Two Saturday's ago I read Stephen Fry's Guardian article Deliver us from Microsoft, about a new laptop called the Asus Eee PC.
He described a laptop which:
- was no bigger or heavier than a normal sized hardback book
- cost £229
- took 20 seconds to start and ten seconds to close down
- had usb ports, speakers, wifi web access, and webcam
- has no DVD or CD drive
- uses Open Source instead of Microsoft's operating system and software
- allows you to create, read and edit MS excel, word and powerpoint documents through the open source package OpenOffice.
- has a charger that is as light as a mobile phone charger.
In an age when a fully functional laptop is cheaper than an Xbox and as light as a book, what is the incentive for an individual to use their organisation's computers? Won't they just buy their own devices, configure them how they like and use them for whatever they want in work and in play?
I decided to buy one of these Asus Eee PCs. They took some tracking down because they have been selling like hot cakes. I found a post on a geek forum saying that 237 Tottenham Court Road had received a delivery of 200 of them on Saturday Feb 9. I got there at 12 noon on Monday February 11. They only had thirty left, they'd already sold eleven that morning (and sold another while I was chatting to them). They were confident the rest of the batch would be gone by the end of the day.
When I brought it back to the office it was like bringing a new born baby in, lots of colleagues crowding round, wanting a look and a hold. One week on and I'm delighted with the thing. My old work laptop is now permanently moored at my desk, kept on for the convenience of its connection to the work e-mail server. I use the Asus Eee when I am working at a client's office, working on the train, and of course, for playing around with at home.
The funny thing is that TFPL's head of IT (Michael) is far more interested in my Asus Eee than he ever was in my work (Dell) laptop. Every time he passes my desk he asks me how it is working, and he sat for the best part of an hour connecting it up to our work shared drive. He's even offered to rebuild my old Dell.
One of my friends has been using one of these for a month now and he's very impressed with it.
Onto your wider point though, which is what I really wanted to comment on. Why have a specific computer at all these days? Your bookmarks can be stored on delicious, your documents on Google docs, your Powerpoint presentations on Slideshare, your start page at Pageflakes and so on. We're getting to a stage where the symbiotic relationship with 'our' computer(s) is becoming a thing of the past. I can think of less and less reasons why I need to have a specific computer!
Posted by: Phil Bradley | 18 February 2008 at 20:12
Hi Phil, thank you for tipping me off to Pageflakes. I've set up a page which I use as my start page. I have published it as a pagecast at this address http://www.pageflakes.com/JamesLappin
Posted by: James Lappin | 21 February 2008 at 16:59