The Enhanced Mobility for Those Who Are on the Go
What is happening currently is, for those who want to access the Internet or their Ethernet network or their office or the myriad of services that are offered on the Internet, have to use what are known as hot spots, whose number is on the rise, 70,000 hot spots in more than 100 major cities around the world. Small caf�©s like Starbucks are on the lead, whereas there are a big number of other obscure participants. Restaurants, sport bars and fast food chains are offering Wi-Fi connection to make their business place friendly for their laptop-toting customers. Even airports, hotels, train stations, hospitals, and public libraries are joining Wi-Fi enabling in droves.
Every laptop that is Wi-Fi enabled is capable of spotting businesses that offer the Wi-Fi connection, and walking or driving through a street with a laptop on will enable spotting establishments that are enabled with the Wi-Fi service. If that is not convenient enough there are small devices known as Wi-Fi locators that cost around $30 and more that are small enough to fit in a pocket or a key ring, and just by pressing a button it is possible to tell if the individual is anywhere near a hot spot.
Places like Starbucks for example are charging money and it had proven to be another lucrative source of income, while there are other similar businesses that have started offering the service free. And this has put the popular latte outlet in a hot spot and it might even cost it customers who are flocking to the other businesses that are offering the service free, and eventually Starbucks might change their policy and be done away with their $6 dollar an hour, .10 for every additional minute, and close to $39 a month charge soon.
The point to raise here, however, is why would people want to go mobile in the first place knowing that it is not a widespread phenomenon yet. Some have no choice, because the nature of the business they are in will be the primary cause of going mobile for them. For others, since laptops have become more powerful lately outperforming or competing head on with powerful desktops, it does not make sense why they have to remain fixtures to their desktops. They can take what they are working on wherever they go. Home is one place for example, where most people want to take their unfinished work.
Or depending on the nature of their work, there are professions where all sorts of presentations will be made, and the days of depending on slide shows is gone as any presentation can be made from a laptop. Traveling is also another reason. People can hop planes, trains, buses, and even taxis carrying their laptop, and could accomplish a lot on the road.
For sales people, mobility is a key to the success rate of what they are doing because there are a lot of demonstrations to be made, and all the old gear can be reduced to a feather-light laptop and a few external accessories to help them do their selling pitch. Not only that, accessing the headquarters’ database is possible from anywhere as long as there is some way of accessing the Internet. Most hotel rooms avail this capability. It takes a small camera known as web cam attached to the laptop to have a live video conferencing with anyone from anywhere, as long as there is online connection.
For those who are working with the press, taking pictures and videos anywhere in the world, loading them to their laptop where they could easily carry out editing work, and transmitting a finished product to their headquarters had been made instantaneous.
Those professionals who have the need to scribble on the spot have what are known as Tablet PCs, and professionals who have to take notes while interacting with others or their customers, or designer artists who want to draw a sketch can do it right on the monitor of the Tablet laptops, and could save it or do anything they want with it.
This is without mentioning those who use their laptop to listen to music they have accumulated on their laptop’s hard drive or from CDs, or watch downloaded movies or DVDs, or read eBooks and other material while they are traveling a long distance. All these are possible because for those who have to use audio, there are state-of-the-art headphones that work with laptops seamlessly. Some might even want to engage with games as the laptop can easily be transformed into a play station anywhere, even on a plane, and eventually it is anticipated that the Internet will be accessed from any flight.
In order to have all these advantages, there are features that have to be made part of most laptops, to make them suitable for a mobile use. The first important things to take into consideration are size and weight, and making some compromising could be required in order to have the lightest laptop. Features like internal floppy, CD, or DVD drives could be missing to make the laptop feather-light, even if some machines like Sony, for example, have managed to add these features while still making the laptop light enough.
Then the processor will always have to be the Intel Centrino in order to have the wireless technology on the go, if not anything else. Otherwise one major capability, which is wireless connectivity through the Internet will be lacking even if laptops could still have a lot of use without it, for most businesses or for personal use like it was mentioned above.
The memory of the laptop is also important as the standard 32 MB most laptops come with might not be enough for most programs and the 64 MB is recommended. Not to ever worry about memory, installing the 120 MB or buying a laptop that is equipped with it will make the machine capable of handling any program or any number of them at a the same time.
The hard disk drive should at least be 80 GB even if there are 120 GB laptops, and in most cases there might not be a need for such a huge size, but having it at one’s disposal might come handy in a future date, and that is solely dependent on what the individual is doing.
The display is also key because accessing the laptop in all kinds of light condition including outdoors is possible and in most cases, the Active Matrix, which is the latest technology is the better choice. Then the battery life is indispensable, because for the most part, especially on the road, what the laptop will be using is battery power, and what is recommended is Lithium Ion, which is more durable and could hold charge much longer.
The availability of enough Ports and Slots are very essential too, because that is the only way enhancing the functionality of the laptop is possible. Like it was mentioned earlier, to make the machine lighter some features might be eliminated, and one way of giving such machines the missing capabilities is by using external peripherals. These devises include PCMCIA that allow the use of adapter cards for modem cards, or removable disk drives for floppy, CDs, DVDs with RW capability, or even a keyboard or another monitor, mouse, speakers, cameras, camcorders, PDAs, and earphones could be attached to the main laptop through these Ports and Slots depending on the need. To make things even less complicated a docking station can be used where all the above mentioned peripherals including scanners and printers could be attached to it, and the laptop needs only to be plugged into the docking station and when being mobile is required, there will only be one unplugging to do.
Overall, to complement things, there are hard drives known as USB flash drive with 1 GB storage capability that can fit on a key ring. It is not at all difficult to imagine what mobility means to today’s workplace, where hoping form one place to the other, with feather-light laptops is possible, with all important works and documents securely tucked away into another small, pocket-sized hard drive. In addition, most of the peripherals that make the laptop fully functional easily fit in the laptop bags.
