[NTLK] portable computers [was: Followup to Houston Chronicle Story]

From: Len Cole (leonard.cole_at_verizon.net)
Date: Tue Dec 23 2003 - 12:08:25 PST


I agree whole heartedly. The listing of the computers chronologically is the most sensible way of handling it. The "ranking" of the computers was bothering me, but my thoughts became trapped in a particular mind set which prevented me from even realizing that chronological order was an alternative! That's what happens when the brain is tired! :-)

Regardless if the desktop market is stagnant or not, I certainly do not think that Mr. and Mrs. John Q. Public are buying laptops to use in their family room. They're still too expensive. Just look at the mass marketing - it's still all desktops, at least until the last few months now that Intel is pushing the Centrino chipset.

Rather, I think that the laptop market is being fueled by business, college students and secondary education. I would rank the *home* market for laptops dead last, only because that still is the mass market segment where people basically buy what they're told to buy; and they are not being told to buy laptops.

Also there few laptops are aimed at gamers, which although is a small segment, is still an important segment since it is driving the performance demands through the roof. I now laptops are making great strides in performance, but they're still not being promoted as an alternative to high end desktops.

I'd probably be more than happy to give up my 8600 for a good PowerBook, even a used one, but they are still cost prohibitive for me. There's nothing more I would like than to clear up the stacks of computer equipment of all types in my den.

In fact I do have two old PowerBook models but they are not yet "meaty" enough to suit my needs. The 190 needs more memory and a drive larger than 500 MB. Those two upgrades for the PB 190 are on the drawing board 'cause I like that little computer. Upgrading it will be far cheaper than getting a newer used one, and since I don't intend to go online with it, I don't need to worry about its relative lack of performance.

And on a mildly related topic, if the purpose of a MessagePad is to have your computer in your hand, what is the fuss about keyboards? Doesn't that defeat the purpose of an MP being handheld? To me the joy of using an MP is being able to jot down the information into whatever application you're using at the time.

I'm not demeaning the use of keyboards, it's that they're counter-intuitive to me. What I'd like to see is a twelve to fifteen inch diagonal tablet with Newton capabilities. *That* would be totally awesome to use.

Yes, you're right. This is a far more interesting exchange than poutine! :-) It's also amazing to see where desktop computing has taken us since it's beginnings, especially from the standpoint of someone who was "brought up" in the school of Big Iron, just before the microcomputer's creation. Twenty years ago, who would have thought that hard disks would have the enormous capacities they have today? Who would have thought we'd be measuring memory in gigabytes? Who could conceive that clock speeds in excess of 3 GHz were even possible?

Regardless of how any particular computer has influenced home computing, I, for one, would go through extremely serious withdrawal if I had to give up my computer!

ljc

On December 23 2003, Jon Glass <jonglass_at_usa.net> wrote:

>Rather than ranking these
>computers, he should have simply listed them chronologically...

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