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 Technology News | August 2005 
Spoiled for Choice: Here's How to Cut Through the Confusion of Buying a Laptop Computer
 Keith Woolhouse - The Ottawa Citizen
| | Tom Camps, CEO of BOLDstreet Wireless, has been using his Acer laptop computer for five years and is more than ready to trade up to a better one. But the number of choices is phenomenal. (Photo: Wayne Cuddington) |
It's not entirely Tom Camps' fault that he's lugging around a five-year-old laptop he dismisses as a "boat anchor." Camps has an Acer TravelMate. It's driving him to despair. "It's slowly withering away. I don't use the screen any more and I've had to buy an external monitor. The clicker on the built-in mouse pad isn't functional, so I use an external mouse. The problem is, because of its limitation, it's no good for presentations."
But still he struggles through his business day with it. What makes Camps' situation unique is that he's Canada's hotspot hotshot, who founded BoldStreet Wireless in 2002 and has steered the Ottawa-based company to the pinnacle of wireless computing with a coast-to-coast network approaching 710 locations in coffee shops, hotels, restaurants and airports, the largest public network of hotspots in the country.
Mobile computing is his life. But here he is, with a dead-duck of a machine that draws withering, unsubtle glances from his employees. The wonder is why he hasn't upgraded. It's not that he hasn't tried. At one point he picked up a Compaq machine at Staples for $1,400. He took it back under the store's 14-day return policy.
"I found it wholly inappropriate for what I wanted to do," he says. "The screen was so shiny and reflective that it was really hard to use if there was any ambient light. It was terrible. If there was a window behind you, it was almost unusable. I decided to research the laptops more thoroughly before I bought another one." What he discovered is what all would-be buyers eventually run into - buying a laptop is a nightmarish undertaking.
It's not for the lack of choice, but rather because of the number of brands and models in the marketplace and the different features they offer.
Between them, the major manufacturers - Acer, Apple, Asus, Averatec, Compaq, Dell, eMachine, Fujitsu, Gateway, Hewlett-Packard, IBM, LG, MDG, Sony, TaoTec, Toshiba, Sony, plus dozens of other machines being packaged and marketed under lesser known names - have close to 1,000 laptops priced between $799 and $7,999, many of which, at first glance, appear the same. And, to a large extent, they are. Offshore companies manufacture all the innards - the hard drives, chips, motherboards, video cards and cables. The cases are outsourced elsewhere. The Dells, Sonys and Fujitsus merely assemble all the parts and sell them under their brand name. It makes the buying decision that much more difficult.
Even the name creates confusion. Toshiba, like many manufacturers, no longer refers to its models as laptops. Now they're "notebooks." It goes further. "What you refer to as notebook PCs are generally called ultra portable notebook computers," says Toshiba product manager Mini Saluja.
"What you refer to as laptops or desktop replacements are also commonly referred to as notebook computers." If only it stopped there. But it doesn't. With the rebranding came thin-and-light notebooks, ultraportable notebooks, mobile workstations, desktop replacements, business notebooks, gaming laptops and tablets and convertible notebooks.
Toshiba's desktop replacement notebook weighs in at 9.9 pounds (4.49 kilos), about the weight of a supermarket sack of potatoes. "It is an audio visual personal computer capable of being connected to cable TV and is also great for DVD viewing with a 17-inch monitor and great speakers," says Saluja. "At nine pounds-plus, these systems are still portable, but more substantial than the ultraportables."
There was a time when a laptop sat on the lap, a notebook was small and slender enough to be slipped into a briefcase, and a desktop replacement replaced the PC tower. That was when the portable computer industry was still teething. Now it is entering adulthood.
Toshiba introduced the first laptop in April 1985. Today, celebrating the laptop's 20th anniversary, the company has 62 different models. All of them are ready-made or preconfigured. Even though the off-the-shelf choice is vast, would-be buyers are left uncertain about what to buy.
It was never that way with standard tower computers, and Dell was the first of the major manufacturers to realize it doesn't have to be that way, either, with laptops. It has led the industry in letting customers configure their machines according to their personal requirements. Smaller companies are following their lead.
Eurocom is an Ottawa-based company that coined the phrase "desktop replacement" and is in the process of registering the trademark worldwide. The company now has resellers and service centres Canada-wide and in the United States. It has some high-profile customers from Gov. Gen. Adrienne Clarkson to Dave Matthews of the Dave Matthews Band and Eid Eid, former boss of Corel Corp.
"Tell us what you want and need, and we'll build it for you," says Eurocom president Mark Bialic. He is critical of the retail stores' mass consumerism. "They're selling disposable pre-configured notebooks. They're not flexible. Eurocom's systems are fully configurable and let users decided exactly what it is that they want and need, and let them decide what size hard drive they need, and how much memory and what sort of optical drive and video card. And they can always upgrade after that, if they find out that what they have is not enough."
The retail industry is not completely to blame for the "what-you-see-is-what-you-get" approach, Bialic says. He faults the laptop industry itself. "The manufacturers, in general, haven't taken the responsibility to educate the consumer. Look at the automobile industry. It's more than 100 years old. Why do people clean their cars inside and outside? Why do you have an oil change every 5,000 kilometres? Nobody forces you to do that. Why, then, don't people clean their notebooks inside and outside? It's because we have an automobile culture that is more than 100 years old, but the laptop technology is only 20 years old."
"It's much easier for the manufacturers to make fixed configurations, but the consumer has to make a decision and compromise. And they also have to be quite knowledgeable about what they actually need. Once you allow a client to design their own configuration then each customer wants something different because people place a different value on different key components."
Toshiba acknowledges the problem. "We recognize that different lifestyles demand different notebook capabilities. Browse our current models and find the Toshiba notebook that's right for you," the company says on its web site.
But buyers will still have to browse and buy within certain constraints.
Retailers don't disagree. Best Buy, one of the country's major sellers of computers, displays about 20 laptops but carries dozens more. "Having those different models gives customers options, but with more options comes more confusion," says Chris Champagne, who runs Best Buy's Geek Squad home repair and installation team for its Merivale Road store.
"The Toshiba models may all look the same. It's just what's inside that's different. To a lot of people, that's what matters - what it looks like. Our sales staff doesn't work on commission, so we can work with them to determine what it is that they want. We can tell them, this is what your laptop will look like, except yours will have a DVD burner. We try to be as up-to-date as possible on all the latest models and specifications, features and benefits. But it can be overwhelming. Technology is moving so fast that we can barely keep up with it, and the models are continuously changing."
"For the customer, usage remains the key. It boils down to what they want. We're not going to sell a desktop if the customer really needs a laptop."
The decision-making becomes more difficult when cost is a factor. Manufacturers preload their laptops with a profusion of mix-and-match hardware. And no matter what you want or need, there's always a more expensive model beckoning. Take the example of two models, one costing $1,200 that comes with a DVD rewriter and one of $1,300 without a DVD rewriter. The cheaper model has a 40-gigabyte (GB) hard drive while the more expensive model has a 60-GB hard drive but no DVD rewriter. The consumer must choose - or pay $1,400 for a model that has a 60GB hard drive and a DVD rewriter.
How much hard drive storage does a person need? "If you want to store a lot of files on CD disks, then 30 to 40 gigs should be enough. However, if you are used to saving everything on your computer, photos, a movie and other huge files, then you will realize quite soon that 40 gigs is not enough," says Bialic.
That applies to almost every other feature.
"Even when you go online to places like CNET (www.cnet.com) the reviews talk of this one with a DVD writer, this one with longer battery life, this one will a more effective keyboard. It's crazy. All I want is a good laptop," says Camps. "How do you say, 'This is the laptop for me?' I don't think you can, any more. Unless you're always going to pay top dollar, you always have to compromise on some dimension of the decision, and it's really frustrating."
"The low-end computers all seem to be aimed toward home use rather than office use and are less appropriate for what I want to do. And the good corporate laptops are quite expensive. The whole laptop industry is totally bewildering."
Bewildering or not, there's no indication that the mobile computing industry is about to change its ways, and why should it? In May, laptops and notebooks outsold desktops in the United States for the first time in a calendar month, the San Francisco research firm Current Analysis reported. Notebook sales came in at 53 per cent, up from 46 per cent for the same period last year. Industry officials predict that 195 million units will be sold this year.
Finally, a sobering statistic: Thirty per cent of all laptops fail in the first 12 months. Here's the bad news; another 30 per cent will fail in the second year. Those statistics come from PC World consumer reports. "Best Buy doesn't disagree with those figures," says Champagne. "With so much packed into such a small space it's not surprising. There's not one dominant cause of failure. It's a variety of factors; a chip, a fuzzy monitor, a heat-related problem. It's a combination of problems. Everything is mass-produced, right? There's nothing we have control over."
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The Goods on Accessories
There is no shortage of accessories and optional extras for laptops. You can break the bank with accessories. Here are some worth considering and what you can expect to pay. You won't need them all, but you'll find that some are essential:
In-store service plan $115 (1 year) to $449.99 (3 years)
Bag or backpack $24.99 to $119.99
Wireless mouse $49.99
Keyboard $24.99 (USB) to $89.99 (wireless)
Printer $49.99 to $599.99
Router $99.99
Docking station $259.99
Memory stick $39.99 (128 megs) to $169.99 (1 gigabyte)
7-in-1 card reader (plugs into USB port) $39.99
Firewire notebook card $39.99
Portable speakers $62.50
Bluetooth adapter $59.99
WebCam $50
Spare battery $260
USB notebook card $39.99
375-watt power inverter $79
175-watt power inverter $39.99
USB hub (powered) $39.99
USB hub (passive) $20
Blank CDs $29.99 for 50
Blank DVDs $19.99 for 25 |
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