morning lineup firegeezer on 18 Aug 2008 08:05 am
Morning Lineup - August 18
You know how I enjoy watching the “information revolution” and the electronic advances that are rolling in along with it. I’ve never been one to jump out and be the first to get the new gadgets, but instead I watch them get refined and let the early buyers work out the bugs. Then I’ll get one it is something that I can really use.
Looking through yesterday’s Best Buy advertisement, I spotted a couple of things that I found interesting. First of all, I noticed a group of three computer monitors (19″, 22″, and 25.5″) under the heading “Get a larger view for your laptop.” And they are plugging large PC-type monitors with the intention of having them plugged into your laptop when at home.
That makes sense. More and more people now are relying on their laptop for all of their computer operations and just toting them along wherever they go. If you’ve got one of those wireless cellphone connections like the Geezerguys do, then you are online all the time. And when at home, just plug into the big screen. I just looked and sure enough, there’s a port on the side of my laptop for a monitor.
The other ad that I found interesting was for an HP computer that I believe is the next generation of PC’s arriving. While they call it a PC, it is really a blend of PC and laptop taking advantage of the great progress of miniaturization that we’ve seen in the last couple of years.
This new machine takes the works of a laptop and builds it right into the monitor, giving you a PC in one piece.
The 22″ monitor is thinner than a laptop but is built like one with the hard drive, processer, etc., all packed into it along with the CD/DVD drive. It even has the Wi-Fi and Bluetooth stuff built into it and the keyboard and mouse are wireless. (You can check out HP’s description of it HERE.)
The machine being offered this week has a 320 Gb hard drive and a 4 gig memory along with a built-in webcam. The price is $1,300. Now we’re talking mainstream use. I can see these pretty much doing away with the traditional PC completely. This will be fun to watch.
Now let’s have some fun checking out the equipment for the day. I’m going to start the coffee. See you later in the day room.
on 18 Aug 2008 at 9:44 am 1.Dal90 said …
What you’ll find is the laptop will support dual monitors — I keep my laptop open, up on a stand with email, IM, etc so I can glance to check those. And a 19″ Sony monitor I stare at for most of my my work. Except when mobile, I’ve run with dual monitor setups now for, oh, five years and can’t conceive of only having one (I *hate* having to work just from the laptop).
If I had a desktop system I could easily support four monitors at once with common graphic cards today, and I know I can justify three as it is. One programmer I saw at a client had a terrific setup — 3 21″ monitors in the normal landscape orientation, and a fourth in letter orientation.