If you look at the numbers notebook system sales nearly equal desktop sales. Very few of the units sold are low end Eee or Apple Air systems. They’re computers people want for all of their work – at the office, at home, on the road!
Figure 4 – Portable Computing – Today’s reasonably priced notebook computers deliver performance and capabilities equal to that of their stay-at-home desktop systems. It’s no wonder that individuals and companies have replaced desktop systems with a more versatile mobile laptop. Someday – just someday – smartphones will become intelligent additions to the mix. Source — IDC
Today’s notebook user really wants it all. We want a system that will handle the information explosion.
Figure 5 – Sight, Sound – Eons ago portable computers were mere number crunchers and word processors. Today we sometimes have the feeling that they hold our entire lives in storage…family/friends moments/memory photos and videos, time/place shifted TV shows, music of every genre, business presentations, personal records and more. Illustration — NYTimes
You know:
- 10 trillion person-to-person emails each year
- 220 billion digital camera photos
- Billions of hours of HD video, music
- Billions of document, ppt and other files
It doesn’t take a brain surgeon to see that people are now using their go-everywhere systems to do…everything. That’s especially true of video whether it’s shot with a camera or a camphone. Increasingly people are taking, post producing, sharing, storing more content.
Figure 6 – Creative Endeavors – High performance computers, economical/easy-to-use video production software and economic highdef cameras/camcorders have put the creative resources into the hands of almost everyone who has a desire to express him-/herself. The new creative materials that are posted to the web have also reduced the importance of the TV set as the primary source of entertainment. Source — eMarketer
That’s why 120GB drive in the notebook is overloaded and we carry a 120GB USB external HD to handle “the other stuff!” We’ve got video and we’re not afraid to use it even though most people look at the content and agree with the Controller, “I know but this guy has no flying experience at all. He’s a menace to himself and everything else in the air… yes, birds too.”
Of course working with all that content on the notebook during a flight helps raise the temperature 10 degrees thus forcing the airline to use more fuel to run the air conditioning. Darn…bet they’ll start charging you a $10 fee for opening your notebook because you’re using more fuel than the obese person in the seat next to you!
We agree with McCroskey, “Looks like I picked the wrong week to quit smoking.”
Of course all of the power and storage capacity doesn’t really matter with today’s notebooks because since lithium ion batteries were pulled from the market. Sales were a little sluggish after a paltry few of them blew up. The industry quickly modified the designs to solve the overheating and “poof” issue.
New Power
Right now firms are aggressively trying to develop high-performance, long-life, economic portable computer power solutions that don’t weigh too much.
Figure 7 – Heavy Support – Today’s laptop and sub-laptop computers are light and powerful. Unfortunately if you need to use the system for a long time away from an electrical outlet you may need a porter to carry the energy source.
Problem is cobalt is in short supply. And if you haven’t quite noticed it, almost everything your kids use today runs on batteries. It’s not that the industry isn’t trying to solve these “minor” issues.
All they have to do is give us the:
- performance of an Alienware or Acer Ferrari notebook
- weight of a netbook
- graphics power of a GeForce card
- processing power of a quad-core CPU
- low power intelligence
- liquid cooling system
- dynamic load balancing and balanced architecture
- “reasonable” system price
We need to take our system on the road with us. That’s right…”someone who won’t crack under pressure.” When will it happen? Striker simply said, “I can’t tell you that. It’s classified.” Until then we’re taking one more accessory with us on our business flights…a long extension cord.
Beyond Simulation – Certainly a high performance GPU chip or board makes flight simulation software fun and exciting to use. But at some point the pilot needs to take off and land the plane. That requires hands-on, real world expertise and experience…good luck!!! Photo Source — Paramount
