I am running well over 200 laptops 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year. Turning off these machines for any worthwhile length of time is impossible for us. With every machine in our areas being mission essential, we cannot afford to have any machine down for more than a matter of minutes. In the past 3 years, we have found laptops to be the most ideal solution to our current structure. Should one laptop go down, we can quickly swap it for a spare, and continue on with minimal interruption. When we keep roaming profiles and restrict users from maintaining documents on their local drives, we are able to be sure that minimal data is lost when the laptop inevitably goes down. They are often moved from position to position during restructuring, and act as desktop replacements for the vast majority of our organization. With hot swappable optical drives, whenever one breaks we simply reack into our spares box, grab a new one, slap it in, and set the user back to work. It has been a blessing for the majority of our users.
On the negative side, many users complain about 15" screens. When most of your workforce stares at their screens for a minimum of 12 hours a day, 7 days a week, they tend to complain more about their viewing situation than your average cubicle dweller. In order to combat this, we purchased 19" LCD's, keyboards, and mice. For those users who work on multiple networks, we also purchased KVM's reduce the amount of desktop space required. We double and triple stack our laptops with inch high spacers between each, to aid in cooling. What has my organization done? Effectively turned laptops into desktops. We haven't saved much space, and we have decreased the lifespan of our already hard-pushed machines. In all actuality, we have seen most laptops drop in lifespan greatly. Even single laptop workstations are dying at a year to a year and a half of use.
We do have a few desktops, where more raw video processing power is required, and we even use some of those nifty Sun Ray systems, albeit in an extremely limited capacity.
We are preparing to move toward a small form factor computing mode, using some of those laptop like boxes with the screens mounted on the front of a stand, like the newer Dell small form factor boxes. Myself and a number of my coworkers stand against this concept, as this will require much more desk space than the laptops in double and triple stacking situations. They also do not support PS/2 nor upgrading, which has been a long time complaint of ours.
We suggest a move toward a similar-sized small form factor machine such as Shuttle or something similar. That would enable us to customize each workstation to the needs of that mission at a generally cheaper cost, as most users will only require the basic network accessing box without all the bells and whistles (or hard drive space). We would maintain our beloved monitors, keyboards, and mice, AND have the upgradability that is required.
I say for office situations, laptops are ok, but will never take the place of a desktop until they are truely upgradable, not just usb-able.
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I am running well over 200 laptops 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year. Turning off these machines for any worthwhile length of time is impossible for us. With every machine in our areas being mission essential, we cannot afford to have any machine down for more than a matter of minutes. In the past 3 years, we have found laptops to be the most ideal solution to our current structure. Should one laptop go down, we can quickly swap it for a spare, and continue on with minimal interruption. When we keep roaming profiles and restrict users from maintaining documents on their local drives, we are able to be sure that minimal data is lost when the laptop inevitably goes down. They are often moved from position to position during restructuring, and act as desktop replacements for the vast majority of our organization. With hot swappable optical drives, whenever one breaks we simply reack into our spares box, grab a new one, slap it in, and set the user back to work. It has been a blessing for the majority of our users. On the negative side, many users complain about 15" screens. When most of your workforce stares at their screens for a minimum of 12 hours a day, 7 days a week, they tend to complain more about their viewing situation than your average cubicle dweller. In order to combat this, we purchased 19" LCD's, keyboards, and mice. For those users who work on multiple networks, we also purchased KVM's reduce the amount of desktop space required. We double and triple stack our laptops with inch high spacers between each, to aid in cooling. What has my organization done? Effectively turned laptops into desktops. We haven't saved much space, and we have decreased the lifespan of our already hard-pushed machines. In all actuality, we have seen most laptops drop in lifespan greatly. Even single laptop workstations are dying at a year to a year and a half of use. We do have a few desktops, where more raw video processing power is required, and we even use some of those nifty Sun Ray systems, albeit in an extremely limited capacity. We are preparing to move toward a small form factor computing mode, using some of those laptop like boxes with the screens mounted on the front of a stand, like the newer Dell small form factor boxes. Myself and a number of my coworkers stand against this concept, as this will require much more desk space than the laptops in double and triple stacking situations. They also do not support PS/2 nor upgrading, which has been a long time complaint of ours. We suggest a move toward a similar-sized small form factor machine such as Shuttle or something similar. That would enable us to customize each workstation to the needs of that mission at a generally cheaper cost, as most users will only require the basic network accessing box without all the bells and whistles (or hard drive space). We would maintain our beloved monitors, keyboards, and mice, AND have the upgradability that is required. I say for office situations, laptops are ok, but will never take the place of a desktop until they are truely upgradable, not just usb-able.