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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...
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.
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.
Try running syndaemon on your login. This little program is included with the synaptics X driver and it disables the touch pad while you are typing and reenables it automaticaly after a specified timeout (I have mine set to 2 seconds).
...and IN SOVIET RUSSIA, beowulf clusters imagine 1, 2, 3 profit!!!! jokes made out of YOU!!!
You can't just throw a graphics chip into a laptop as an afterthought: the entire machine has to be designed around the thermal profile of both the CPU and the GPU. Given how marginal laptop cooling systems are, an increase of 5W in GPU power output might be enough to overheat the system.
A laptop really isn't designed to be upgradeable - the good ones, especially so. They're integrated systems, carefully engineered for structural strength and heat dissipation. The only laptops that could accomodate a modular graphics interface are the cheap 17" ABS monsters.
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.
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!
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
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.
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.