Cheap Laptops – Affordable, Full-Powered Mobility
The tide has turned. We are now on the threshold of the era where fast technology, convenient technology, and affordable technology are converging. Up until now, there was always a price – a price for speed or a price for convenience and usability. With the advent of the cheap laptop – cheap as in low priced, not shabbily made – the technology is accessible by the masses and we will see the world changing at an even more rapid clip.
The same thing has happened with laptops, just shifted a few years. Up until now, it has been impossible to have computing power and mobility and mass availability combined; you could have any combination of two out of three, but never all three. As laptops became more sophisticated and more powerful with better quality, the prices remained nearly constant. The lower middle class couldn’t easily capitalize on the technology and had to resort to doing computing on the home desktop.
The prohibitive cost of laptops stimulated the growth of the hand held devices. Granted, these devices will not go away – they have a definite advantage over laptops for many applications and in many environments – but hand held devices do not have the same power and user interface advantages that a laptop inherently has (larger display screens for viewing multiple things at once; using a keyboard for input instead of fumbling with thumbs on tiny buttons; and a wealth of software). Now that laptop prices are approaching the cost of a hand held, the average consumer is going to have more options.
The cheap laptop will enable more people to escape the chains of a desk, or of having to spend the evening entering data and filling out forms on the computer after spending a day out in the field. With the laptop now affordable to nearly everyone, the computing power can go with the worker to the job site. More power will be available to more people, offering more flexibility in how work is done.
What this will really mean for society is yet to be seen, but think of it like this. Automobiles were once for the elite driver; now they’re everywhere. Televisions were once for the elite viewer; now they’re everywhere. Cell phones were once for the elite consumer only; now these phones are everywhere. And laptops were once for the rich and/or the techie; soon they will be everywhere.
The benefits that this could have for blue collar industries could be staggering. A workers who has had to rely on phone calls to get or send information soon will be doing it on a cheap laptop that he takes with him to the job site. Everyone will have more access to better information at a faster rate. The world will be a better connected place.
The cheap laptop that allows the masses to tie in and get connected like never before may also instigate social changes. No longer will the laptop user be confined to being the man in the business suit waiting for his flight at the airport gate. The laptop user will be the worker who has stopped at a fast food place to eat, or the farmer out in the field, or the hunter hiding in a duck blind. Well, maybe that’s a stretch. The point is that there will be changes. The doors have been opened and the sky is the limit!