Ultra Portable Laptops example essay topic

The newest in laptop technology is a new series of machines. They have great performance of a regular laptop will all of the same fine features but, are much smaller and weigh less than four pounds including battery which is far less than other laptops available on the current market. They are the ultra portable line of computers that promise to provide a vast variety of high performance for the user as well as superior portability to take it anywhere on the job place. Some of the features that these new ultra portables display is the use of smaller than industry size for the individual keys on the keyboard. The new keyboards on these units are about 95% of the normal size. This will make a noticeable difference for typing keystrokes.

I was able to personally demonstrate one of these ultra portable laptops. I did confirm and notice that when I was typing and navigating through the windows console that there were times that it was harder to hit the correct keys. I think that through practice and a frequent usage of the unit would easily correct this issue of the smaller keyboard and make mobility through the windows environment much easier to navigate. Another high quality feature that is packed into these units is the use of high-resolution displays. Most units that I researched had a maximum display size of 1024 X 768.

With a 12.1" screen size display. The result of this is a crisp clear picture for general applications. However due to the size limitations of the screen small fonts and other small icons can become hard to view. This is corrected by supplying the user with an external VGA port that can project the screen on another monitor or view screen.

What makes these ultra portables so small and compact is that they are primarily composed of a processor, screen, keyboard, and hard drive. The removal of other internal components such as a CDROM drive or floppy drive is instead replaced with a slot or external I / O connector. By not having these extra peripherals the overall weight is reduced to increase its portability. This was done because the primary user of typical user only needs a hard rive to save files, create documents, read email, and surf the web. If the need does arise to add on a cdrom drive or other peripheral this can easily be accomplished by accessing the associated port at the rear of the unit or plug-in for the external drive or peripheral to operate. There is a downside to this and that is that because of this you will have to tot around the extra peripherals in your bag if you want to use them.

Most of the machines have both a modem and Ethernet capabilities built into the units for networking purposes. Some units such as the Panasonic model that I demonstrated on had a wireless network connection which would even increase the portability of this type of device to be used in outdoor locations for example where power is not available. Bottom line these ultra portable laptops are the newest and fastest growing segment in the laptop market. As of currently they are consisting of 10 percent of the notebook sales.

With projections that are expected to double over the next couple years. I believe that these new machines are yet another step in the evolution of pc computing and technology. As time goes by these machines get faster, smaller, portable, and less expensive. Though the price currently for an ultra portable is in the range of $2,500 - $3,500 dollars. I expect that if these units do catch on more and more as expected that the price will decrease and thus will make these machines valuable tools in the workplace to conduct business in today's society.