Desktop Replacements and the 11 Pound Pencil

Marco Ramius writes "Tom's Hardware Guide has an article up entitled 'Unwieldy Laptops or Portable Desktops?' in which the author lugs an Alienware Area-51m desktop replacement to a 32 hour LAN to assess what advantages and disadvantages desktop replacements have over desktops themselves." They also have a related article entitled The Case of the 11 Pound Pencil where an office adopts a desktop replacement solution to unsatisfactory ends. Both interesting looks at appropriate uses for hefty hardware.

Re:Well...

[Agelmar]

Had you RTFA'd, you would know that the "11lb Pencil" is a name that the editor from THG gave a HP laptop (can't remember the part number) that was given to employees to replace forms which were previously filled in with pencil. The new laptops and the associated changes with "going digital" were of little practical use. In the end, the things were no more useful than a pencil for the application they were purchased for, but much bulkier, hence the term 11lb pencil.

I'm not sure if the parent post was just unfunny or ignorant, but it's definitely -1 overrated.

Re:Shared devices

[Rakishi]

There are a lot of small 12" notebooks, with no cd-rom drive and limited ports, google for subnotebooks. They're in the 2 to 3lb range. Smaller ones have a smaller screen.

Re:Machine was in motion for 32 hours straight - h

[moe.ron]

There are currently no entries for marathon LAN gaming.

If there was, it wouldn't go to someone playing 32 hours straight. It would go to that Korean man who died after playing for 50 hours. [BBC News [bbc.co.uk]]

Re:portable ENIAC

[MrFlibbs]

The main point of the article is not that laptops aren't useful, but rather that the type of device used is this case (a large laptop) was not well-suited for the job at hand. In fact, this is only one of multiple major shortcomings the article sites:

1) A large desktop replacement laptop was chosen when a thin and light laptop or PDA would have been a better choice.

2) The PDF files required duplex printing when the office had only single-sided printers.

3) Users weren't adequately trained on how to manage the data files. The original PDF files should have been READ-only, and the users trained on where to save the files they created.

4) No database tool was used. This forced each electronic form to be filled in anew each time instead of pulling up client data that had already been entered before.

The gist of the article is not that laptops aren't useful, but that jumping onto a technology bandwagon without first gathering requirements from the actual users and designing a solution to best meet the user's needs leads to half-assed solutions.

The poor users were essentially forced into using large laptops to do the job they could have done just as well with a notebook and pencil. The article maintains a good solution is possible, but in this case was not achieved.

Re:Shared devices

[DarkNemesis618]

In my office where I work, the trend is now to buy Dell D610 Laptops with Docking Stations. The D610's aren't paper thin, but they're relatively light and are pretty good. When the users are here at work, they have their docking stations with plenty of ports as well as a keyboard, mouse, & monitor. They can then just undock and take the laptop on the road no problem. It's the best of both worlds in my opinion.

perfect for iMac

[foniksonik]

This is the scenario for an iMac.... replace a tower + screen with a small footprint all in one. Laptops don't make for great desktop replacements... they are too cramped, not ergonomic... display is too small, etc. etc. for day to day office use. They are even less expandable and upgradeable than an all in one type pc, the list goes on.

iMacs are wonderful for desktop use and relatively portable when it comes down to it... ie: you can move them around by yourself... all the connections are easy to get to, they have built in wireless so no need to rewire or extend the network to a new space.. if you have a wall port for ethernet no problem... built in speakers and headphone jacks for privacy... the new ones have the built in iSight for video conference and all have a built in mic for audio conference. New ones have bluetooth built in for use with wireless input and for synching up your pda with entourage or ical....

Bonjour is a god send for IT... just buy a printer that uses zeroconf and you'll never have label another ip address on it again just 'add printer' and pick bonjour , voila.. the printer shows up and will work without special drivers, though you may want to download them for extra features for special people...

So many nice things to say about the combo of OS X and iMac for office use.

Re:Shared devices

[Anne Thwacks]

I'm not sure why the T42 has a parallel port.

Because, as those of us who have to work for a living know: a TON of important software uses it for the dongle!

Re:Well...

[VaticDart]

For those of you who think this is true, it's not.

Both the Americans and the Russians used pencils in orbital flights in the early days of the space race. However, they both realized that it was kind of a bad idea to be using something that shedded little bits of graphite or lead into a zero-G, high-oxygen, stuffed-with-electronics environment. So a company, Fischer maybe, not the US government, spent about a million US dollars developing the "space pen" which was then sold to both the Russians and NASA.

Re:Shared devices

[SyncNine]

I've got a zd8000, and even though this is somewhat off-topic -- you can use ndiswrapper to get the wi-fi working. Certain distributions that I've never found even work with it straight from install! (Based solely on hearsay. ;))

Other than that, the zd8000 is nice. While I've got a whupass desktop (athlon64 3800+/sli nvidia 6800gtx/2gb ram/720gb hdd/yadayadayada), I have never once had the desire to pick it up and lug it anywhere. LAN party or not, that box is staying there for a LONG time.

With the laptop, on the other hand, it's much easier. My buddy and I go down to the local Starbucks and wile away hours playing UT2004 or similar.

I'd never recommend the laptop to anyone who had to carry it around for business though, the thing weighs in at about 11-13 lbs., once you include the power brick, obligatory second battery (1 hour battery life on their 'HIGH CAPACITY' battery if you're doing anything worth a crap). It's quite a pain.

But, for sheer performance, you can't beat it. It plays UT2004 in very high resolutions and gets 90fps. Doom 3 and Quake 4 play on it remarkably well. If you're a gamer and like to game on the go, it's great to have. I don't really mind lugging it around because I don't go too far with it -- and I don't carry it all the time.

Anyways.

Re:Shared devices

[networkBoy]

those tend to have way more issues, least of which is seemingly random assignment of COMx as well as some wierd incompatibilities (like with netstumbler and my GPS)
-nB

Re:Bean Counters and Laptop Specs

[billstewart]

You'd have job waiting for you in that IT department if they hadn't outsourced it...

Graphics cards have a finite amount of resources in them, such as memory, and they decided to spend the resources on more color depth per pixel instead of more pixels. 1024x768 is more resolution than 800x600. 800x600x24 is better than 800x600x8, but as a programmer, or writer, or diagram-drawer, or web-reader, I need more pixels a lot more than I need more colors. For looking at satellite imagery in the late 80s, it would have been nice to have more than 256 grey-scale (not that you could really see more than about 64 greys on the CRTs we had, but it would have given us more bits for overlays or false-color or let us avoid having the screen flash palettes as you switched between windows.)