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IT's Love-Hate Relationship With Laptops
Ian Lamont writes "Are laptops really as great as they're cracked up to be? We love their portability, and we've been charting the steady rise of laptop sales for years. Yet while many of us depend on them for work, our IT departments view them with mixed feelings. IT managers point to wi-fi configuration, complicated authentication procedures, and eight other issues as making their jobs a lot harder. What else is missing from the list of laptop limitations? What would you like to see in the next generation of laptop computers?"
Part of the issue is that people demand laptops when they don't need them. They do have the attractiveness of not having cords or other extraneous things that confuse users, but at the same time, being mobile is oftentimes not the best practice. Security is a major issue - can you trust that your data won't be compromised if lost or stolen? Do you have a reasonable backup? (Most people don't) For most employees, a desktop is often enough. And if laptops are handed out, then users need to be very, very careful. (Encrypt data, daily backups...) I'm thinking a better solution would have a laptop that works as a dumb terminal.
So what? Network administration has only gotten more complicated since the beginning of the profession. Is this really news?
My days of not taking you seriously are certainly coming to a middle...
I know this is going to increase thickness a bit, but having upgradeable graphics cards would be nice. Same with optical drives. I know there's a couple laptops where the graphics are on a daughtercard pretty much, but until it becomes a more commonplace feature with a standard interface, there wont be an industry/market of new cards for laptops like there are for desktops.
Seriously, IT is tough sometimes get over it. Laptops are good for all the reasons listed above. An IT manager should, as per the technology part of his title make it easier to do work. The position this article takes is akin to "well jet flight is nice and all because of the speed, but all these little constraints and extra controls make it complicated and hard, waahhh!" An IT manager is a facilitator and nothing else. I suppose the author of the article would have it that an IT manager is nothing more than a guy who installs OS's and such. There is a lot more to it. That's just the job.
This is a terrible story!! Period!
I got a catholic block.
Maybe it's just me, but I can't stand using that stupid touch pad as a mouse. You would think that in the years that have gone by, they would have developed something better.
1. Battery life still bombs. ... ... and security precautions make users nuts.
2. Laptops get banged up and broken.
3. They're tough to fix, and they die young.
4. They get lost.
5. They're difficult to secure, digitally and physically
6.
7. Wi-Fi is still the Wild, Wild West.
8. Laptops spawn a new breed of uber-entitled user.
9. They're too big or too small.
10. Software performance just ain't the same.
Ludwig Wittgenstein
As an IT Manager, there's only one bad thing that's particular to laptops that significant enough to be comment-worthy. They're a vector for virus infection. Everything else an IT department can just get on with, but the high virus risk associated with devices that regularly travel in and out of the firewalled company network merits pointing out.
One day, some place I work, I want to set up a DMZ for laptops.
We could go back to paper and make their jobs a lot easier. Or just damage the network interface, disk drives, and usb ports. They keyboard and screen while we're at it.
Whoever said IT was supposed to be easy? That's the challenge of IT: to keep the network and desktops functioning, information flowing without impeding people's ability to work efficiently.
Additionally, the comment about portability is hilarious. Laptops are clearly transportable. They can be moved from place to place easily. But true portability is something that has eluded the industry since the Model 100 line went off the market.
-- John.
In my brief experience with IT at a small university several years ago, I learned that laptops have a much shorter expected lifespan in the real world compared to desktops- two years versus four or five before they need to be replaced. Even if users treat them like their firstborn, they just aren't designed to last much longer than that. Out of the half dozen or so laptops that we have floating around the office that are over 2 years old, not one of them has a battery that lasts for more than 15 minutes off of AC.
I work at my school's student affairs IT department. Part of what we do is tech support for residents. Almost every non-trivial problem (spyware cleaning, user error, and bad ram are trivial) is due to a bad HD in a student's laptop. Dells seem particularly susceptible. I think it has a lot to do with unreasonable expectations of durability on the user's end, but when these people start moving into the work force, their employers' budgets had best include frequent replacement drives. (Desktops are immune to this issue, because people don't lug them around and beat the crap out of them.)
I used to carry a bottle of whiskey for snake bite. And two snakes. -Nefarious Wheel
Most people I know (myself included) tend to use laptops as more of a "portable desktop." Perhaps if we dump the batteries we could add more cooling and - in general - get more use out of them for that purpose?
At the same time, I've seen various different models of power bricks, but I much prefer the ones that attach to the laptop snugly rather than the standard rounded barrel-connector. Perhaps something that clicks into place but isn't a pain to remove (because without batteries, it would suck to accidentally knock out that easily-disconnected power jack).
The Cambridge Z88 is a pretty nice vintage laptop. Not a QL and it doesn't fold up, but same DNA.
-- John.
BOSS: Hey guy, we got you a laptop and VPN access. Don't you love it?! Never mind having a life and family, we got you a laptop and you have the COMPANY! OK, I'm going golfing now, there is a status meeting at 8 p.m. tonight I expect you to chair. Tell me about it tomorrow morning... we probably won't need what you find for a few days but we can say "we're ready now". Aren't you glad we got that laptop for you? Oh crap.... gotta go, going to miss my tee time.
ME: Oops, I dropped it. (OK.... wishful thinking.)
-- I ignore anonymous replies to my comments and postings.
Cooling: I don't want to use my laptop fry eggs after few hours of constant use.
K
The option for no OS at all too. At the very least provide me with a clean install of the OS you choose, and proper installation media--meaning none of this hidden partition crap most OEMs use these days.
If you build it, nerds will come. Soylentnews.org
If you use roaming profiles correctly you can upgrade an entire bureau just by walking down the aisles and swapping out the laptops. I was told a fairly major SOE upgrade was handled this way recently, in a government agency in Canberra.
Do not mock my vision of impractical footwear
IT managers point to wi-fi configuration, complicated authentication procedures, and eight other issues as making their jobs a lot harder.
Cry me a river.
In other words, the complainants appear to be incompetent. I support 326 IT staff including 129 that have laptops loaded with mostly WindowsXP and Ubuntu. Apart from gettimg lost (which does not happen often), I do not see any trouble at all.
There are too many compromises and second best's in their design. Extendability is close to zero. If one component dies, the whole thing goes down. I also do not consider unRAIDed disks to be reliable. Laptops are far to expensive for the computing features they offer. I also like to have a real keyboard and a real monitor, whilw I can have those with a laptop, it kind of defeats the purpose.
That said, laptops are reasonable when traveling. But they will not replace powerful desktop systems in the near future.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
I don't like them because they only have one screen. Two screens is my minimum, three plus a television is par.
When they have goggles that give me more screen space than my triple head setup and gloves that double as keyboards, I might take another look.
-1 Uncomfortable Truth
To offer a user's perspective. I hate my work provided laptop because it so slow... Having a laptop is fundamental to my job. I work for a technology department of a major bank so having a laptop is essential so that I can support the applications that I wrote out-of-hours. Unfortunately, the need to secure my laptop (because it could be potentially compromised because it goes outside the bank's immediate environment) means that all the security software installed on it makes it run very slow. My brand new Lenovo Thinkpad takes approximately 15 minutes to startup- unbelievable I know but in my frustration I timed it yesterday. Most technology people I know have asked that the bank allows us to use our own desktops at home - with the mandated mandated anti-virus, version checking software, et al. installed - but there is still a (perfectly understandable) reluctance to do this. Until then we'll stutter by. As an aside: I love the latest hardware dual core that Intel / AMD is providing - and to demonstrate how much the security software on my dual-core Thinkpad is slowing things down - 10 minutes into the boot up of my bank laptop I took out my Macbook Pro from my bag and launched all the applications in the Applications folder. The MBP won. (This is not intended to inflame any mac/windows wars, but merely to show the cost of securing the laptop had on performance)
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Was suppose to fix these problems. Remote updates. Remote, unattended and unrequested security updates. Another pffffft.
You know how we do it at my house? 802.1X. 802.1X is Wifi's best kept secret. Your means of authentication are your OpenLDAP/Kerberos/Samba/FreeRadius credentials for PEAP, or a CA if you are one of our nodes with EAP_TLS.
No complicated WEP/WPA strings, no bullshit.
My problems with laptops:
1. They are too fragile.
2. The internal guts are too hard to work with. Anything more than a RAM upgrade is a nightmare of tiny screws and shielding tape.
3. Operating systems are targeted for desktops and servers, they don't make it easy to set up a laptop the way you want, with encrypted partitions, network configuration, etc. Sure these features are there for the tinkering, but I don't want to mess around, I just want to get to work.
4. Laptop hard drives are so slow! You would think there could be a slightly larger drive form factor that would allow for a drive whose speed approaches that of a standard hard drive.
5. The batteries are all different. Hard drives, RAM, etc. are interchangeable to some extent, why not batteries?
6. Those tiny little laptop cooling fans drive me batty. I really hate the high-pitched whine.
7. While I appreciate the small size, I would gladly trade a pound or so and a quarter inch of thickness for less whiney fans and a faster hard drive. If it's too big to fit in my pocket, it should be a real computer.
8. Not much to be done about it, but it's not possible to use one in comfort; the ergonomics inherently suck.
Or, whatever else it takes these things from wandering off the property. They get stolen along with data that shouldn't leave the property in the first place. Or taken home where the kids can goof around on the 'net with them and get them all infected with crap that mom/dad subsequently bring back inside the company firewall.
Have gnu, will travel.
Same here. Most current laptops have a VGA or DVI port, which you can run an external monitor on. Dual screens all the way (when you can).
+++ UGUCAUCGUAUUUCU
As a user who uses a laptop and someone who has some understanding of it( i am posting this on /.). I think the it manager who decides the people that can choose to replace them don't get the tools they want/need will very quickly be replaced with one who will and should.
maybe if decent laptops were purchased, I imagine some of these issues would be nonexistent. I would love to use my Asus c90 for work, but it ends up being used for lans....and I know at my workplace people have absolute crap like 13" laptops or something....screens so small its painful, I'll take 1680x1050 on a 15.4" over what they have anyday.
Also, laptops are not that bad to deal with, just learning a different route. But once you know how to unscrew them, it isn't all that different from a desktop as far as replacing components (except the screens can be a bitch to replace). Of course the C90 is 1000x easier but any other laptop is not that bad if you have the screwdrivers needed.
... they are an ergonomic disaster-in-waiting. with a screen right next to a keyboard, this arrangement encourages a hunching posture that with long-term use can cause nerve and muscle damage in the upper-arms and neck.
Dual screens are flakey. I want my 30" iBook. I've considered hacking my 24" iMac into a laptop before. - that'd be about the right size for me.
At what price learning? At what cost wisdom? The price is a man's peace of mind, and the cost is his life.
Any IT manager or sysadmin that is having the problems this article lists with either wifi or drivers is not very good at their job.
And anyone who *loses* a laptop is too fucking stupid to have a job.
I want a new quote. One that won't spill. One that don't cost too much. Or come in a pill.
These are either work or personal computers people, not both. If it's work, we will put on what you need. If it's not work don't bring it here to get it fixed when your latest toolbar fubars things. But no, people want it both ways
I was going to comment and say something along these lines. But even more, I think that every major laptop vendor should get together and form a consortium to develop a common core OS based on Linux/BSD/whatever and accompanying suite of office applications for this platform that will be standard on all their models. Each company would also have an in-house team which deals exclusively with hardware compatibility issues between their models and the common core.
If every major vendor invested as much or nearly as much money per copy/machine that they now give to Microsoft, it would amount to a massive budget. After the intial phase of development, QA, and deployment, they could then all ditch Windows or offer it as a lesser-quality option for some of their models (e.g. it might not have guarantees of the same level of support as the primary OS).
One major thing about this approach, which includes developing an office suite and possibly re-doing window managers and entire desktop environments from scratch (I'm not happy about KDE nor Gnome too much), is that it would be developed by a well-funded, stable consortium which could afford to do releases of high-quality, thoroughly-tested and QAed software.
Also, another critical issue is that every major hardware vendor would have to sign on, and agree to commence development of drivers for all their products to work with this new OS.
Notice that this is almost exactly what Apple did, and they are kicking major ass because of it.
The OSS model is great for certain things - particularly large projects for server software like Apache - but the model is not, in my opionion, one that is really capable of ever resulting is stable, working, systems for desktop users (which now according to statistics are predominantly laptop users). The lack of serious QA, and the vast scope of the projects that volunteer developers try to undertake often with limited resources, simply cannot really ever result in something that is acceptably stable and useful for the standard desktop user.
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This really isn't much of an issue if you don't give your users admin rights. I used to work for a company who's name represents a really long river and we weren't given admin rights on our laptops. (I was a system engineer)
At first, I hated it and even more I just hated the idea of not controlling my own machine. In the end though, it really came down to them providing me everythingI needed. If I wanted something that wasn't already installed and pertinent to me doing my job, it was almost instantly handled and installed over the intranet via what I can only guess were custom tools.
It's give and take with the portability that laptops provide. OK Joe User, you can go do your work from home, but in exchange for that we need to, among other things, take precautions that you won't be bringing in viruses to our network.
The key ingredient to my successful situation in such an environment was the capability of the supporting IT team. Without a very solid support team, I think the users would become frustrated with not being able to either install their own apps, or have the support staff provide a way to get them installed.
Food for thought at the very least.
> What would you like to see in the next generation of laptop computers?"
One thing I'd love to see is a little modularity and separation between the computer and the screen.
I want a strong hinge that can be disconnected with a simple everyday tool.
And at least within the same manufacturer, make it standard, the only variables being the size and resolution of the screen.
What a great idea to be able to replace only the half of the laptop that is broken or upgrade only the half that needs to be upgraded.
Reduce waste, reduce downtime, save money.
Is there something intrinsically magical about the screen hinge and graphics connection of a laptop that keeps them forever joined lest ye ship them back to the vendor?
Operator, give me the number for 911!
Wouldn't an easy resolution for regular virus problems be to lock the OS down for file writing? Alot of the companies I've IT'd for over the years minimalize it by having the users save pertinent data to the usual network drives over some sort of firewalled VPN connection to the company network. In fact the connection is made before login, so the user cannot possibly access anything outside the safeguards...unless she's sleeping with someone in the IT department and has the admin password...not like that's every happened >> But I digress!
Sure baby, I'll give you my phone number...in Hex
Where do you want to go today? Gee, I don't know -- let's try this land called Ubuntu, sounds exotic. (Click.) Now that's windowing.
Do not mock my vision of impractical footwear
If laptops were handed out based on genuine business need(ie benefits outweigh costs) as opposed to as part of "mobility initiatives" and as executive toys, and if organizations understood the increase in support costs and resourced appropriately then we wouldn't have a problem with laptops.
All the problems on this list are true, but the biggest problem is people using laptops who don't have a justifiable business need to have one, people who think that because it's a laptop it's theirs and they can use it for personal home use, and businesses who don't understand that laptops take more time to support and so more resources are needed to support them.
IT provides a service, it is not the raison d'etre for a company unless it's business is providing IT services. In most cases the huge benefits provided by laptops definitely outweigh the costs. If IT has a problem with laptops under these circumstances they need to suck it up and deal.
There may be situations where this isn't true, although I'm guessing they're rare. But if that's the case the case needs to be made on the basis of rational analysis, not a bunch of one-sided whining like this.
I also question the validity of many of the claims. For example, if I had the unmitigated gall to complain to our IT people that I was having trouble accessing some football pool they'd laugh themselves sick before telling me to stick it where the sun don't shine.
I wish that even if they included an OS, they make you install it yourself. I swear it would change lives. I once wanted to upgrade my installation of XP Home to XP Pro because I got a copy through my school. Bad idea. Laptop drivers are usually laptop-specific. I had to install Sony's drivers manually, and that meant that I had to use the disc I created from the hidden partition as well as certain drivers from the website. Among the drivers found only on the website: network drivers. The installation process for the drivers was also really confusing because of dependencies. Some dependencies weren't even indicated. It either worked or it didn't.
If laptop manufacturers made you install it yourself, they would certainly make the driver installation process easier. Just one disc. Plug it in, everything gets installed at once, restart, done. None of this 'run 23487DFK8.EXE, restart, run IDFJ8374D.EXE, restart, ...'
Umm, it's 2007. The majority of knowledge workers are purely laptop based. The question we should be asking is 'does physical infrastructure matter anymore'?
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I'm kinda sick of the vaporware.. I often fly 13 hour trips (non-stop) on a plane with no power outlets (not even in business class, or so they tell me!).. If I take 4 sets of rechargeable batteries my GP2X will last me 12 hours, but playing games and watching movies is not getting work done.
How we know is more important than what we know.
For me the biggest benefit of a labtop is the ability to use it in bed. I kid you not. I'm an early riser and a workaholic so the ability to still be in bed when my better half wakes up hours after me, and not waste those hours keeps us both sane and together. Actually maybe that's not sane, now that I think about it.
Because they are salesmen. They go out and hunt rabbits, bears and elephants. They bring in the sales that make the company grow. They need powerpoint and other salesmany cruft to make their sales. IT exists because of them, not the oher way around.
Linux as a complete desktop OS is still relatively new and even now not entirely complete. Advocacy aside, why would anyone willingly choose a solution that means deprivation? Why would anyone suggest it?
I'm not IT, but I have worked on the traveling salesman problem and it's not easy. Cisco, Symantec and Microsoft were all working on solutions at some point. Cisco and Symantec were going with some kind of security authentication server and Microsoft was trying to tie it into DNS. That was about 4 years ago, so they may actually have something usefull by now.
1. Whole-disk encryption still not standard
2. Better efficiency hasn't been used to improve battery life
3. No standard enclosures or motherboard form factors
4. Attract clueless software salesmen, who will demonstrate demanding workstation apps on their 'spiffy little wonder'.
5. Have caught the bigger-is-better disease in the USA... The laptop as an SUV-like status symbol.
6. Most warranties are absurdly short for such a device
Overall though, laptops are the bees knees. Blogging would be an insignificant phenomenon without them, and they have taught the industry a lot about elegance and efficiency.
While there were some valid complaints, such as those around data security and stupid users, much of the article was spent complaining about form factor and performance. If they're having problems, that just means they haven't found the right laptop. For example, I have a 2.5 year old 17" Dell Inspiron that I use for everything. I've found that:
- The 17" size isn't too heavy for me to carry around
- The keyboard isn't cramped. Sure, it's not full-sized keys, but I don't have any problem hitting individual keys
- It's upgradeable where it matters. Memory is easy to add or replace, the hard drive is simple to swap out with the removal of a couple of screws, the CPU can be replaced, and even the GPU can be upgraded (obviously not an off-the-shelf part). What's more, replacement Dell parts are easily available from a wide variety of internet sources, with service guides provided for free by Dell. I've personally replaced the keyboard on this laptop once, with a spare just in case, and I could easily replace anything from the LCD display to the plastic bezel bits without any problems at all
- I'm still on my original 2.5 year old battery and routinely see battery life top 4 hours of usage. I obviously have to be frugal with my settings (turn down the brightness, turn off Vista's fancy graphics features, etc), but when I need to stretch I can
- Performance is awesome in Vista, with all Aero effects running and multiple applications going. It even plays slightly older games quite well (Civ IV and GalCiv2 work great). I did upgrade to 2GB of RAM and a 7200RPM hard drive, but even before those changes the laptop flew in XP
If users are really having form factor and performance issues with the laptops you're using, it's time to look for something better. I know some people don't like Dell, but after this Inspiron I can't see myself using anything else.WHY is 10% of all meeting and presentation productivity wasted on hooking the laptop up to the damn projector or plasma screen?
I don't understand why it's still so technologically challenging to sync a laptop with an external display, reliably and expediently. Mac's get this right more than windows machines do, but even they're a little sluggish at it.
DiscDividers tabbed plastic CD dividers: divider cards f
...users are dumb.
Seriously, how do you lose a laptop? Do you take such little care of a device costing hundreds or thousands of dollars and containing sensitive business and personal data, that you would misplace it, lose it, leave it somewhere where it could be stolen, or carelessly shove it around?
Shoot, when I take my laptop anywhere out of my home [office], it's either in my sight or locked up in a safe (no, a Kensington lock doesn't cut it); and if it's being moved, it's carefully clenched in both of my hands and/or in its protective case.
However, what I really think is a non-issue in this story is the last gripe: software performance. What on Earth are they even talking about? Software applications don't perform as quickly on laptops? Maybe if your spending desktop-money on a laptop. A Core Duo with a couple GB of RAM and a decent GPU with dedicated memory will perform just as effectively as a comparable desktop.
Only laptops make up 40% of corporate use, and I only see it increasing. A DMZ per laptop maybe, or you're just infecting other laptops.
With a docking station, you can plug 2 displays into most laptops anyways.
At least one manufacturer makes an adapter that will split a (eg) 2048x768 signal into 2 x 1024x768 separate signals to drive two monitors. That's the solution that some of our clients are using to get 3 displays. You need a bit of smarts on the O/S itself to treat the one screen as two, but once you do that it works well.
I agree with you about two screens being a minimum though. The attraction for me isn't so much the screen size, it's having two distinct workspaces. A 30" single screen probably wouldn't be as nice for the stuff I do as two 15" screens is.
I'd like to be able to carry my laptop to the server room and hook up a VGA input so I can view what's on the server's screen without either purchasing a KVM or lugging in a full external monitor. Sort of like a temporary slave function (or just a F-key that allows video in...I'm not all that bothered about the keyboard and mouse).
A virtual keypad (like one of those you can lay down in front of you) plugged into your virtual eyewear (that projects the screen onto your eye) would be a nice space-saver too. Everything wireless, computer the size of an iPod in your pocket.
This is an awesome example. The company-whose-name-shall-not-be-spoken decided there was a right way to manage laptops that was best for the organization. The Right Way meant a lot more work and infrastructure for the IT to handle (ergo, extra costs). At this point, its not about a laptop being "handy" and "only a little more money." It about the laptop costing a lot more money (to manage). So is it still worth it? If that laptop at BestBuy came with a mandatory $100 per month charge attached to it, I bet people would think about its value a little more. This company decided yes. For others, the answer could probably be no.
To me the most annoying thing about laptops is the slow hard drives. By default just about every OEM equips the things with 5400RPM drives, which is less than the standard 7200RPMs that desktop machines usually come with. I know you can get 7200RPM hard drives but most of the time a company-issued laptop will have the 5400RPM variety, which for development purposes is annoyingly slow. And of course upping the RPM's on a hard drive is going to make battery life even worse. The answer to increased productivity is not slower machines, portable or no.
Schnapple
Your analysis is quite succinct, -OJ
sig sig sig siggy sig
Make the screen easily replaceable by the user. My laptop is less than two years old (Acer) and has about 25 dead pixels all over the panel. Naturally, it's out of warranty. Naturally, I'm sure to point those dead pixels out to everyone who sees my laptop, and I also explain that other brands I've owned haven't had nearly as many problems.
Okay, so it was a cheap laptop. But I resent having to replace the whole thing just because one part is faulty. (I've looked into a replacement screen, and it really isn't worth it.)
I'm firmly in the desktop is king camp, and user-replaceable off-the-shelf parts rock. If they design a standard laptop with parts interchangeable between different brands, then I'll consider getting rid of my beloved desktop PC.
Hal Spacejock: Science Fiction with Nuts
Why were you modded offtopic?
From the summary:
"What would you like to see in the next generation of laptop computers?"
Ask and ye shall receive!
Personally, my tastes (and needs for a laptop) are really different from yours, as I still am in love with my Sharp MMC20- think the size of a Playboy magazine, and quite light to boot.
But if I had the budget, Oh Yeah! Gaming laptop here I come!
So I see where you are coming from, and think your post was ONTOPIC, my own needs drive me the opposite direction....but so what?
Your needs/wants in a laptop are are valid as anyone else's, and you answered the submitter's question. WTF?
Moderators take note: At least RTFS or RTFA before blasting out offtopic mods!
Down With Slashdot BETA!!! I've been around the corner and seen the oliphant; you can only abuse me from your perspecti
but when I'm VPN'd with Outlook over my Aircard to my home office, I'd like to be able to shut the lid and have it suspend immediately. And then when I open the lid again, it'd be nice if it auto-reconnected behind the scenes, or maybe gave me a little popup asking me if I want to do that. This would negate the hallways full of people rushing about with their laptops cracked open. Nothing frustrates me more with my laptop at work then the following scenario:
Office buddy: Hey, let's go chat in a conference room.
Me: Ok. Hold on while I disconnect from VPN...done. Now let me disconnect from Verizon...done. Cancel Outlook's reconnecting attempts, close Outlook, close the lid, Ok I'm ready to go..hey where'd everybody go?
That's about my only gripe with my Thinkpad, and yeah it's pretty small but when you have to do it five or six times a day it adds up; otherwise I like it a lot. Meh, I guess that's mostly a software thing come to think of it, but still.
There is simply too much glass..
Dual screens are flakey
Since when? I haven't used less than two screens at work for about 5 years...never had a problem.
ZuluPad, the wiki notepad on crack
But they're portable. Want to browse the web on the bus? I've got Wifi in my area. Want to work on the couch? in the kitchen? Easy, just grab the thing and park someplace else. You can also literally work in bed. Built-in UPS. Taking a month vacation on the other side of the continent? Bring your laptop, no downtime. Portable DVD player. Space saver, no freaking mouse cord throwing stuff off the desk. You can put your laptop in the safe before leaving for work, nothing to steal, no footprint.
I've had the same Al-PB for the last 4 years. Bought the top of the line. It was expensive, but spread that over 4 years and its more reasonable. I dropped it a couple of times. It's got bumps, scratchs, but still runs perfectly well. I can put an external HD if I need more space or faster read/write times. If the machine becomes too slow, use it as a thin-client. Buy a headless desktop and remote login on that machine via Wifi: no need to upgrade the laptop, all the advantages of a desktop, all the advantages of a laptop. I mean what's wrong with bringing the screen and keyboard with you and have the CPU in a corner. Want to play game, buy a console.
All the (plastic) laptops I had before that, disintegrated inside 2 years (broken hinge, cracked board). So I went for quality and it's been a good decision in retrospect. It's a damn neat convenience overall. Laptop have vastly improved since last time I shopped for one. Higher resolution screens, thinner, faster HDs. I'd say they're becoming more practical with each generation.
I agree. For our particular job, supporting 24x7 operations required being able to work from home on occasion. Instead of allowing potentially 'dirty' traffic from a users' home machine via VPN, the company decided on the approach I mentioned above with a customized VPN installation.
It's certainly not for every company, but I think it was the right way in this particular case.
My MacBook is the finest computer I've ever had. Ever. And it's a 2nd gen MacBook with the Core 2 Duo rather than Core Duo chip, so it actually can go on your lap in a pinch without giving your lap 3rd Degree Burns.
It's a year old and the battery life still kicks -- 3 hours at least. Gotta love it.
Knowledge is power. Knowledge shared is power multiplied.
Same, I know alot of "non-techies" that love them but I cant stand them, give me my full ATX tower anyday. I know people say "just use a docking station when you're at home" but then you just have a lower powered PC. The keyboard is crampy, I HATE touchpads with a passion, its just not what I'm after. Wireless is not what its all cracked up to be, there a bastard if hardware failes and there more expensive. So yeah, lol, not a fan
Make SELinux enforcing again!
Just because some distros are a royal pain to set up and use, doesn't mean they are all a giant PITA anymore. And Crossover has come a long way too. Office 2K actually runs faster and more stable for me under Xandros than one the Win2K Pro workstation it was originally installed on.
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
The No. 3 reason covers some of the major hardware issues, but the one aspect of this it lacked was parts availability. Laptops are built with such propriety that it is a pain to get parts. Even if an IT group can perform repairs without violating warranties, the parts still require more time to acquire from a manufacturer than desktop parts. This lack of availability also helps drive the price of the parts upward in comparison to desktop parts.
As an IT Manager... One day, some place I work, I want to set up a DMZ for laptops.
I'm confused. Can you not make that decision as an IT manager? Or are you just an IT peon supervisor in a gigantic company?
If you have any authority at all, make that a project, or put together a project plan to pass up your chain.
Of course, that might take some effort.
I see this problem come up all the time. Laptops which are configured to connect to the SMTP server of the user's home ISP, and then can't send mail at other locations. Or are set up to use a mail server on the office LAN, and can't send when off the LAN. People on Macs or linux laptops running their own mail server, not having it configured correctly, with the result that they land an entire office in one of the spam blacklists (happened to my company twice).
And if an admin or ISP goes to the trouble of offering some flavour of authenticated SMTP, most of the time the client software isn't set up correctly and you end up with a support nightmare the first time they take the laptop on the road. And while, yes, there are other solutions in client software, 95% of users aren't savvy enough to use them, or even understand what the issues are.
Maybe SMTP settings should have been part of the DHCP standard. Connect to a network, and it automagically tells you what your SMTP server is, just like it does with nameservers.
A few people have mentioned that laptops are still too fragile, and I'd have to agree. My office is based out of a ship and we are constantly sending people off the ship into different nearby countries. The ship was in Malaysia, we had laptops in Thailand, Cambodia and Singapore. The ship was South Africa, we had laptops in Madagascar, La Reunion and the Seychelles. The ship is currently in the Philippines, we have laptops in Papua New Guinea and Australia. Though the users aren't always the most computer-proficient, they do try their best to take care of the machines. But one out of every five laptops that goes out comes back broken. We burn through motherboards, hard-drives, CD drives and power supplies. The only thing that never seems to break is the network card. Despite the fact that the point of the laptop is mobility, most hardware just doesn't seem to be able to handle repeated trips on planes, trains, buses, motorcycles, tuk-tuks, rickshaws, and the occasional camel, not to mention the inconsitencies in electrical currents.
I'd trade weight and cost if I could get some durability.
Cons
1. Sometimes luggageable and heavy
2. Battery is not enough (specially if 3D cards integrated)
3. Battery die fast and quite rare to find (even you find, it gonna cost a bomb)
4. Its hard to use it on a desk top (arms start to get pain)
5. Hard to use it all day long (keyboard isnt that ergonomatic)
6. Synthetic pad gonna suck when working for so long (gonna need a mouse, definitley)
7. Gaming experience, not that great
8. Future software gonna be intolerably slow
9. Can't upgrade HDD (USB external HDD would be an options)
10. Lack of processing power (you gonna really feel it in softwares like MATLAB)
11. USB ports usually at wrong place
12. Heat flow is usually not good (leaves burn patches on lap)
13. Fragile, prone to problems in long run
14. Cannot revive much for future laptop/computer
15. Need a technician to troubleshoot
16. Hard to find a laptop with the combination of hardware you require
Pros
1. Portability (useful if you are a nomad)
2. Less power hungry
3. Easy to install OS, find hardware drivers (compared to desktops/servers)
4. Good to use on lap when watching TV
5. Pretty much everything is integrated (keyboard, webcam, wifi, network card, modem etc.)
6. Space saving
7. Quite good for movie watching, web surfing and all the light/leisurey tasks which you can do at your bedroom
8. Removed all the legacy stuff (like PS2, LPT... sometimes.. it is a bad idea too)
How about a reflective or transflective screen like modern PDAs? Current laptops are nearly impossible to read outside in daylight, especially in direct sunlight.
The Christian Right is Neither (Christian nor right). See: Matthew 23, Matthew 25, Ezekiel 16:48-50
pfft.
i am in IT, and its pretty safe bet to say the sales types will use whatever is put in front of them, including double clicking that cutesly looking [trojaned] crap on msn or elsewhere.
need a presentation tool? use open office 'impress'. once its up on the projector, what does it matter?
most of it is fluffy lies anyway!.
all my original reply was saying is they're often given the wrong tool for the job.
i guess a bunch of MS apologists are dishing out mods today... OT??
( and no, it doesnt exist to support sales, sales exists to overcharge for it. and of course take their cut. same as any industry.)
I wish laptops would have an option to customize keyboard layout.
With ergonomy being the next big thing driving the market, virtually all laptops are good enough performance-wise, but the choice of laptop is determined by ease of use.
I with I could buy my favourite brand of laptop for aesthetical reasons, and have an option to customize my keyboard layout: the location of the "Windows" key, all the special ones like "Fn", "PgUp", "PgDn", "Home", "End", "Del", function keys, one or two "Ctrl", size of "Shift", "Alt" and "AltGr", multimedia keys, etc.
Whenever I have to reccomend a laptop purchase, I always stress the importance of the keyboard: once bought, it cannot be changed. If unconfortable, the rest of the laptop does not matter: the user will have to buy (and carry around) an external USB or Bluetooth keyboard.
IT is part of a business. Making IT's job harder in that business costs money. The article is making the point that there are some pretty serious cons about using laptops, and these need to be considered as part of their cost.
I know it is wishful thinking and all, but how about having laptop designs from all manufacturers follow a certain number of standard design. This case when a motherboard fails it isn't a ridiculously expensive replacement you must get.
The size of a magazine, sixteen hour battery life, five second suspend/resume, and a disconnected-mode DFS that actually works. One with on-disk encryption. The laptop should not want or need an identity distinct from its home network. And, ah, yeah, a hypervisor so that my 'home' and 'work' laptops can be the same physical object without causing any issues of system or data management propriety. That's all I ask.
this 16-year user of laptops and desktops finds your response naive. i'm convinced of my argument through several bouts of brachial neuritis.
try it (brachial neuritis) some day and you'll understand.
What I want if anything is IPS panel or whatever better than this shitty TN bullshit. I have a new macbook pro and it's using a 262.144 color screen with 500:1 contrast, 16ms response time and most importantly 130/110 degree viewing angles.
Graphics doesn't look good when you view it straight on, and it sucks as three magazine pages wet together and slapped against your window for viewing at an angle.
So fix that, and also give me a higher DPI, it's a 15.4" 1440x900 but ATLEAST 1680x1050 and preferably 1920x1200, or considering the subpixel smoothing techniques used even higher than that.
Also please don't let it hurt my balls, I have some weird acke in my testicles, I hope it's not a huge problem. Not that I have anyone to make pregnant anyway.
TBH I'd find being treated like a child as to what you want to do on your work machine annoying. We have software installed on the machine that tracks for viruses, spyware and anything illegal put onto the machine. The machine keeps itself up to date with patches pushed down over the network. Beyond that we have full control over the machine. If someone disables one of the items the system mails them and the manager that something is up with the machine. It gets fixed.
Works much better then the "mother may I" approach.
No way - 13" is the right size for a notebook, any bigger and it's too heavy - once you stuff the power supply, mouse, lunch, umbrella and other assorted junk in your bag. And awkward, particularly in rush hour trains.
The company for whom I work has a desk-bound development team, almost all of whom had to supply their own equipment. All with laptops they take home, and usb mice, keyboards and 20"+ LCD screens.
The moral - laptops are supposed to be mobile, for the sake of your neck muscles buy an external display or 2!
Since I don't need to be mobile next time I'll buy a mac-mini and with the money I save buy big screens for home and the office.
I had a guy get one stolen from the back seat of his car. It wasn't a problem though, because he backed everything up to CD. He kept these in the bag with the laptop. His boss then yelled at us because it was 'all our fault.' A four hour turnaround on a fully configured replacement machine got a please explain from management.
My biggest problem with laptops was the people who 'needed' them versus the people who needed them. People who need a laptop will use it and live with the deficiencies and are often low maintenance, ie. self-supporting. People who 'need' a laptop want it now and it has to be better than any desktop and they have to have VPN access. The laptop sits on their desk for weeks at a time. At the same time they're telling the boss how much work they're doing from home. When you tell the boss that you're fixing the VPN that has had issues for a couple of weeks, things get interesting. I was the only one trying to use it, so I gave it a low priority.
Unless you use so-called "Ergo-tops", basically a desk-stand in which you place the laptop, and plug in a keyboard and mouse. You lose the portability at first, but for long runs behind the laptop it's better.
80 CC D8 AF AE D3 AB 54 B7 2E CE 67 C7
still finding bonzi buddy on my lawyers computer, and when i warned him of what it was he said he liked it and wanted to keep it...
-Noc
If someone has physical control of a machine, there really isn't anything you can do to stop them from doing whatever they want, anyway.
I actually do a lot of my work on a ship using an HSDPA/3.5G connection and various laptops. One of my laptops is an IBM/Lenovo ThinkPad machine. On one occasion it fell down on the metallic upper deck's floor. A PCMCIA (3G) card on it was completely destroyed, but there was absolutely no damage on the laptop itself. Not even a small scratch. No damage to my 7200RPM HDD (Seagate, custom upgrade by me) at all, which is incredible considering that it was working when it fell down. The durability of my IBM/Lenovo ThinkPad really surprised me. My biggest problem was actually my lost SSH connection (which I revived soon as I luckily had another 3G terminal with me, and from that day I always use the nohup command whenever I am about to execute anything time-consuming on a server).
On another occassion, the same IBM ThinkPad machine was exposed to large amounts of seawater by accident (shit happens). The water actually entered into the laptop through the cooling holes. Again, the laptop had absolutely no problem working.
In general, having used 4 different ThinkPad models over years, I can say that their durability is great. A very old IBM with a 100MHz processor still works as if it were new, and its screen hinges have not shown any signs of aging. An old Dell Latitude I have, however, suffers from a too relaxed screen which dances on every little move (never bothered to fix it as I don't use it much).
It also worths noting that my IBM/Lenovo ThinkPads have never had problems with radio interference, although other laptops I have go crazy (random keystrokes/mouse clicks/speaker noise etc) whenever I place a 3G terminal too close (2-4 cm) on them.
a) Get rid of the horrible shiny panoramic screens
- Are web pages panoramic? No.
- When you're writing a document, is it panoramic? No.
Most of the pixels on a panoramic screen spend their life showing "filler" - bring back the tall screens I say.
No sig today...
The two 15" screens would give you half the screen real estate of a single 30". The size is measure diagonally, so the area:size increase ratio is 2:1. (area is length squared).
It is dangerous to be right when the government is wrong.
This really isn't much of an issue if you don't give your users admin rights. I used to work for a company who's name represents a really long river and we weren't given admin rights on our laptops. (I was a system engineer)
It is bloody trouble if you are responsibel of maintian applciation, but are not allowed to isntall them.
One solution i see more and more is that people are installing a virtual machine that has local admin. The network admins are not responsible for this virtual machine, but all the old virusses and security issues are right back in the network.
First, we are converting to laptops where I work for the IT department. The primary reason is disaster recovery. Our requirements require the ability to do our work with a minimum amount of downtime. We also have moved to a requirement which basically excludes VPN from home as all machines that connect to our network must be controlled by the PC department.
1. For our needs battery life is immaterial. Its docked at work and plugged in at home.
2,3 Anything moved constantly is going to be subject to being broken. However most people who never had one here tend to be very careful and we do give out robust carrying cases (including wheeled units to those who might strain from carrying an 8lb laptop and accessories)
4. Can't do much about that, but as a company we have lost only two in the recent year (fortune 500 here)
5. One of the primary reasons for going to a laptop is because for those who need access from home we cannot secure THEIR personal machines! Another reason for laptops is that they can be configured to give the same network experience at home as when at work. This means all the familar drive mappings are there. Documents are not kept on laptops. Nothing mission critical is.
6. Other than one extra password, usually to the drive or laptop itself, the security is the same as a desktop
7. By default most of our laptops are not allowed to Wi-Fi. Its not needed. Now, we do have "power users" who can do this but use is restricted to company functions (trips sponsored by company - etc... not starbucks/Mcds)
8. Not anymore. The costs are comparable for the most part and when you convert an entire department. Hell there are people who don't want laptops and we are looking at ways to accomadate them. Don't be surprised by that, many people don't "want to take work home" which is how quite a few perceive these things. Work actually bought me a laptop backpack as I tend to ride a motorcycle - so there went that excuse
9. For 90% of their usage they are just fine. Its all about context. At work they are docked. Regular keyboard, mouse, and flat panel are permanently kept at work. We don't expect employees to use them at home full time. The ability to use it at home is so they don't have to drive to work for simple issues. Saves them time and gas. As such most will put up with the laptops simply to avoid having to come in.
10. Have you seen today's business laptops? All of ours will be C2D 2gb 160gb (5400 and 7200 depending on need) setups. They are just fine. Compared to our average desktops which tend to get replaced less often these things are speed demons.
The problem with lists like yours and the original article is that they assume people use laptops one way. We have people that fit into their nice little category but at the same time we have headed to a new direction which because of changing laws and business requirements. IT users are a different breed and their use of laptops can be radically different that the regular user.
* Winners compare their achievements to their goals, losers compare theirs to that of others.
They gave me a laptop at work. I leave it on the desk all the time... Essentially, it's a desktop with a built-in UPS ;-)
The carrying bag is getting dusty somewhere in a closet.
The Z88 will also run for tens of hours on a set of AA batteries - uses very little power! It really was a very nice machine.
Also, before Sinclair had to sell out to Amstrad, they were working on the Pandora design. Many people credit Apple with inventing the clamshell laptop style, but Rick Dickinson's industrial design for the Pandora was the now ubiquitous clamshell - in 1986. Unfortunately, Amstrad killed the project off when they bought Sinclair (although to be fair, in 1986, LCD technology wasn't really up to much and while monochrome LCD panels existed that would have worked, they wouldn't really have made for a great display!). Looking at Rick Dickinson's pictures and mock-ups of the Pandora design, they did flirt with Clive Sinclair's flat CRT for a while - presumably they concluded it'd be too big and power hungry and an LCD was the right compromise despite Clive Sinclair not really liking them.
Oolite: Elite-like game. For Mac, Linux and Windows
A couple friends of mine just got their MacBooks. And I couldn't believe it, they didn't come with eSata.
I am also holding back on a purchase for one of those Ubuntu Dells.
Notebook drives are expensive. And I had some really bad experience with SLOW USB connections, because of different reasons. With eSata there is no difference, because there are no other chipsets involved.
It's no use. When you have full physical access to the computer, getting administrator access is just a matter of time. Try http://home.eunet.no/~pnordahl/ntpasswd/ for Windows machines, or any LiveCD for a Linux ones (chroot and passwd can do miracles). No CD drive? Oh gee, boot it off USB. Password on BIOS? A bit of work with a screwdriver, take the battery out for a few minutes, and the BIOS is brand new. Only responsible solution is putting the laptops, once back in the company's net, in a separate - untrusted - subnet. Even better, make them boot as terminals (both solutions got mentioned earlier, I'd just like to point out the good ideas).
One thing that doesn't seem to be mentioned here is proper use of offline modes, rather than being a hardware thing this is possibly more of an O/S or application thing, but is a crucial area which is often overlooked. If you have a user with Windows who works mostly away, then domain credentials must have an absurdly high cache number or else they will no longer be able to login after working a month offline. Using local user/password instead means they have to keep typing in passwords when they eventually do access the network resources unless set in a batch file. Yes easy to do but not for a lot of differing users/connections/laptops. Roaming profiles equally are great but troublesome - not immediately but think of the user who installs iTunes and then fills their 80gb ipod! Yes there are controls to stop certain folders syncing but there is no granularity. Synchronisation of data files can be done in a variety of ways, but short of using a cumbersome safe that everyone has to check files in and out of, then there is always going to be problems with synchronisation: someone takes a file offline, makes a change then comes back and syncs a week later. The day before they sync someone else modifies the file - who wins? Synchronisation of any database app also has similar problems, whether its keeping a CRM up to date or financial data, strict controls have to be enforced to make sure that when it does sync it syncs properly. The trouble is endusers always will request full access and it just 'to work'. One day the entire world (read: including the green fields, yellow deserts and blue oceans) will be networked, and then we can issue thumbdrives that boot *nix and establish RDP back to the head office...
Sometimes, and I know this is hard for some linux advocates to understand, a company is irreversibly tied to a product that is Windows-only. A place I worked at recently had just such a product. It did basically everything for the company that Office didn't. It meant that Linux was simply not an option for any desktop. (Also, since the product didn't work under Vista, it meant that wasn't an option either.)
You might want to look at Slax and PortableApps. Those are my solutions for when I have to use the locked-down computers at the university. Tip for booting Slax when the BIOS is set to run from the harddrive first and is password protected: just unplug the machine and pop the BIOS battery out. (you did not hear that from me).
It is dangerous to be right when the government is wrong.
Is that SATA drives on both laptops and desktops now have the same data and power interface... makes copying data and GHOSTing far simpler.
I work in a (tiny) school. We've had two staff laptops broken beyond repair in the last two days. Unforunately, the staff don't get that a) moving them back and forth from home means that they need to be careful and b) installing every bit of software on them, every printer they can find and every ISP disk they use is detrimental to the laptop's performance (and yes, I have fought to have all such facilities removed from the laptops but the state of affairs is that the school network is locked down and unchangeable by staff and laptops are seen as "testing areas" for new software they might want on the network etc.).
Additionally, we use interactive whiteboards a lot and after a few months into the new term we've now got about six laptops with destroyed monitor ports on them where they connect to the wall-sockets for the projectors. It got that silly that we've put desktops into every room and are insisting on their use. Laptops are now just for school-home travel. I argue that they shouldn't even be used for that given their track record and that USB keys and home computers should be the way. It'd be cheaper to buy every member of staff that hasn't already got one a home computer and a 2Gb USB key than it costs us each year in broken, lost or stolen hardware.
But laptops have that "cool" factor. Like TFT's, optical mice, wireless keyboards and interactive whiteboards and those large displays that just sit in the foyer cycling through a Powerpoint presentation. If it's "cool", nobody cares how much it costs (it even becomes a bit of a status symbol the more expensive it is) so long as they can be seen using it. And then there's the tech (me) who has a clapped out 600MHz ex-student PC as the main interface to the server, no laptop, no wireless gadgets and a £20 radio to communicate with the site managers, offices etc. (we don't have a phone system in place and I won't use my personal mobile at work). And guess who gets the most IT work done and in the shortest time?
and pertinent to me doing my job
Key phrase there.
As a salaried employee, if I want to play games for half an hour to unwind, as long as I still get my work done at the end of the day/week/project, I have every right to do so.
Explain, however, how I would convince a corporate IT department that I need AoE installed (even presuming, of course, that I provide my own legal copy)?
That battery is pretty damn handy when the building power cuts out - especially if the network equipment is UPS'd so you still have full access to the int[ra|er]net.
Yes, that's a great brochure. Now, pack a laptop away for a month before plugging it into an insecure network. There's a good chance it will be rooted or otherwise infected by one of the latest exploits before the anti-virus software and OS have a chance to download and install updates.
And if you think that the IT division can just dictate that staff aren't to do that, try telling your CEO what to do and see how he or she likes it.
No. They run hot so having the thing on you lap is uncomfortable and/or painful. The battery life is OK for about 2 weeks and then it just simply can't keep the thing running for over 2 hours of hard core use. The built-in graphics cards are just ok, and you are stuck with it.
We love their portability, and we've been charting the steady rise of laptop sales for years.
Most people I know, which is a lot, keep the laptop on a small desk or coffee table in their home and rarely move it, and then when they unplug, to go sit on the couch, the darn battery starts draining like a sieve.
Yet while many of us depend on them for work, our IT departments view them with mixed feelings. IT managers point to wi-fi configuration, complicated authentication procedures, and eight other issues as making their jobs a lot harder. Oh please! "My job is harder", boo-f'in-hoo. Seriously. If you are a decent IT guy you are making 60k+ year with good benefits, so suck it up. In case you have been asleep for the past 10 years technology has been getting more and more advanced as time progresses. What part about that did you think was going to make your job easier! It is funny, the more advanced technology gets, the more it is supposed to 'help' us. Maybe for the end-user, but the IT guys and gals get stuck holding the why-doesn't-my-wifi-thingy-connect-to-the-network bag.
What else is missing from the list of laptop limitations?
I think their short comings have been pretty well covered.
What would you like to see in the next generation of laptop computers?"
More mini-expansion ports and serviceable parts. Like on board graphics cards. Why not have upgradeable graphics cards via the good ol' mini PC card slot? Extension through a docking station. If we can't make the laptops more extensible then how about the docking station. It would be cool if the docking station got a little bigger, say big enough for your various graphics cards and some SATA connections with drive bays? This way when you plug in to the station you get a super fast graphics card and access to larger hard drive space and fast DVD burners, or multiple DVD-RWs to easily copy disks, or whatever...
These stories about how "hard" it is to be an IT person get old. Users are stupid and now the IT guy has to deal with laptops too? Get over it.
I would love to see any brand with non-x86 architecture again. If Dell is now supporting Linux and Solaris, the could bake a move and support modern CPUs in addition to the modern operating systems.
There are some advantages to x86, mostly price, but it's a case of finding the right tool for the job and for me much would benefit from sparc, ppc, cell or something else. Not that ubiquitous wi-fi or GPRS doesn't allow remote access, even X or thin clients, to remote hosts running the right architecture but it would be excellent to be able to find all that in a notebook, too.
Shoot. For many things, bringing back the 14" G3 iBook would do the job.
Beta is broken and the link to classic doesn't work. Stop wasting our time or there won't be anybody left here.
I do a lot of road work. As such I'm living off of a laptop. I have an "admin" account, as they call it. I can't change my own system time, or even view it, but I now need it for a work application, to syncronize some clocks.
This one little difficulty has delayed a project, pissed off a big big customer (one of the Big Three), and costs possibly thousands of dollars. Thanks IT!
It's not hard to understand. And it's not spesific to operating-systems.
Sometimes a business ties itself so closely to the product of a certain other company that it literally cannot do its business without them.
This is however, regardless of field, a -VERY- bad idea. It means that that company, in reality, own your business. They can do anything they want, and you have no choice but to bend over and take it. That isn't a situation you deliberatedly put yourself into unless you're an idiot.
Sometimes companies ended up in such a situation trough accident, in that case, the only sensible thing to do is to work to extract oneself from the dependency. Sometimes that ain't easy, and you have to settle for staying dependant short-term. Even then, your long-time goal should be to break free. Meanwhile you have to hope that your master doesn't decide to do anything -too- abusive before you can manage to break free.
"caucophony" - noun; Turning up the volume on your pr0n.
Rich And Stupid is not so bad as Working For Rich And Stupid.
Why do they even have those things? There has to be a better solution."
first he complains about the battery because he doesn't want it. Then about the power adapter. Would he prefer a wood burning model or is something with a hand crank more his style?
When speaking of kids and laptops, she admits it's taken work to educate them on how to handle their new computing tools. Educate kids? really? What a pain. And at a school of all places. Oh the nerve.
Bob Vesely has a simple reason why he hates laptops: They're easy to lose.
Where did he get this group of people? If it weren't small enough to be "easy to lose" then it'd be "too big to be portable". Looks like they'll complain about any angle.
They're difficult to secure, digitally
And this is different from a desktop computer how?
Many users don't understand that data in transit needs to be protected
Again, is this any different than losing private information not on a laptop? If you don't have the common sense to be careful with person records it doesn't matter if they're on a laptop, a backup tape, or a box of microfilm. Laptops don't lose data, stupid people lose data.
"Wireless is the biggest nightmare we have right now," he says. "The technology changes all the time and we just can't keep up."
If you're whining about the pace at which computer technology improves as being a problem, you should not be in the IT business. Take your floppy disks, your CRT, 8-tracks, and go find a dark hole to live in.
Laptops are either too large -- which causes users to complain about lugging all that extra weight around -- or they're too small, which means no one can type on them. Finding a happy medium seems to elude many IT organizations.
At least this time they're openly complaining aboiut both sides of the isssue at the same time. I suppose if 5 inches is too short, and at the same time 5 inches is too long, you pretty much have a guaranteed opportunity to whine.
That means IT managers need to equip their road machines with a comprehensive suite of drivers -- after, of course, defining what's "comprehensive" for which users -- and then keeping those drivers up to date.
OR you could deploy an OS that didn't require a driver install every time you plugged in a new flash drive or other common trivial hardware. Again this has nothing to do with laptops, it's a computer issue in general.
The author of this article doesn't have a problem with laptops, he has a problem with computers in general and is clearly fishing for reasons to complain.
I work for the Department of Redundancy Department.
It seems that a lot of people would like to see a dual monitor on a laptop, which is very possible to do. Hopefully some laptop designer is reading this and considering it.
Can I bum a sig?
Great idea! I'll add it to the huge long list of stuff that will never get funding.
Comaq nx9420. There must be others.
I work in the BCP Office of a large IT Department (800+ IT professionals) and we struggle with determining whether to by desktops or laptops for our associates. There are about 85 of the associates that are involved in our Disaster Recovery plan, and our current policy is that each of them use laptops. In most cases, they use this as their everyday machine and take it back and forth with them to work each day. Our philosophy is that if we have to deploy them to an alternate location or enable them to work from home in an emergency they will be best able to function if they are already using the PC that has all of their software, documents, email, etc. loaded on it. These laptops are, of course, twice as expensive as comparable desktop PCs and more expensive to manage. We are exploring some possible other strategies, but this is the situation right now. Do any other Slashdotters have similar circumstances at their employer?
This really isn't much of an issue if you don't give your users admin rights.
There's been a lot of remote exploits in Windows and server software that doesn't require admin rights to spread.
#!/
To be fair, it is not really the laptop that is the vector for the virus but its operating system. If the bean counters would open up their eyes to alternative, more secure Operating Systems i.e. the BSDs or Linux, perhaps mobile computing would be more secure. Linux and the BSDs have built-in drive encryption capabilities so no further expense need be incurred to purchasing that kind of software. Remember, exploits to Windows are being found almost daily . Even if you have a Windows box very locked down, guarranteed that there exists an exploit to gain administrative privileges to install malware remotely.
When you wear goggles and gloves to use your computer in public, you're going to look like a douche.
It could be done but it's difficult and probably not worth the effort since once the machine is compromised, it's usually at root level (in Windows at least) and changing mount options would then be trivial.
The only option I see would be to set the disk ro in hardware which you can do on some models I believe. And having only those pieces of the system that would work on a ro FS on that disk. Not sure it's very easy in Windows (don't know enough about how Windows works).
May contain traces of nut.
Made from the freshest electrons.
Laptops given to end users need a 'user eject' speech recognition feature. When the laptop hears the user say anything like "Is the network slowing down?" or "Is everything okay everywhere?" or "Is there something wrong?", or any other similar ambiguous question, the laptop self destructs with enough explosive force so as to remove the user. That would solve lots of problems.
"We are all geniuses when we dream"
- E.M. Cioran
I live and usually work close to home, but a couple times a month I have to go to the company central, 300 Km away. I usually leave around 6:00 am, so that I can arrive in time to do useful work and talk to colleagues.
Before laptops, I would pack my workstation, including monitor, keyboard, mouse, cables and anything else I was working with at the time into my company car and drive. Theoretically I could have left the monitor - I was told to and did so at first - but a single incident of there not being a promised monitor available cured me of that. Note that there were also stairs to climb both at start and destination. When I arrived, I was both mentally stressed out from driving and physically hot and sweaty (even in Winter) from just dragging 50 Kilos of equipment up stairs. I would need 20 minutes or more just to recover from the trip.
Now I simply pack up my laptop and perhaps a suitcase and take the train. If I'm tired, then I can rest on the train. If I am alert, then I can work. I no longer have a company car, but I consider it a plus because it translated directly into a raise.
It even saves the company money directly: where I live, the train trip is cheaper than the gas + wear and tear on the company car it would cost.
The articles number one point "Battery Life Still Bombs" is ludicrous: (some battery life) > (no battery life). Battery life is not the major reason for me to have a laptop, but it is rare for my batteries to go out on me during the trip (with changing trains, I normally have about two hours of 'up' time on a three hour trip).
Sure laptops are still slower and less powerful than a workstation of the same cost - but todays laptop is still way ahead of a five year old workstation and they're getting more powerful and cheaper all the time.
Really, for most purposes high-end laptops are just as powerful as a desktop. My T60p flies through what I need to do for work. And for the cramped issue - make it a non-issue. I've got my laptop set as the primary monitor, with an external LCD as the second monitor. External USB keyboard and a MX500 mouse give me full keyboard and mouse. I've basically got a fully stocked desktop right here, but I can unplug everything and take it with me, and work on the laptop keyboard and trackpad if I need to. It's the best of both worlds, and I don't forsee myself ever getting a full tower desktop again!
What about Flybook VM? It is good for aeroplane users and for those who want to move the screen away or closer.
Really? Hmmm. My users could, conceivably, gat past the BIOS password to get their laptops to boot from CD. I'm not sure what good that would do them, since they'd lose time on the machine and the security software would lock it at the next hard drive boot, preventing a Windows logon. Of course, they could then use a bootable CD that doesn't care about the time but since their hard drive is fully encrypted, they wouldn't be able to see anything on it or make changes (unless they just wanted to wipe it clean after stealing the laptop). No, the only way they can get in is from a hard drive boot that requires their FDE login and password, so all the live CDs and bios tricks in the world don't help.
At that point, they can start trying passwords. Oh, wait, how are they going to do that? They can't install a cracker of any sort unless they have privileges, which they don't. Maybe they can get someone on the IT staff to accidently reveal the workstation admin password? OK, that gets them in but there's no useful data to be seen. All the data is stored under separate EFS-encrypted folders for each user who creates the files. However, they could install software. At that point, they have a standalone computer running some random software package. If they want to jeopardize their job so they can play Solitaire, then, well, big whoop to me.
The next time they plug in at the office, the software will be detected by our scans. I've seen unauthorized software plugged in by a user via a USB flash drive get detected, the account locked off the LAN, and the users manager contacted by Security in less than 10 minutes after the drive was plugged in. Running unauthorized software on our LAN isn't going to work for long.
Don't give privileges people don't need. Full disk encryption is your friend. Additional, per-user data encryption is still necessary. Scan what's on your network. Why not just pay some attention to basics instead of treating laptops as a problem? They aren't. They're just different.
You want something missing off that list that's rapidly becoming a pet peeve? How about the removal of serial ports on a lot of machines? Need to configure a switch, just plug in your serial...oh crap!
Need a system to run a debug session of a crashing server/workstation? Just plug in your...d'oh!
"It is a miracle that curiosity survives formal education." -Albert Einstein
I had a bunch of users who wanted laptops as they spend a lot of time on the road. Understandable, but difficult to support without extra staffing. So I set the laptops up with nothing on them except a terminal session app that connects to XP-based virtual machines in the computer room, communicating via SSL-wrapped RDP. It works fairly well, and if a laptop is stolen or destroyed no data is lost.
Regards;
like a MacBook Pro
Intelligence is no guarantee of wisdom
We now have the ability to work from home in our underwear (if that's your preference) and we're complaining about it now? Come on guys, there really aren't that many things about a mobile workforce and its security and reliability that can't be taken care of by a) a good purchasing policy (3 or 4 year replacement cycle, some for of accidental warranty), b) concurrent login to VPN without the split tunnel, and c) a good antivirus.
Quit your bitching and enjoy getting what you asked for.
This is the typical whining that comes out of big company IT departments. Everything is about them and how hard their job is and how those darned users are always getting in the way. Never an acknowledgment that the users are the reason that they are there, and that IT's job is to enable the users to be as productive as possible in a reasonably secure way relative to the data being handled. Most of this is total whining and BS IMHO. 1. Battery life still bombs. I except my users laptops to last from 2-3 years. I very, very rarely have to replace a battery before this time is up. 2. Laptops get banged up and broken. Okay, but OTOH you can't use your desktop at a meeting on the road. This is the one tradeoff of a laptop. Still, the vast majority of our laptops make it through to the 3 year mark unscathed. 3. They're tough to fix, and they die young. No, they are easy to fix. You tell the manufacturer they are broken, and then they send you another one. If your corporate IT department is wasting their time trying to replace motherboards on laptops, someone needs to be fired. Again, most last to 3 years. Also most decent sized companies lease laptops meaning that at 2-3 years you get new ones anyway. 4. They get lost. There is a big difference between lost and stolen. Johnny loses his lunch box every once in a while. Mr. Smith should not be losing his laptop. Stolen laptop means "tighten up security". Lost laptop? Maybe you need some personnel changes. 5. They're difficult to secure, digitally and physically ...
Not really. It just takes a little more creativity, which is why there are IT departments in the first place. Enforce a firewall policy. Don't allow user defined exceptions. Use a reflector based remote-assistance system such as EchoVNC, or if you are too dumb/lazy/busy to set that up, use GoToAssist. Use good whole disk encryption. Make sure communications like email are setup using SSL instead of plain text. In Windows, you can even setup IPSec between computers, set IPSec to pass through the firewall, use auto enrollment for certificates, and when you are on your office subnets your laptops can be communicated with as if they had no firewall on them at all, enabling updates to be pushed out with no problem.
6. ... and security precautions make users nuts.
Only nutty security precautions make users nuts. Not being allowed to change your own desktop wallpaper makes users nuts.
7. Wi-Fi is still the Wild, Wild West.
See #5
8. Laptops spawn a new breed of uber-entitled user.
Um, that is what they are supposed to do. In response to the football draft comment in the article, I again state that maybe you are hiring the wrong people. I somehow doubt that the problems those types are causing are limited to laptops and IT.
9. They're too big or too small.
Oh my god, this is the dumbest list ever. Travel a lot? buy a small one, use a KB, mouse and monitor when at work or at home. Don't travel a lot? Buy whatever size you want and still use a keyboard, mouse and monitor at home.
10. Software performance just ain't the same.
Yes, it is. What the hell? It is a computer just like all computers. I am writing this on a Dell laptop running Ubuntu that I routinely run 2 VM's on during the day and performance is fine. In the past I have played WoW. Performance was fine. My wife's coworkers do autocad on their laptops all the time. PERFORMANCE IS FINE.
More self centered whining from IT. It makes us all look bad.
Completely aside from the security concerns, laptops are just plain painful to have to work with. From the end user's perspective, you've got a tiny little screen, a squished-up little low-quality keyboard that's hard to type on, and a pointing device that's so bad most people end up not using it. (An increasing number of laptop users carry around a USB mouse along with the laptop, which helps somewhat.) And then there's the maintenance issue. If anything goes wrong with the thing (hardwarily), you pretty much might as well just toss it and buy a new one, and that's a bit salty for most people. A laptop is a fairly big purchase, not really big like a house or a new car, but big enough that most people expect to be able to get them repaired, and laptops are typically difficult to fix. Having the peripherals built in is especially troublesome in this regard. In some cases you can send the thing in to the manufacturer, who may or may not be able to repair it, but that takes at least a couple of weeks, and meanwhile you've got no computer, which is increasingly unacceptable to many people. A desktop you can generally get fixed locally, in a day or two.
On top of all that, if you want to really use it "anywhere" like people think they will before they buy them, you have to fool around worrying about the current state of the battery all the time, which is such a pain that after a few weeks most laptop users just keep them plugged into an electrical outlet all the time. They still carry them around between different outlets (e.g., the office, the living room, the bedroom, maybe even the library), of course, but as computing and especially networking become more and more pervasive, there are going to just *be* computers in all of those places anyhow, and you'll be able to easily connect to any of them from any of the others, which pretty much negates most of the benefits of having a laptop.
Furthermore, laptops are pretty big to carry around. Too big to really be convenient. If you could get by with a much smaller device, something small enough to hold in one hand, that would be better. Cellphones are dominating that market right now, and they are if possible even more pervasive than laptops. Their feature set is still fairly limited at the moment, but it's growing, and it's already enough that people complain about the learning curve, so you know where that's headed. Give them a few years and the main advantage of the laptop will be its larger keyboard and screen, but for those things the laptop can't compete with desktop computers.
When you add to all that the cost of a laptop, which is typically as much as two or three regular PCs, the laptop no longer looks like such a good deal.
I'm not saying laptops don't have their uses, but I don't think they'll be anywhere near as popular twenty years from now as they are right now. I think a combination of pervasive network computing and smaller devices will eventually make them irrelevant. If you can check your mail and get maps on a handheld device (which can probably also make phone calls), and you can connect to your home system remotely and use it more or less as if it were local from pretty much any room of any building in the developed world, you won't need or want a laptop.
I know in the movies people use laptops to check their email on the beach, but in the real world people don't go to the beach to check email, and even if they do they can check it on their cellphone or whatever. In the real world people mainly use the laptop so they have a computer both at work and at home, and maybe in the hotel when they travel, and so forth. Once there are computers in all those places, the demand for laptops will decline.
Cut that out, or I will ship you to Norilsk in a box.
My primary OS is Debian GNU/Linux and it is an antivirus by itself. XP still exists as a dual-boot option but rarely gets booted at all. Why so many companies insist on MS, I really don't know, but I guess they just don't know how to hack a GNU/Linux OS to their own needs.
I'd like to see a seamless switch from wired to wireless and back so I don't lose all my putty sessions.
Moderating "-1, Disagree" is simple censorship. Have the guts to post your opinion.
I do the PC architecture work for a large company that's soon to have a majority of laptop systems. While it's true they make life harder from a support perspective, they're also the new normal. People expect to cart their machines around with them to meetings, on the road, etc. The Web 2.0 crowd coming in is also going to demand mobility even more than the current crop of workers. If they don't demand that you connect their iPhones to the network, they'll definitely scream for portable machines.
:)
All you have to do is adjust your expectations. You have to assume that you won't be able to quickly roll out a configuration change, and need to have tools in place that can effectively manage the machines when they do connect in. We have it even worse, since our users are on the corporate LAN for minutes, not hours, at a time. We've had to develop our own workarounds for these kind of management problems.
The other thing you need to assume is that these things are going to get stolen. Disk encryption is a huge project that's on my radar. ideally, I'd love to give people a thin client laptop that had no data on it, but that's just not possible now. Maybe if SaaS ever takes off, but not now.
They don't. I do all my presentations with OpenOffice.org Impress and it works great. Even the wireless presentation gadgets work with it just fine.
You have "every right" to use your company's property for personal use? Really?
You might want to rethink that statement.
Nick
"A plan fiendishly clever in its intricacies"- Homer Simpson
Really, for most purposes high-end laptops are just as powerful as a desktop.
Sure, but you have to get someone to pay for it. My employer budgets the same fixed amount for employee computers regardless of whether they are workstations or laptops. If my current workstation dies in some spectacularly irretrievable fashion, I can get a respectable new desktop or a low level laptop.
There's also the issue of disk access speeds. On a desktop, you can get super fast 10,000 RPM hard drives pretty cheaply, and if you're really ambitions you can put them in a RAID mirroring and striping array to increase performance even further without unduly risking data loss. You can't do that with a laptop. Since I'm moving around databases and database files a lot, that makes a big difference.
I use Debian GNU/Linux as my primary platform and I happily work with it on desktops and laptops. Why would anyone suggest Windows in their sane mind is beyond my imagination.
Is there something intrinsically magical about the screen hinge and graphics connection of a laptop that keeps them forever joined
Yes, and it will only get worse in the upcoming years. One of the many constraints in laptop design is routing the cables through the hinge. You have a back light and its control, and all the crazy data & clock lines (not analog video) for the LCD display. Now with WLAN you have co-axial cable, since since real-world experience has shown that locating the antenna up high is worth the cable losses. The trend is to put more stuff up there, like webcams, where the machine can see, and the microphone, further from those fans whose noise everyone is complaining about in posts here. And more antennas, for WWAN, TV, DVB, UWB, blah, blah, blah.
In my company it's SOP for PCs to be left on overnight, that way updates, patches, installations, virus scans and so on can be run while the user is away (and even reboot the PC if needed.) This isn't as easy with laptops that are often unplugged from the network much of the time. (Even the ones used in the office are often locked in a cabinet overnight to prevent theft.) Either the updates need to be run manually or they need to be run after startup (leaving the user screaming "Help Desk! Why is my laptop so slow? Is the internet down?)
Prisencolinensinainciusol. Ol Rait!
Laptop users often require administrative rights when their on the road. Things break, they call in, you walk them through a restore point, setting up a replacement wireless card, .... Many things require admin rights.
Forget about educating these users the difference between an administrative account and an user account. They can not remember their different Windows network signon and AS400 signon.
Ergo, if you have to manage laptops, do not allow the user to install software and they can't install VMWare.
/user:adminaccount" and I can connect to the shares with my admin privileges. My desktop group grants me that because of my job... all it took was for me to sign that "privileged operations" agreement that also allowed me VMware Server on my laptop.
This isn't rocket science, really. You just have to prioritize what you want to do, and provide the tools your users need without giving them the keys to the kingdom.
I personally do not manage PC's any more... I moved on to the server side of the house but let me relate to you how things work where I work.
I have a laptop, and I use it since I'm on-call one week in 6. I do not have admin rights to my laptop... in fact I'm as locked down a user as everyone else is. However, despite my initial bad feeling about this, I have had few if any problems. Quite simply, our desktop support team uses SMS to distribute updates and software to the end user in a packaged form. That way, we can control who has what software simply because some of them require passwords to install which are requested on an ad-hoc basis. Every piece of software I need to do my job including software like Putty is out there under "Run Advertised Programs". I just click the software I need, click install and within a minute or two my software's installed even if I'm on a VPN.
What about tools like VMWare Server? Well, we have that in RAP as well... but that's strictly limited to people who sign an agreement with the desktop group about responsible behavior, and we don't build arbitrary XP boxes. VM's built on our systems are audited by a script pushed by group policy, so the desktop group can spot an arbitrary XP desktop a mile off. Yes, they have alerts... yes, those logs are put in a database... yes, in the event that I put arbitrary OSs on my system I could be disciplined by HR by the terms of the agreement I signed with my desktop folks.
So what about admin tools I need? OK... ever used Citrix? We have a section of our farm dedicated to our UNIX, SQL and Windows admins that provides all those tools for us to use in an admin job; Windows admin tools and so forth. This also has the advantage that our performance of admin tasks even on a slow VPN can be similar to working at the office.
Sure, I'm not totally locked down... and I have a different account in the Active Directory that I use to authenticate to servers; a so-called Admin account. If I want to connect to a share with admin privileges all I need is a command prompt and a "net use \\server
Sound like a bit of a pain, but trust me... I don't want to be troubleshooting desktop problems all the time. I want to focus on my job; keeping the lights on in the datacenter. If my laptop shoots crap, I want to be able to pick up the phone and have someone else responsible for my not being able to do my job... or provide me an alternate way to get my job done. If I had admin rights to my laptop, I'd probably fix it myself... and the one time I've had problems with my laptop I actually had a good idea of the problem. But you know what? Because of that I was able to pick up the phone, call our desktop folks, explain precisely what the problem was and they were able to fix it within minutes because no troubleshooting was required... and they trust me since I'm also a professional Windows guy.
See, in my opinion the people who cry about not having admin rights to their machines are the same people who sit in the basement and refuse to talk to anyone else. Me, I'd rather have my rights taken away to my laptop so I can just focus on MY job... not someone else's. It makes me more productive, and allows me to defer responsibility when stuff goes wrong with my laptop. Hell, even when I ordered upgraded RAM I let the desktop folks do it... I put components in servers every other day, but I figured that I have better things to do with my time than figure out where all the screws are to get to
How about you not use Corporate owned tools for your games... maybe... I don't know... buy a portable game box?
I have a backpack I carry my laptop in. In one of the pockets of said backpack is a Nintendo DS with about a dozen games. If I feel the need to release a little stress, I just open the DS which then resumes wherever I was last time I played it... voila... I have games.
My boss doesn't mind this so long as I (a) don't disturb my colleagues and (b) don't do it to the detriment of my job.
You don't need AoE or any other game on your corporate-provided and owned tools. You need to do your job with them... anything beyond that is your own personal stuff and therefore should be RUN on your own personal stuff.
They are a health hazard....you end up buying a separate keyboard, a bigger mouse (you need a docking bay to use both) or get the company to subsidie for them. I am just waiting for someone to successfully sue the laptop makers or the companies they worked for, for forcing laptops on them. Lastly, not having a laptop is an excuse not to bring work home!
Reality is what we taste, smell, see, hear and touch yet we cannot comprehend it...only approximate it.
*Most* of the USB RS-232 adapters (GUC232, etc.) have buggy drivers. They work for incidental stuff, but they die hard (and take down, say, Windows XP) if you push them.
SeaLevel's stuff seems pretty good, by the way.
Intel Core 2 Quad Q6600 2.4GHz Processor with 2 x 4MB L2 Cache 260$
+ slight OC (80$)
= 4 cores at 3.0Ghz aka Pownage (Priceless)
Now most people don't need that much CPU, or a multi TB RAID 5 array etc but for those who do high end laptops are just a waste of cash.
I use a cheep laptop for on the go access to the internet, but when you want to get things done desktops cost less, expand easily and are just faster.
The only way I got two screens was by having a laptop.
Think I could convince my cheap boss to spring for another video card and a second monitor for a desktop? No way.
Think I could scrounge a video card that wasn't ISA? Nope.
Think he's let me get a laptop "for all the meetings?" Yep.
Think he'd let me keep the monitor and desktop I had? Yep.
It amazes me that none my my coworkers with laptops use theirs like this. They all have full size monitors, keyboards, and mice for when at their desk, but not a single one of them uses both screens simultaneously.
Think he'd care if I was still using the desktop or not? Nope.
The preferred solution is to not have a problem.
Since Linux? I told Vista I have a monitor to the right of my laptop screen and it said,"Here you go!" I told Ubuntu I had a monitor to the right of my laptop and it said,"WTF? Don't you mean you have a screen to the left?" "No, the screen is to the right." "No it isn't." "Fine, make the screen on the left the default screen." "Ok. Nah, just kidding."
I have a 37" display connected to my Macbook pro, and two 20" 4:3 monitors, as well as a 23" 16:9 monitor connected to my windows desktop. As long as Ultramon is installed, the windows machine is much better for development work than the Macbook. Separate workspaces provides more utility than one huge workspace. With the 37" I find I am constantly moving and resizing windows because stuff ends up overlapping and getting in the way. With three monitors, I can have three separate apps maximized to a screen. I usually have the project specs on the left screen, the documentation to the right, and the project itself upfront. Additionally, I have a e-mail to the left and Firefox to the right, and can shuffle maximized apps between screens in two clicks.
You don't make the poor richer by making the rich poorer. - Winston Churchill
I really only use Linux as a server, so I don't use the GUI much. Unfortunately, the nature of my work pretty much requires that I use Windows or OSX.
ZuluPad, the wiki notepad on crack
Well, I think laptops can do without the battery for now. When they're new, the battery may give you a few hours but, they die quickly. My IBM laptop had a battery that may give you 10 minutes. I finally removed the extra weight as it served no other useful purpose. Why have a battery if you need to plug it in anyway? Even my boss has to keep his 1-year old Vaio plugged in all the time or he can't get any work done.
For battery life to be useful, they need to run 10 hours and not be heavy That way they can get you through a normal work day. We're not there yet. Maybe fuel cells will get us there someday. I like the concept of a power storage and portability but I think our dreams are ahead of technology at this point. Battery design hasn't really changed much over the years. Fuel cells, super capacitors and bio-hydrogen may get us somewhere but batteries don't live up to their promise anymore.
Drives use less and less power, are getting smaller and now solid-state memory may replace drives all together. Video is certainly getting more efficient but we keep asking it to do more. WiFi and encryption are standard now. About the only part of the computer that isn't making rapid advances is the power supply -- the battery. Until that problem is solved, we won't have a truely portable PC.
Banjo - The more I know about Windoze, the more I love *nix
>> that's right, someone lifted a desktop machine out of a lecture hall
>> in the middle of the day on a crowded campus
Actually, it is easier to steal something when you are in the open about it.
Do it in front of everybody's eyes and they don't think anything of it.
I did this myself once. I liked the fancy desk chairs in the computer lab of my university and decided that I would take one. So, around noon on a Monday, with people walking everywhere, I wheeled that chair across the middle of campus to my dorm room. A friend of mine asked what I was doing. My reply: "I'm stealing this chair."
His response: "You crazy practical joker. Get outta here!"
(I did return it at the end of the semester. I'm not a thief. I just like comfy chairs for studying in.)
I'm hope you mean hooking up two monitors to one laptop not two monitors on one laptop. ;-)
Ok ok enough joking. There are some laptops you can do this one. The Dell Latitude D class laptops have this ability with the docking station. You just have to have a DVI connection on one monitor and VGA on the other. I usually use two Dell Ultra Sharps to accomplish this but that just me. I do wish Dell would put two DVI and VGA on their port reps, instead of one each, but it still gets the job done.
"There are four boxes to be used in defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, and ammo. Please use in that order." -Ed H
I know Dell does. HP I'm not sure about but I believe they do as well. The trick is you have to buy the business class computers like the Optiplex(desktops) or Latitudes(laptops) to get the install disks with out extra OEM crap. You may pay extra for these but I think its worth it. Not only do you get a cleaner OS load but the hardware is usually built to better standards as well.
"There are four boxes to be used in defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, and ammo. Please use in that order." -Ed H
This is specially true with "foreign" laptops. In a perfect world, there would be a special VLAN and ESSID for foreign PC's that usually only need Internet access and/or limited access to corporate network. This is doable with adequate equipment, but justifying the effort and hassle of wide 802.1x deploying isn't easy in some companies where IT it's already overloaded of work.
I did mean having 2 monitors on one laptop. It could slide out from behind the other monitor.
Can I bum a sig?
When was the last time you saw a cracked screen or an HDD with bad blocks on a desktop PC? What about a broken USB or power connector?
Laptops certainly do set the user free from the office, but I've seen a marked increase in 'accidental' damage over the last 15 years.
Hey ho, It keeps me in a job though.
I drink, therefor I am... drunk.
The point was to remove the battery, thus no internal power backup, thus pulling the plug would mean that it's lights-out. In other words, I don't want something that pulls out more easily, I want it to be more difficult, and for safely add some traction-pads on the bottom.
So despite the "fapping" comment made by the subsequent poster, I definitely do not want something that's easier to disconnect, so really that response was pretty much mac fanboism by somebody who hadn't really read my post anyways.
http://h18013.www1.hp.com/products/servers/management/remotemgmt.html
Compaq has been using these for like 10 years and they've gotten better and better and cheaper and cheaper.
The only reason you should be in the server room is to physically move equipment.
Ironically, the setup you describe is essentially a hardware tiling window manager. I would say that the problem with one single large monitor is not really in the monitor itself, it's with the deficiency of today's standard GUIs.
Wow, that would be too bulky, not to mention heavy, to do with current technology. It may be possible to do in the future but as it stands now the technology doesn't exist to make something that would be practical in size and weight.
"There are four boxes to be used in defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, and ammo. Please use in that order." -Ed H
I think that this idea is actually very intelligent, but would like to add that the interaction is the missing element. Consider that most people not already tied to a desktop/terminal are likely knowledge workers as opposed to data entry types, and the need for mobility is important. Even people with workstations need laptops to work in other locations.
What I would like to see is something about 4" x 7" which functions somewhat like an iPhone, except with the addition of a pen. Combine this with a desktop dock with hard storage. Company information does not leave the office, and necessary documents are accessible via VPN. These things would need decent processors and graphic capabilities or dock with some kind of collaborative processing for connection with real monitors and keyboards.
Part of the issue, in my opinion, is really interaction and social in nature as opposed to IT. Treating a device like a glorified cell phone will allow a lot more flexibility once the the technology accommodates. The mobile is the future of computing...
Hey! A Gargoyle!
Get real RS232 from a real RS232 company, B&B. They have been doing RS232 gizmos of every sort since the 80's. PCMCIA, USB, parallel to RS232, multiple ports, long distance extenders, RS422, RS485, serial for PDA's, you name it. Not cheap though.
You don't need AoE or any other game on your corporate-provided and owned tools. You need to do your job with them... anything beyond that is your own personal stuff and therefore should be RUN on your own personal stuff.
...But they don't care if you use their power, water, physical space, heat,
toilets, and various other corporate assets on your breaks?
Drawing a magical line around "CPU time" as a corporate asset and ignoring the rest strikes me as a petty and meaningless argument. Yes, they "own" it and can tell you what you can and can't use - And when your friends throw away leftover pizza rather than letting you have a slice, you don't stay friendly with them for very long.
So Linux dual screen is funky, oh well. My only problem involves a laptop and two docking stations with different sized monitors on each of them. And a kvm switch.
"We returned the General to El Salvador, or maybe Guatemala, it's difficult to tell from 10,000 feet"
I couldn't agree more. Neither Windows or OS X seem to really handle very large or multiple monitors well. Windows issues can be remedied, for the most part, with Ultramon, but it would seem that this functionality should be built into the OS.
You don't make the poor richer by making the rich poorer. - Winston Churchill
The keyboard is crampy, I HATE touchpads with a passion, its just not what I'm after.
Use a docking station and usb kbd/mouse. I do and it works great.
"We returned the General to El Salvador, or maybe Guatemala, it's difficult to tell from 10,000 feet"
It seems that the market is driven by people who have no clue about these issues and think that the convenient size and ability to run current software is enough to make it a useful working tool. Sometimes, they are enlightened slightly when they find that they can't type a straight sentence with that keyboard.
"I love my job, but I hate talking to people like you" (Freddie Mercury)
Compiz does a pretty good job of setting up ¨fake¨ monitors. I imagine it could be used to create fake ¨monitors¨. I imagine you could set up your fake monitors to be parts of a big display for maximizing or other stuff.
For idea/thought seperation though, I doubt there is any substitute for 3+ inches of air though.
Wow, sent an e-mail as suggested when clicking on "use classic" banner, and got a fast response that addressed my msg
There's a line down the middle of your vision. Ewww!
:)
I'd rather just have a big single screen although I'd be tempted to go with tri-screens if I could get 30" Apple Cinema HD flatpanels. A couple dinky 19" monitors though is almost as frustrating to work from as a single 19" monitor.
Of course my eyesight sucks so maybe normal people can see a 19" monitor or two just fine.
At what price learning? At what cost wisdom? The price is a man's peace of mind, and the cost is his life.
Must be a Ubuntu thing or something to do with your hardware. Linux was the first OS I used multiple monitors on and that was about a decade ago. It worked fine then. Of course back then I had to custom compile XWindow to make it work. I doubt you have to do that now.
At what price learning? At what cost wisdom? The price is a man's peace of mind, and the cost is his life.
For my most powerful needs I have servers that can pretty much stay where they are. I can access them from anywhere with an Internet connection anyway.
For a laptop I'd rather have a huge, powerful, laptop to carry to places I'll need it. It doesn't even need a battery because anything I'd want to use will need to be plugged in. Anywhere I'm likely to use it will let me do that. I've seriously thought about modding my 24" iMac into a jumbo laptop by attaching some sort of flap to cover the screen when it's being moved and to hold a bluetooth keyboard and mouse. Stick a handle on top and it's ready to be my laptop.
Then I like to have a slightly bigger than palm sized laptop for carrying around and making notes and checking email. Probably the stuff most people would try to do on their dinky phone. The XO (OLPC) is a pretty good size for me but I'd like it to be a little more powerful and to just run a normal Linux distro. If it could double as a phone, mp3 player, camera, video game, etc then great but my primary needs are Internet access and note taking. So bigger than a phone or PDA but smaller than a laptop.
At what price learning? At what cost wisdom? The price is a man's peace of mind, and the cost is his life.
It should be simple, small, light, solid state, be extremly low power with really long battery life, also viewable in direct sun light. The wireless should seemlessly connect to all surrounding machines in a kind of mesh pattern. It needs to me moisture dust and resistant. It could also be really stylish maybe a froggy green color.
I wasn't aware of Xandros Pro or Crossover Office. Crossover office sounds interesting. Is it Xandros only?
I keep waiting for someone to create a downloads.com type web page for linux apps. Not so much for acquisition of the software, more for just the user and editor reviews. There's a big disconnect in the linux world between the number of apps that can do X and the amount of useful information comparing apps that can do X.
If anyone knows of a site like downloads.com for linux, feel free to let the rest of us know.
and no, it doesnt exist to support sales, sales exists to overcharge for it. and of course take their cut. same as any industry Only if your company sells IT, which doesn't apply to most people who call themselves IT.Linux may be more secure out of the box, but there's nothing in Linux that will stop an idiot user from installing malware. Unless they are prevented from installing any software, which is choosing depravation.
.......Linux was the first OS I used multiple monitors on and that was about a decade ago.......
Back in 1989, I used an external 19" monitor with my SE30 Mac. It was great for doing drawings with Macdraft and later Claris CAD. The Macbook Pro is a laptop that will support two monitors.
Laptops are for on the go people. Computer costs for professionals are low enough now, so many can own a fully accessorized desktop and also a powerful laptop for travel. Laptops of necessity have to make certain compromises. Synchronization software can keep the user data up to date.
All theory is gray
.....the windows machine is much better for development work than the Macbook........
You are comparing Apples to Microsoft. Take your Windows machine with you on an airplane or to your local Starbucks shop. Laptops and desktops are not competitors, but complementary, for entirely different situations and use. You have both and are therefore enjoying the best of both worlds.
All theory is gray
I completely agree with this. Although the keyboard is okay, and I don't mind the touchpad, the monitors are far too small.
I've gone with a 15-inch laptop twice so far, and I can at least read the text and type properly (unlike on the smaller ones), but I have too little screen real-estate. In order to maximize this, I use Ratpoison on this laptop, with Gkrellm as my only toolbar (when I want one). Ratpoison is a nice window manager, and the keyboard shortcuts make up for the slow touchpad, but 1280x800 is still too low.
- Neil
I'm waiting for something like a cross between an iPhone and a laptop. About 6" x 6". About one pound. Fits in a coat pocket. More fit for reading web pages. Solid-state drive. Working voice-recognition highly-desirable. Intelligently (adaptively) pre-fetches daily content based on preferences. WiMax.
An intelligent, non-fiddley little info monkey that requires a minimum of attention and stays current. Knows what you want, knows where to get it, learns your priorities. When you ask for something, 90% of the time it's already on-board. When you have to wait, it plays a selection from your all-time top 100 whatever. Apologizes profusely when it fucks up.
"You must try to forget all you have learned. You must begin to dream." -- Sherwood Anderson
.......Neither Windows or OS X seem to really handle very large or multiple monitors well......
BS. Macs have always worked well with multiple monitors. I had an external 19 in. monitor for my SE/30 way back in 1989. The later MacIIci also worked well out of the box with two monitors. A Macbook pro laptop will also run another screen. The G5 did run 30" screens, if you could afford one at the time.
All theory is gray
You don't make the poor richer by making the rich poorer. - Winston Churchill
I'm comparing operating systems to operating systems, specifically a Mac hooked to a 37" screen and a PC hooked to three displays. In that context, they are both effectively desktops being used for the same task. If I was comparing there ability to send e-mails from a coffee shop, it would be no contest though, the Mac has a much better interface for day to day tasks.
You don't make the poor richer by making the rich poorer. - Winston Churchill
Data is hardly an issue. With Internet access I always have access to my data just as if I were sitting in my office. It's just a network filesystem away. At issue is how small and crappy laptops are. Using a laptop is painful because the monitor is so small and the keyboard and mouse are very cramped and unresponsive. They're fine for writing a simple document, looking at the web, or email but for any serious computing use they're worthless.
;)
I've actually studied my own productivity and on a laptop, or any computer with a small monitor, I'm about 1/6th as productive as I am when using a decent sized monitor. On some tasks the difference is so dramatic that it's literally faster to just wait until I get back to the office.
Of course, in my experience, most users don't really do anything with their computers. Most of em you could plug a keyboard into an etch-a-sketch and they wouldn't notice the difference.
It's not that I don't think there couldn't be a portable computer that's work for my needs. I just don't think it could rightly be called a laptop anymore. It'd be more a portable desktop computer. Issues such as size, weight, and having a battery really don't matter at all to me. The only laptop-like issues I really care about is it being a single unit and easily portable which in my experience isn't the case with most laptops anyway. Most people have a huge laptop bag with all sorts of extra crap tucked into it. Why not just make the laptop bigger, include all needed features, and lose the extra crap?
At what price learning? At what cost wisdom? The price is a man's peace of mind, and the cost is his life.
As compared to my iMac I'm currently using that is 24" and currently set at 1920x1200. Quite a difference. I'd love to have a even bigger, higher resolution, monitor too. Even this seems to small for me as I often have to shuffle windows around to see everything at the same time. If they sold a 30" iMac, with the cinema displays's 2560x1600 resolution, I'd buy one. I'm tempted to get the cinema display to slap on my Linux server but they switched to the ugly brushed alumnium look which I don't like - will have to see if the classic white display has the same specs. :)
At what price learning? At what cost wisdom? The price is a man's peace of mind, and the cost is his life.
the GP postulates the problems of the IT department that laptops present, and the specifics of viruses & other nasties being brought back into the corporate lan by bedhopping laptops..
'there's nothing in Linux that will stop an idiot user from installing malware'
in *nix, user has to do it on purpose: ie the execution model is such that user intervention is required to install said malware. the windows model is somewhat more lax, and leads directly to the GP issue of virii finding their way onto the corporate lan.
as a couple of others have pointed out in this thread, the tight coupling of application and working processes ( eg: need powerpoint, or some in house system that needs active directory and exchange and office and internet explorer ) leads directly to being completely at the whim of the vendor.
my original point about my linux laptop never having had a virus, and i drag it from LAN to LAN was entirely meant to illustrate that a large part of the problems IT departments face is the result of letting vendors tell them what they need, and end up with systems that can work with a lot of babysitting, but usually at a much greater cost overall.
things like proprietary VPNS to allow user access to an intranet are just the wrong solution to the problem: why not just make the intranet available over https after authentication? and if the information it contains is really taht sensitive, why let a laptop connect to it at all? its pretty simple to drag files onto the laptop, walk out the door, have laptop disappear, and boom, there goes your security.
same deal for email. same deal for internal corporate application XYZ. if company wants their employees to work from anywhere, and provide a laptop to enable this, all these layers of crap they end up putting in for the sake of 'security' just couple them and their business processes ever tighter to the vendor products.
( and yes, i'm a software engineer, and so my company does sell IT, but most of my work is professional services in medium to large enterprises implementing business systems, so i see how they work, and how they all too often try to solve the wrong part of a problem with ever more complex solutions, and so i do my best to steer them clear of those tightly coupled style systems..)
eh?
ensuring an independence of business practice from vendor lock-in will never get funding?
how did you get a 5 digit slashdot uid & not learn anything along the way?
......Why not just make the laptop bigger, include all needed features......
The computer you are describing is the 24 in iMac. You get a BIG monitor/system unit and a keyboard/mouse. Other than putting in specialized PCI cards, it will do everything any PC box will, including running your favorite flavor of Windows if needed. It's not exactly portable, but it could be called luggable, such as carrying it to another room in your house. It has wireless networking and blue tooth standard. If you hate wires, get an extra blue tooth mouse/keyboard.
If you already have a nice monitor/keyboard/mouse, check out the Mac mini. It's so small you may forget it is even there. Don't expect to play the latest fancy games on any Mac though, except possibly the very expensive, powerful and big Macpro towers. All Macs will run Windows very well. My Macbook pro even runs VISTA acceptably well although XP does much better.
All theory is gray
They have a free trial (I believe it is for 90 days) so if you are curious or just want to give it a spin you can grab a copy. I have been using it for 3 years and so far it has worked with everything thing I've thrown at it, hassle free (including the PITA Broadcom 4318 wireless and Winmodem built into my laptop). When you figure in the price of the Crossover you get with it, along with the hassle free setup(partitions and sets up a dual boot with any Windows you may have installed without a bit of trouble) it really is a good deal. I highly recommend it.
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
Yeah, they're great. Our SOE laptops are uncrippled, too. We're treated like adults. Gotta love that.
Do not mock my vision of impractical footwear
I didn't say I wouldn't want to fund it. You try arguing against "vendor lock-in" when upper management really likes the vendor. (Or when there's not even enough funding to meet the company's basic industry reporting requirements. Or when it looks like a listed company won't meet its published forecast earnings. Or when the IT division is so busy that anything not immediately critical doesn't get done.) Vendor lock-in is low priority compared to the crap going on in a typical company.
And that was my point. Even though you only have 1/2 the real estate, I still find it a more useful configuration.
I didn't say they didn't handle it, I said they didn't handle it well. And they don't. For instance, the menu bar only displays in the primary monitor, so if I am using Textmate on the secondary screen, and I want to open another project, I have to scroll the mouse to the primary monitor and navigate the menus there. Not very usable. Constantly resizing and manually shuffling applications is unproductive, real maximize and, as another poster said, a tiling window manager, would do wonders to address this.
You don't make the poor richer by making the rich poorer. - Winston Churchill
actually,
i've worked in many companies, of varying sizes. from a handful through to the cube farms.
one of the reasons i get hired is to implement systems that relieve the burden of vendor lock-in, which overall usually means stripping back several layers of cruft, re-writing a few apps to meet business practices needs, and giving a roadmap for where to go next.
i promote my services in such a way, and have had most of my work over the last 5-10 years coming through referrals from happy customers. we'll go in, clean up the mess, and leave them with real choice of direction.
if you're finding your job a soul-destroying monotony, i highly recommend you get out and start doing things the way you think they should be done. if you have the relevant experience, companies will listen, and you can actually affect positive change.
( i sincerely hope thats what 'the business' from your link above is all about..)
.....For instance, the menu bar only displays in the primary monitor.....
I suppose it all depends on what you are doing and how the program you are doing it with is set up. If most of the action is done with the menus, then having to do a lot of mousing is wasted motion. In such a use, having the menu on each monitor would certainly be preferable.
I was using CAD and illustration programs which have multiple tool palettes that can be placed on any of the monitors. I would open several drawing sheets an place them on the monitors with the palettes conveniently close to all sheets. For that, I did not have to take many trips to the menu bar.
Sometimes I also had to have a wide spreadsheet open, one with many columns. For that the biggest advantage of several monitors was that I could see the entire sheet in a large window at once, without scrolling sideways.
All theory is gray
If you cannot configure your own system you should be fired. If you complain about it, find a new job. Will...
"funding" ? I don't know what you read, but it certainly wasn't what I wrote.
I'll rephrase it for you.
As a business, you want to be able to buy all the stuff you need from multiple sources. This helps you get a better price, better performance, better quality trough a mechanism known as "competition".
If you are dependent on a widget from a single vendor then, for this widget, there is zero competition.
Over time, the lack of competition will tend to rise prices, and the quality will suffer.
Thus, you want to -avoid- the latter kind of situation in favor of the first, whenever you have the chance. This has very little to do with funding. It doesn't cost more to buy nuts and bolts with -standard- threading rather than single-vendor proprietary ones. Indeed outside of a few very specialised areas, nobody would even consider doing anything else.
If doesn't cost more to install Apache -- where any company with the right skills can offer any level of support you care to pay for, over IIS where a -SINGLE- company gets to dictate everything from support-options over future features to bugfix-turnaround.
Some companies prefer keeping the chains, because they're so used to them they can hardly feel the restraints anymore. That won't save them from being screwed by the company owning the chains though, nor from being underbid by more efficient companies that are free of artificial restraints.
It's not. And I left six months ago.
There's not a single thing in your comment I don't already know.
What's missing in your comment are the costs associated with training and the politics of existing relationships. You're also thinking way too long term for most middle/upper level managers that I know.
Too put things in perspective, if everyone thought as you've described no one would ever install Exchange. But, of course, they do, don't they?
Ah, but I'm not. I'm drawing your "magical line" between things considered as a convenience and a sop to the requirements of human beings as a whole, and a tool that allows you to do your job.
Let's presume for an example that you work in a factory or warehouse driving a forklift. Said forklift is your corporate-owned tool... it is not your personal toy to go careening around the parking lot at a moment's notice because you're bored.
The fact is that the things you cite are precisely those things required to ensure that employees continue to work in a particular environment, they are environmental concerns... not job concerns. The laptop or desktop computer is a tool to get the job done, nothing more and should be treated as such. You know what I do when I want to use a computer for games? I have my own laptop. Sometimes my boss is cool if I have it sitting on my desk at work... sometimes I take it to a local Panera at lunchtime and surf the web while I eat. I save that for my personal stuff, and I do business on my work laptop.
Is it a pain carrying two laptops around? Not really. The furthest I ever carry them is between my office and my car, and then my car to my house. Even then, my work laptop normally sits right inside the door of my house until I head to work the next day unless I have a need to dial in (maybe one week in six).
I didn't draw your "magical line", the law draws that line for you. The work provided laptop is a tool to get a job done. If you don't need it, you don't get it. If you don't need to play games for a living, then the corporation doesn't need to let you do so.
Besides, with a game you're talking about uncontrolled and un-certified software that may cause issues with the software on your laptop that's required to actually get your job done. It may even cause enough problems that it would require a rebuild of your machine... that's a cost to the corporation that you work for and one that is a cost directly attributable to your usage of the machine. That's why I feel corporations should not allow this arbitrary software on their desktops or laptops.
If you happen to work for a company that allows you to use their assets for your own personal enjoyment, power to you. This is an example of small company thinking that becomes a liability rapidly as a company grows. Of course, if you're spending all your time playing games, you're not exactly contributing to the bottom line, are you? Me, I'd rather work in a place where the focus during the work day is on getting the job done... thereby increasing the income or efficiency of the corporation as a whole and perhaps increasing my odds of still having a job by the end of the day. Don't kid yourself; there's no job security these days, and the best way you can ensure you might still have a job by tomorrow is to just focus on doing your job today.
I sound old... I'm not. I just have priorities and feel that except in very narrowly defined circumstances, a Corporate-owned tool should be used only for Corporate business. Of course, this is a double-edged sword and perhaps encourages people using these tools to work a 40-hour week or whatever... that's actually a bargain a corporation is happy to deal with simply because working more than a 40 hour week is only hurting you (presuming you're salaried)... it doesn't really make a difference to the corporation as a whole unless you happen to be a one-man team. Again, small company thinking.
It depends. Certainly, a large part of the industry has yet to learn this lesson. They will though, either the soft way or the hard way.