Blurring the Line Between Laptops and Desktops

bart_scriv writes "BusinessWeek looks at the latest offerings in ultra-portable PCs, offering up some specs and pictures. Some of the highlinghts: removeable 19-20 inch LCD dispays, dual NVIDIA cards and customizable exteriors. On the downside, some of these machines weigh almost 20 pounds and all of them sport a pretty high price tag — they probably won't be replacing desktops or laptops anytime soon."

Comments

weigh 20 punds?

[ScottLindner]

That's not a portable! My laptop is heavy at 8lbs and it sucks to carry around with all of the gadgets and gizmos. Heck... even my SFF is lighter than 20 pounds. I love the concept but the weight has to improve big time.

Re:weigh 20 punds?

[Cleon]

Oy, you kids. When I was young, in the heady days of 8088 processors, the laptops weighed ten pounds at LEAST. And we were THANKFUL!

Re:weigh 20 punds?

[stratjakt]

You're a wimp!

I'd love to be able to carry, or cheaply ship a real computer to sites when I have to travel, or even set it up back at the hotel rooms so I can squash bugs, compile, and do database stuff on a *real* computer.

It really sucks trying to do some sort of data manipulation involving millions of records, tens of gigabytes at a time, on a pentium M laptop with 512 megs of ram and one of its rinky-dink little hard drives. And many times the space is so tight on the clients server, I really have no choice during an upgrade to migrate the whole thing to the laptop (or usb drive) and watch the poor thing suffer overnight.

I've been trying to talk the boss into letting me put together a high-specced shuttle cube PC that I could ship out with a 15' LCD for just such an occasion. Once I had them overnight my office desktop to me, because it was apparent that my laptop just couldnt cut it.

So, like plenty of technologies, just because it's not useful to YOU doesn't mean it isnt useful to anyone.

Re:weigh 20 punds?

[ScottLindner]

LOL

I bet that really sucked carrying up a hill both ways too. :-)

Re:weigh 20 punds?

[NanoGator]

"That's not a portable! My laptop is heavy at 8lbs and it sucks to carry around with all of the gadgets and gizmos. Heck... even my SFF is lighter than 20 pounds."

It's a lot more portable than the case, kb, mouse, monitor, and speakers I have attached to it. Gotta put it into perspective. Some people read 'portable' as "I don't mind flying across the country with it", and some read it as "I can fold it up and take it to the office".

Re:weigh 20 punds?

[trb]

It may be argued that a 20 lb PC is portable. It may not be argued that it is "ultra-portable." "Portable ultra-PC," maybe. "Ultra-portable PC," no. (Note that this phrasing is an error in the slashdot lead, not in the article itself.)

Well

[Moby Cock]

The worst of both worlds. Big and heavy, thus hard to move around. Performance hit and battery life woes too!

Prior art

[Mensa Babe]

I've heard this guy has just filed a lawsuit. Apparently he holds the patent for method and aparatus for blurring the line between laptops and desktops.

Depends on the use

[FiveDollarYoBet]

I think it depends on the use of the laptop. I just got a new rig with a 17" screen and while it does weigh in at 9lbs. it fits my usage. I needed a good machine that I could stare at for long periods but once a month or so I could toss it in the car and go on-site. People just need to realize that these aren't for the salesman who spends 340+ days a year on the road and they're not for the data entry temp's cube.

Of course knowing that didn't stop me from cursing about how heavy my bag was while lugging it around the subway on the way to the clients!

The Market for This?

[nko321]

How many people here are looking for a 15+ lb. machine to replace their desktop priced at $2000+ USD?

Okay, now how many people are looking for a sub-5 lb. machine in a laptop form factor that can run basic productivity software with excellent battery life priced at less than $800 USD?

Why are there so few options for the latter scenario? And an even better question: why are there so many options for the former scenario!?

ULTRA portable?

[caudron]

I know what "ultra" means. Do they? I believe the phrase they are looking for is Semi Portable, not Ultra Portable.

That's like saying Windows is Ultra Stable or Linux is Ultra Simple!

Tom "Ultra Brilliant" Caudron
http://tom.digitalelite.com/

Re:PowerBooks

[peragrin]

While I own a powerbook, just about any 12-15" laptop with a decent video out, and a couple of USB ports works great both ways.

my 12" powerbook normally sites on my desk with a USB keyboard and mouse plugged and on the keyboard tray and a 19" LCD off to the side. I can use both displays at the same time(a feature found in all OS's now a days) and the hot swap mini dvi port means i can unplug the 19"lcd and plug in my 27" tv, sit back and watch a dvd. Both displays automatically switch to the settings I like for each.

Then when i do travel I just have to carry a 4.5 pound notebook, and a light case containing a couple of cords a USB travel mouse. Most of the time while traveling i don't even both with carrying a power supply because I have 4 hours of wireless web surfing, and more if i turn off the wireless card.

That's called the best of both worlds. And as I stated you can do that with XP or linux as well(not sure about hot swap monitors for either, but that's relatively minor)

Simple.

[treeves]

If "ultraviolet" means light that is beyond violet "ultra-portable" means beyond portable. i.e. it's too heavy to be considered portable.

if only it were blurred in a different direction..

[buddyglass]

Here is what I'd like to buy: a laptop, but without the keyboard, monitor, touchpad, speakers, and optical drive. Basically a little brick I could carry back and forth between work/home and drop into a docking station that's hooked up to a full-size keyboard, mouse and 21" LCD monitor. If you ditch all the human I/O devices (keyboard, touchpad, monitor, speakers) and commit to using an external optical drive, the thing shouldn't be much bigger/heavier than a portable hard drive.

Alternately, I'd be happy with a "very fast" portable hard drive that has an elegant plugin interface to a desktop box. Then I could install everything on that drive and just lug it back and forth. The issue there is that I'd need to have "very similar" hardware in the two locations.