Why Laptops Are to come to be Obsolete

Laptops have become ordinary in todays society, with sales outstripping desktop computers and trends towards people becoming more mobile. This pattern remained largely unaffected, with laptop sales growing every year.

Then in 2007, at Computex Taipei 2007, Asustek unveiled the 'Asus Eee Pc' - a netbook designed to be smaller, economy and lighter than conventional laptop computers. It was a logical idea, simplify. The former Asus Eee Pc, the 7 inch Eee Pc 701, is still on sale but the netbook has evolved. Asus went on to progress it's Eee Pc Series to include 9 and 10 inch models, the 'top-of-the-range' Eee Pc S101 and used the technology from it to produce the 'Eee Top', a computer bereft of screen, mouse and keyboard which is designed to be portable. Other companies entered the fray such as Acer with it's Aspire One netbook (itself going on to match Asus's sales) and Msi - who introduced the first 10 inch netbook, the Wind, now pretty much the commerce standard. Slowly the bigger players began to take consideration with Hp, Samsung, Lg, Toshiba, Dell and most recently Sony having entered the field with microscopic laptops more or less mimicking the efforts of pioneering Asus. The only major enterprise that seems to be missing from the fray is Apple, but rumour has it they're trying to produce a touchscreen model combining the Mac operating ideas with iPhone technology.

Samsung Laptop

So the mini laptop shop has already captured the hearts and minds of the manufacturers, after all the economy and simpler models are easier to shop and sell. But what about the consumers? What do they think?

A coarse complaint about a mini laptop is the interface is simply too small. The keyboard is cramped with a poor layout, the touchpad is too tiny and the buttons are peculiarly positioned. Indeed, the earlier netbooks were a bit of a mess - but their more modern cousins are a far cry from the earlier attempts at producing a mini laptop. Now, the bigger players are entering the market, they're capitalizing on their rivals earlier trial and error runs, incorporating their own lines unique selling points and using their name to shop their products. Today, the bigger brands 'appear' to use more of the shelf space - maybe they're more profitable... Maybe consumers are warming to the idea of a mini laptop, given the sudden wash on big brands now available on the market.

Another annotation is the lack of processing power, and Cd/Dvd-Rom Drive. Netbooks from their early notion were designed to be straightforward and cheap, so the new-build Intel Atom processor was designed only to fulfill basic tasks like word processing, browsing the internet and playing light games. The benefit of having such a straightforward processor is that it's more efficient leading to longer battery life (also helped by having a smaller screen). The lack of a optic disc drive (your Cd/Dvd-Rom) is a necessary cut in order to shed the extra size and weight - and for those who literally grumble about this there is a solution! An external Usb disc drive costs between £20-30, or splash out on an ultra-portable notebook like the Sony Vaio Tt (the world's smallest blu-ray notebook) which is only 11.1 inches in diameter.

The lack of features compared to a laptop though is a flawed conference for most people. Sure, a laptop will be able to run graphic laberious software or faster games - they have the processors to do that; but it will still remain inferior to a desktop computer. Most features on a laptop are inferior to a desktop, except for one. The portability of a laptop is its main selling point, and it's ordinary to think that's the standard. But when keen around, like a laptop is designed for, how often is it that you'd need all that computing power? All the extra features? All that extra weight and bulk? All that extra expense? Would you be better off with something smaller, lighter and economy - a mini laptop? (Worth adding that some features such as inbuilt webcams, Bluetooth, embedded sim cards and more aren't available as acceptable on laptops, whereas they are on netbooks)

Yes, there will be professionals who will need powerful, yet conveyable computing power, but such will tend to go towards the 'ultra-portable' range of laptop computers anyway, devices such as the Sony Vaio Series or Apple MacBooks (for graphic designers). Mini laptops and netbooks are becoming evermore sophisticated, and already in their short time in existence they've managed to take aroundabout 10% of the laptop shop already.

I predict that the mini laptop will become the former conveyable computing device, added to a desktop computer. Laptops will become a reserve of the working expert and will be marketed as such. Particularly while these times of economic gloom and doom, people are thinking smarter about where they splash their cash - so if you're finding to invest in a new laptop computer - stop, and think. Must I pay a few hundred pounds extra for those features? Do I literally need them? Can I be bothered lugging that extra weight around in my bag?

Why Laptops Are to come to be Obsolete