Or coffee. They REALLY don’t like coffee.
I bought a laptop to save me 2 hours of unproductive time on the train each day and also because most places I go to have desktops that suck way more than my laptop and would take forever to setup right. I also have a seriously expensive brompton bike for similar reasons and I bought both with my own money since I’m self-employed. I’m not here to impress anyone, I just have better things to do than care about what anyone thinks about my stuff when I can use it to use my time more productively.
Ps: I do try to keep my stuff out of the way when it’s crowded.
It seems you have some anger management issues with delusions of fictitious assaults. I never said anything about confronting laptop users on trains. In fact, my days of public transportation are thankfully well behind me.
I don’t hate people that use laptops as true laptops. Their version of computing just isn’t the same as mine and my livelihood requires big screens, a big keyboard, and everything else. My perception of laptops got hurt in a big way during my first professional job in the late 1990’s. Back then, professional quality laptops could cost $5000 or more and had tiny screens and crappy everything. The company hired the consulting firm Ernst and Young to do auditing and analysis. I met with them day after day watching them painfully point and click little text entries into Excel. It wouldn’t be so bad if the people in question were simple temps but these people billed at $150 - $250 an hour a piece and they employed a novelty as a major tool of the trade.
Laptops have gotten better but the etch-a-sketch problem still remains. Lots of people adopted Palm Pilots at one time and those were even more useless. Some people just use their computing devices as quasi-helpful toys and others of us have legitimate work to do. A laptop works fine for movie viewing and composing e-mail on the go but the design is quite the compromise that fails to meet most users needs ideally.
If you actually wanted an answer I assume you’d have started this in IMHO or something, but since you didn’t you obviously don’t so -
Desktops are stupid and shitty, they’re barely more powerful than a laptop and nearly as convenient and portable as a server. Worst of both worlds.
Self-employed laptop owner here. Sony Vaio F series. I’ve had it for two years and it goes nearly everywhere with me. I honestly don’t know what I’d do without it. I have power cords at home, work, and my boyfriend’s house. Anywhere else, there’s enough battery to get me through. Yes, it does get a little bit toasty in the summer, however, I can fix that with a nifty little usb powered cooling fan.
LAPTOPS RULE!!!
Dell Vostro 1500. Very comfortable to set on my lap. Warm, but not hot.
I use my Thinkpad X61 Tablet for pretty much everything, including all my work. Partly because it’s more powerful than the desktop PC my employer has assigned to me, but mostly because it’s nice to have all my data and software wherever I go. My work involves not just Microsoft Office stuff but also extensive use of optical design software and math/engineering software, and the performance is perfectly satisfactory.
This laptop is about 12x12", small enough to fit on most tables. It’s cool enough to use on my lap; I do it most evenings while sitting in the living room. Battery life is about 4 hours in actual use (claimed battery life is 9 hours, but I run the screen brightness pretty high). Which means I can leave the AC adapter at work on weekdays, though I do have a second one on order. The screen is small (12") but it has good resolution (SXGA+ = 1400x1050) so it doesn’t feel cramped at all.
Lenovo’s T40 series fits the bill. They’re quiet and cool. The extended battery lasts a really long time (4-8 hours) depending on what you’re doing. These are perfect for ‘email machines’.
You may consider simply wearing pants while you’re online sometimes.
My Dell Inspiron stays in the comfortably warm zone, and it’s usually parked on my lap while in use. Unless I’m out and about somewhere, and then it’s usually on the table in front of me.
What a bizarre topic to get exercised about.
I’m a student, and I’d hate to try and get by without my laptop. It’s incredibly convenient to be able to have all my work, and programs, and web access in front of me in each and every class. When I go to the library to work, I don’t need to try and snag one of the free computers - I can sit in one of the nice, comfortable armchairs, perch my laptop on one of the arms, and get to work.
This is just stupid and parochial.
Plenty of people do “legitimate work” on their laptops, and the laptops cope just fine with the workload. Every academic, scholar, researcher, or scientist who needs to do work outside their regular office can benefit from the use of a laptop. If your work takes you to libraries, archives, laboratories, job sites, or any one of dozens of other places, laptop computers allow you to take your work with you, and to have all your vital information handy.
The fact that most people who use laptops don’t need huge amounts of computer power doesn’t mean that the work they do on their computers is not “legitimate work.” I fully agree that, for a high-end tech person who needs wads of computing power and acres of screen space, a laptop would not be ideal, but for most people it functions perfectly well as a useful work tool.
If it makes you feel better to masturbate about the amount of computing power you need, and to suggest that everyone else is just playing with “quasi-helpful toys,” knock yourself out. But it makes you look like a tool. And not the useful kind, either.
The fact that more people buy laptops than desktops seems to cast doubt on your assessment.
I’m also surprised that, for a guy who not only claims to be in IT, but also claims to have some background in academia, you are so ignorant about the amount of work situations in which a laptop can be of use.
Almost every academic i know has a laptop, and they are invaluable tools for preventing the duplication of work. If you are doing research in a library or archive, and are taking notes by hand, you then have to spend almost the same amount of time again typing your notes into your computer later on. Type them straight into your laptop, and they remain there, easily searchable and accessible.
And this basic note-taking function doesn’t even touch on the variety of programs that make life easier for people with laptops. Beyond basic Office-type programs, software like bibliographic tools, statistics programs, graphing software, mapping software, smaller database applications, etc., etc., all work perfectly well on relatively low-powered computers and provide an incredible amount of assistance in many fields and many professions, both in academia and in the world of business, non-profit organizations, government, etc., etc.
The fact that these people don’t do the sort of work that you do, and don’t require the same amount of computing power, doesn’t mean that they’re not doing work, or are just viewing movies and checking email.
I bought my HP laptop in 2003 and love it. The hard drive recently crapped out and I had it replaced and the techs were able to transfer all my old files to the new one. So I’ll probably go a few more years on it before I buy a new one. It’s a 1.9GHz P4 with 512 Mb of RAM (probably state of the art 4 years ago) and runs anything from Dreamweaver and Front Page to Firefox with about 60 tabs open. I can run about 9 or 10 programs without locking up, I rip MP3’s and convert DVD’s to run on a PSP. I use it in lieu of a desktop, with a standard keyboard plugged into the USB. I bought some small USB powered speakers which sound as good as most desktop speakers. It has a 15" monitor which is large enough for me to see about 48" in front of me. I don’t play games on it, other than simple Flash games. I’d rather use a console for games. IMO, a laptop can substitute for a desktop for most average needs.
I agree. I had a laptop and literally replaced it with my PHONE. With my Pocket PC I can surf the net, check and send emails, watch video clips, listen to Audible books, use Microsoft Office applications, and even WiFi plus of course have much more handy access to voice memos, the camera, and all integrated into the cool features of a phone like text messaging. I’ve got a full size foldout keyboard that collapses into a wallet-sized package for when I want to type a great deal.
Laptops suck.
I’m sort of entertained that those of us who work in coffee shops suck.
My Dell Inspiron never/rarely gets warm - I almost wish it would, as I’m always cold.
I travel a bit, and go to lots of meetings well away from work. How is a desktop going to let me review my presentation in a hotel? How is it going to go to a meeting room and get plugged into a projector to show a presentation? I mostly use it at home, but it is essential for traveling. (At work I have a Solaris thin client with a nice big screen.)
I once had to bring a desktop, actually an old Sun workstation, across the country to a meeting. (This was years ago, when laptops were new, and before EDA tools were on Windows.) We had to put it in a special case, convince airport security that turning it on was not going to do anything but illuminate an led, and borrow a monitor at the place we were going to do a demo. Plus, almost get a hernia from putting that thing into the overhead bin. No thanks, laptops any day for me.
I got a brand spanking new Lenovo X61 *tablet * running vista/Office2007. It’s good for about 4 hours of battery life in high performance mode. It doesn’t run hot, is pretty light, and works pretty damn well for the 50%+ part of the time I’m not at my work desk but still have to get all my work done (for which a PC is indespensible). And I use a windows PDA phone extensively as well. When I am in the office, it’s often 10 hours a day on the laptop. I do a lot of spreadsheets and am cursed by a corporate culture that believes powerpoints can turn shit to gold.
I’ve been a laptop only kinda user for at least 8 years. I don’t have an external screen, mouse or keyboard. Since the X61 came with an ultra lightweight docking station, I actually use that whenever I’m at work but it’s far from indespensible.
I like the biometric reader that allows me to log on with a thumb swipe. I use tablet mode extensively with customers or to mark up powerpoints.
So, OP channelling the ghost of handy, care to share on tablets too?
Self employed laptop owner here who spends a lot of time in hotels. Laptops are kind of necessary for the job and location. In fact some of the “expensive models” (Sony TZ90, Panasonic toughbook Y4) you are complaining have a long battery life 6 hours or more, are quiet, not hot. I use them all the time on cross country flights. I am buying another one tomorrow to upgrade the Y4, not to irk you but because some of us need a laptop, not a blackberry, not an apple iphone but an actual computer to run programs necessary for work in remote locations. I’m sorry but this is a lame rant.
The reason for poor battery performance on laptops is often because they’re charged too much. If you use a laptop in the office as well as out and about, it’s better to run it on batteries for a while (say, in the morning), then charge it fully before you take it away. If you’re planning to use the thing as a desktop PC for an extended time, physically take the battery out.
This isn’t so much the case with the newer Lithium Ion batteries, but still, laptop batteries are designed to be used - that is, charged and then discharged (a bit at least).
Hey, if you’ve got a beef with TPTB, why not take it to the…
Oh
Never mind.