orporate America loves notebook computers. In fact, U.S. companies are buying them at record rates. Sales grew by nearly 50% in the first quarter of this year. By comparison, U.S. sales of desktop PCs have been growing steadily, if not thrillingly, at no more than 15% a year.
The word on the street tells an even more highly charged s
tory. John Danielsen, VP of IS at Pacific Gas & Electric Co. (PG&E) in San Francisco, says, "Notebooks are now a third of my PCs-and growing."
At Robert Plan Corp., an insurance group in Uniondale, N.Y., the notebooks are piling up so fast that Bruce Nash, senior VP of technology services, says,
"Our next big decisions will be how to handle our growing notebook population."
Resellers see the growth, too. Eric Feldman, a VP at ComputerLand Corp. in Plainview, N.Y., says notebook sales have soared in the past two months alone. "You're starting to see some different people buying the systems," he says. "And with availability up, sales have taken off."
A big driver of notebook growth is the fact that the portable machines have grown as powerful as most desktops.
As recently as two years ago, that wasn't the case. Then, a $3,000 notebook would have had an Intel 486 or equivalent microprocessor, a 500-Mbyte hard drive, 4 Mbytes of RAM, and a 9.5-inch passive matrix screen. That configuration
wasn't powerful enough to perform high-level computing tasks. So notebooks were typically relegated to spreadsheet work, limited presentations, and simple E-mail.
Transformation
But today, that same $3,000 buys a lot more: a notebook with an Intel Pentium processor, a 1.2-Gbyte hard drive, a CD-ROM drive, 16 Mbytes of RAM, and a 12.1-inch passive matrix screen. This generation of notebooks can download a wealth of data from the Internet and corporate E-mail, deliver an in-depth sales presentation, and deliver acceptable video and graphics. When running Microsoft's Windows 95 software, that $3,000 system is functionally far closer to a desktop machine than was its 1995 predecessor.
Notebooks will continue getting faster and more powerful. Intel plans a mobile version of its top-of-the-line Pentium II microprocessor next year and hopes to seed a graphics-intensive notebook market with the high-powered chip.
At the high end of the notebook market, at least, desktop replacement seems to b
e a common item. Officials at Compaq Computer, for example, say half of their high-end notebooks are shipped with docking stations. The latest Compaq notebook line even includes a docking station that can sit on its side like a tower unit.
That lets people use notebooks for many tasks previously reserved for the beefiest of desktop machines, which means an increase in telecommuting. During last summer's Olympics, when the Games tied up Atlanta's thoroughfares with spectator traffic, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention let many of its users work at home, often via an array of notebooks.
In fact, three-quarters of notebook users at midsize to large companies surveyed by International Data Corp. this year say their notebooks are their primary PCs. That figure is expected to jump to 82% next year, according to IDC.
"Our company is moving more toward laptops," agrees Al Iglesias, a project manager at HBO & Co., an Atlanta software and services provider for the health-care industry. HBO has
about 800 mobile users. Adds Iglesias, "A lot of people at the corporate office will go home on the weekends or evenings and want to do things like remote mail."
But one gap between desktops and notebooks stubbornly remains: management of the machines. PG&E's Danielsen started a PC-management initiative in the late 1980s that has cut 30% from the utility's total cost of ownership, but, he says, "the tools we use for managing the desktop don't apply to the notebook. That's our next big hurdle."
To help, new notebooks from Compaq, Hewlett-Packard, IBM, and other major vendors include management features once found only on desktop machines. For instance, Compaq's Armada 7700 includes the same asset management, fault detection, and security features found on the company's desktops.
The Desktop Management Task Force, an industry group, is working on further mobile additions to its Desktop Management Interface (DMI), which is incorporated into desktop management solutions such as Compaq's. Officials o
f the task force say more portable management features will be included in a DMI specification later this year. Intel has already incorporated aspects of DMI in a new mobile version of LANDesk Client Manager, which incorporates mobile features into Intel's management software.
Some management considerations come down to a simple issue: Because notebooks are portable, they get used on the road, and because they're used on the road, it's difficult for the IS department to support them. "It's a management problem when you have field people-people who never come into the office-using them," says Phillip Gordon, a systems architect with Franklin Templeton Group, a mutual fund company in San Mateo, Calif., that uses several hundred IBM ThinkPads.
Emphasis On Support
HP will emphasize its worldwide service and support capabilities with the Omnibook 2000, its new line of notebooks that feature a 133-MHz Intel Penti
um with MMX multi-media extensions. Pricing for the line starts at $2,100. "For mobile workers, fast service and worldwide support become critical," says Jim McDonnell, group marketing manager for HP's personal information products group.
Also, some users moving to Windows NT on the desktop worry about that operating system's fit with notebooks. Nash of Robert Plan, for example, wants to move his desktop users from Windows 3.1 to NT, leapfrogging Windows 95 entirely. But he's wondering what to do about his growing population of notebook users. "Windows NT isn't as notebook-friendly as Windows 95," he says. "But at the same time, we don't want to support a different operating system."
Another gap: When notebooks operate on their batteries, power consumption remains a problem. Many notebooks run through their batteries much faster than vendors may claim. That can leave air travelers computerless, for example.
While Microsoft promises Windows NT will be more notebook-friendly in the next release, i
t's still likely to be a power hog. Some companies, such as Digital Equipment, offer NT on their notebooks with additional power management features, but users say they'd prefer an industry-standard solution.
Security Risks
Another area where notebooks differ from desktops: They're far more likely to be stolen. Sixty-three percent of mobile professionals surveyed by Sherwood Research in Wellesley, Mass., say thefts of portable PCs have increased in the last year; 7% of those surveyed say they have had their own notebooks stolen. In all, more than 200,000 portable computers were reported stolen in the United States last year, Sherwood Research says. Roughly one-third of the machines were stolen from cars, one-third from hotel rooms, and one-third from other locations.
But Nathan Nuttall, research director of computing systems at Sherwood Research, believes notebook makers could turn this liability into an asset: "Portable PC manufacturers have an opportunity to differentiate their products
by incorporating features that enhance security."
--with additional reporting by
Mary Hayes
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orporate America loves notebook computers. In fact, U.S. companies are buying them at record rates. Sales grew by nearly 50% in the first quarter of this year. By comparison, U.S. sales of desktop PCs have been growing steadily, if not thrillingly, at no more than 15% a year.
