measures. Sure, someone can peer over your screen to see
what you're typing, but if you're working on something that's commercially sensitive,
why are you doing it in public?
6. ...and security precautions make users nuts
Between passwords, screen locks, complicated procedures to log onto virtual
private networks and the risk of getting booted off an "insecure"
Wi-Fi connection, well, it's not always easy for users to get online just
anywhere.
But you still deploy security measures on desktop PCs, right? HSPDA
modems provide a secure 'anywhere' connection if you don't trust public
Wi-Fi networks and there's no reason for VPN access to be any more complicated
than standard Wi-Fi.
7. Wi-Fi is still the Wild, Wild West
The challenge of configuring laptops for wireless connectivity, and keeping
them up to date, is probably the single biggest nightmare IT professionals
face daily, they say.
Unsecured Wi-Fi should be a no-no for anyone who's concerned about security
- it should be VPN or HSPDA all the way. Keeping a laptop up-to-date is no different
than magaing a desktop and tools like Centrino
Pro make remote management much easier.
8. Laptops spawn a new breed of uber-entitled user
Those glossy ads of people effortlessly using laptops in a diner, or on a
mountaintop or while driving, all give his users ideas. Bad ideas. Ideas that
make them expect that they can be online anywhere and everywhere.
We were angry when we realised that Cadbury's hadn't trained a real gorilla
to play
the drums, too.
9. They're too big or too small.
That's like saying desktops PCs are "too beige".
10. Software performance just ain't the same.
Big applications just don't work as well on a laptop. Sure, your standard-issue
laptop can chomp along nicely on a complex inventory spreadsheet or a 275-slide
PowerPoint presentation. The problem comes when users want to multitask between
the two, say when creating a presentation.
What a load of rubbish. Unless you're looking to play Crysis
at 1680 x 1050,a laptop is no less capable than a desktop PC. And if you really
need to run a weather simulator, do you really need to do it on the train home?
[ComputerWorld]
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