2011年2月21日星期一

The Secret of New PC designs for Small Business

You might know the old joke about Henry Ford's first car -- it was available in either black or black. With laptops and other computer form factors, there are only a few design options. Now, some PC makers are challenging that notion.
Much of the media attention at the recent Consumer Electronics Show(CES) surrounded new computer styles, shapes and sizes -- perhaps signaling a change from the tried-and-true laptop form factor popularized over the past two decades.
One attention-getting device is the Dell Inspiron Duo, which looks like a typical netbook at first glance but actually transforms into a tablet when you remove the LCD touch display. Lenovo offers a similar model called the LePad U1, but that hybrid was first announced over a year ago.
Another laptop, which uses dual touchscreens instead of a physical keyboard, is the Acer Iconia. The main advantage of this new form factor is that the keyboard can be customized or changed altogether depending on what you need the laptop to do.
Another model, the Razer Switchblade, has keys that display different words or icons depending on the application -- say, for gaming or for getting real work done.
So, are these new form factors innovative? Sure. Practical? That's another -- and perhaps more important -- consideration altogether.blok, a kindergarten classroom PC, designed by Christianne LeBlanc, Jessica Livingston and Maarianne Goldberg.
As usual, the hardest part about deciding whether these new form factors make sense is just being careful to avoid the lure of something being new and interesting, and then determining whether they will actually make sense for real work. To find out, we caught up with industry experts to weigh in on the pros and cons of alternative computer styles.
Does 'one size fits all' work?
"We've all been conditioned into believing that something that's remained fundamentally unchanged for decades is a classic, successful, perfect design that needs no additional modification," begins Carmi Levy, an independent technology analyst based in London, Ontario. "In the case of the basic laptop, however, classic doesn't mean ideal -- despite the fact that the basic laptop has become an icon of business and consumer computing, it's been apparent for years that its one-shape-fits-all form factor falls short."
Levy says enterprise and consumer buyers are often "complacent," and in turn stick with a familiar design. "Because of this, hardware vendors, afraid of introducing the PC world's equivalent of the Edsel, have shied away from stretching the form factor envelope."
Times might be changing, however.
"The tablet is the first truly successful post-laptop design for a mobile productivity device in a generation -- it has opened the door to other hybrid hardware designs by softening buyer resistance anything that strays too far from the trusty old laptop design."
The new laptop-tablet hybrids may just be a smart new form factor, he says.
"The Dell Inspiron Duo (aka Sparta) is just close enough to existing form factors that buyers might be willing to give it a shot. It's evolutionary, not revolutionary, and that could be more than enough to begin to give Dell some sales momentum in this emerging market slice."
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