What is new from a technological and offering aspects

Last couple of decades has witnessed amazing technological innovations in the field of ‘mobile computing’ and ‘miniaturization’. ‘Convergence’ has been the winning theme. All aspects of our daily life have been impacted in a positive manner. Right from cell phones to PDA’s to computers –all have improved over time to make our lives better. Globalization has created global corporate personnel and the need to equip their armory by introducing portability, was the compelling reason behind inventing mobile machines or laptops.

The journey of laptop evolution in little over two decades has been immense and there has always been an exponential trend-change. From ten kilos laptop back in 1981 to Toshiba’s Portege R500-S5007V that weighs 1.08 kilos. The first notebook from Osborne Computers looked like a sewing machine case and the display was just 5 inch wide. Next notable laptop was from IBM in 1984. Needless to say, it was all text based. It had 640K RAM. Today, almost any electronic device – be it phone or camera or palmtop – have storage space more than 640K. Imagine an era where none of our software, applications, games or gadgets would work! But then it was just a step ahead in the journey of notebooks’ evolution. Next milestone in the journey was reached first by Compaq as they came out with graphics equipped laptop in 1988. Finally, Apple broke into the world of laptops in 1989 with a laptop that would run for 10 hours on battery.
 

The latest laptops’ offerings are not limited to serious computing nerds but are cutting across plethora of customer segments – computer professionals, designers, architects, school-kids, housewives, entertainment-seekers, and everyone who want their online world to be portable. Internet’s evolution has an integral story in the evolution of notebooks. With Internet being able to provide videos, games, music and pictures, it was only natural to have laptops the ability to have DVD players, music players, call making abilities – all with the portable aspect of notebook remaining unchanged. Enter Wi-Fi capability in laptop and soon the mantra of convergence with portability is reality. However, from a technological perspective, all the latest applications require tremendous processing power, storage abilities and technological advances – and the present day notebooks hardware abilities successfully meet the software’s ever growing resource need.
 

The present day’s laptop can have 64-bit processor or dual processors, which provide the raw muscle required for processing. RAM’s have evolved from 640K to 2GB. This satiates most of the current day games. And then DVD slots, video graphic cards, Wi-Fi capability, USB slots, integrated modem, hundreds of GB’s of primary storage, and long-life batteries add to all that is required from a notebook to do personal or professional or educational activities. Mac Book Air is the slimmest laptop while Acer Travel Mate is touch-screen tablet laptop. While Wi-Fi ability was milestone to mark beginning of a new era in laptop history, Bluetooth compatible is the recent past accomplishment – all happening with an eye towards reducing weight and size. Early last year we had Sony come up with Blue-ray disc optical drive integrated with their VAIO notebooks.
 

Prices of laptops drastically vary depending on processing power, storage, accessories, offerings and brand name. While it is necessary to have a most recent laptop, it is prudent to map ones needs to laptop configurations. The continuous need to compute, access anywhere anytime will only improve with time and new technological inventions.
 

The latest trend in the laptop arena is the netbooks. These can be called mini laptops with small screen size (8” to 10” on average) small hard drive and reduced RAM, netbooks and light weight are gaining momentum across a wide amount of light or users and travelers whose needs are pretty simple such as web browsing and modest use of office applications. These users are happy to trade some power and hard drive space (that they don’t use in general) for the practicality of small and light machines that they can take anywhere.