Article Written for the Killarney Outlook 12th April 2008

Many of the Flesk I.T. customers have been buying notebook computers recently.

They seem to be in vogue at the moment (notebook computers that is), the portability of the devices makes them a big hit and they do not take up as much room as a desktop.

There are downsides of course, they have less expandability, they are more prone to breakage (and more costly to repair) and they are more expensive for what you get. A customer recently asked me what the difference was in price. I didn’t know off hand but after some time rooting through the price lists from various distributers it worked out that I could sell a desktop with MS Office for roughly the same price as a similarly kitted out notebook.

The cost differential between desktops and notebooks is well known in commercial circles and the large I.T. outsourcing crowds will charge more for supporting a laptop than they will a desktop. When I worked in large corporations and pointed this out to departmental heads the growth of laptop numbers remained unchanged. I have one, I have quite a few desktops as well but that is another story.

I have also noticed how, over the years, how much you get with a computer has decreased over time. Nowadays you do not get recovery disks but, instead, have to create your own. You do not get a bag with a notebooks computer, MS Office comes preinstalled but with no reinstall media (again, you have to create your own or have a backup), the Anti-virus software is only partially installed and will download 40-50MB of data when you activate it. Warranties are only 12 months long and anything extra costs. This last one is particularly hard hitting for a notebook because, as mentioned before, they are prone to breakage and some extended warranty is a serious consideration.

One thing that has remained the same other the years is the amount of junk software that comes pre-installed, everything from badly written utilities, that seem to perform no useful or even discernible function, from the manufacturer to the Google toolbar.  It is as if the equipment manufacturers are having a bit of a joke sometimes.

Talking of jokes, I had a laugh at the antics of Richard Branson the other day. In a key-note speech he was giving at the CTIA Wireless conference in Las Vegas he announced that he and the folks at Google had entered into a Joint Venture called Virgle, the aim of which was to build upon the space interests that his Virgin group of companies own and send a manned mission to Mars on a spacecraft called Noah’s Ark. Why Noah’s Ark? because they would be taking animals with them to set up a colony. The trip, he said, was likely to be one-way only and recruitment for the mission had already started. He even asked for volunteers to join him on stage and over 20 attendees did just that. May be they should have checked their calendars first, the date was April 1st.