Mobile Computing: Pass The Portable
Roger Gann explains why the latest incarnations of the notebook PC are winning the race for the hearts and minds of corporate users
Choosing between a desktop and notebook PC used to be so simple ? you bought desktop PCs for office-bound staff and notebooks for those on the road. Notebooks were dear, under-powered, and riddled with compromise: the screens were too small and of poor resolution, storage was inadequate, and few machines delivered much, if any, multimedia. It wasn?t a difficult choice.
An even more serious consideration for corporate buyers was the long delay between the introduction of desktop processors from Intel and their regular and affordable appearance in portable models. No one wanted to wait six to eight months for desktop-class performance in a mobile machine.
But not any more. Notebook technology has caught up so that the current state-of-the-art machine really does offer desktop functionality. While there are still some differences, today?s high-end notebooks come with specifications most users would love to have on their desktop: 166MHz Pentium MMX processors, 3Gb hard drives, 13.3in TFT displays, 12-speed CD-Rom drives, PCI docking stations, full-screen Mpeg video and telephony-capable modems. You can pay well over #4,000 for a notebook like this, but even the value notebooks come with 120MHz Pentiums, 1Gb hard disks and ample expansion possibilities.
The historic lead in technology of desktops over portables ? which has seen a 200MHz desktop processor launched on the same day as a 166MHz notebook chip ? is starting to shrink. In February, the world?s leading microprocessor manufacturer introduced three devices, integrated into the one unit, which ought to expedite and enhance the design of mainstream notebooks.
The Intel Mobile Module card contains an MMX Pentium chip, secondary cache and the recently announced 430TX PCI, and plugs into a mobile motherboard. Such a device means that notebook vendors no longer need to worry about processor-specific circuitry, thermal management or electromagnetic interference.
The Intel 430TX PCI set is designed for both portables and desktops, and is the first mobile chip set to support concurrent PCI (which lessens processor latencies for greater multimedia performance), ultra DMA (which doubles EIDE transfer rates), universal serial bus (a high-speed interface for peripheral devices) and the memory technology known as synchronous DRam.
Intel expects mobile TX machines to deliver greater power management, desktop-like performance and a natural upgrade path to future processors. Performance improvements are secondary to Intel, however ? the dual-chip design of the TX, central to the Intel Mobile Module, will simplify both the design and manufacturing of notebook PCs.
The wallet-size card includes a 150 or 166MHz MMX Pentium, the secondary cache, a system clock and the ?North Bridge? of the 430TX chipset. A 3.3V PCI bus and a 3.3V, 64-bit memory bus then connects this module to the motherboard, which houses the ?South Bridge? components.
This setup will allow vendors to use a common motherboard for several processors. Therefore a design to hold the new MMX Pentium module this summer can be reused for Deschutes modules, Intel?s first P6 mobile chip, next year. This major step, as well as other developments, may hasten the market arrival of new portable technologies.
But, despite these advances, desktops aren?t going to disappear anytime soon. Desktop machines are still more powerful ? at present the fastest mobile Pentium available runs at 166MHz, desktop machines now run at 233MHz ? and for the equivalent power are usually cheaper. And if you want Pentium Pro or Pentium II, well you?ll just have to whistle.
Notebook functionality and flexibility has also been much improved by the gradual adoption of modular construction. This approach benefits manufacturer and user alike. Many high-end notebooks provide one or more component bays that let you swap in and out a CD-Rom drive, floppy drive, and second battery pack but notebooks like Compaq?s Armada 4100 and Digital?s HiNote Ultra II take mix-and-match design a step further with their multimedia-equipped docking stations.
Another factor in the rise of the notebook has been the inexorable increase in screen sizes. Most high-end notebooks now sport gorgeous 13.3in TFT displays capable of delivering XGA resolutions ? these are functional equivalents of today?s 15in desktop displays. Now, Digital has announced the HiNote Ultra 2000 family of premium notebooks, of which the GTX 5155M comes with a 14.1in TFT display ? the first notebook to do so.
Nevertheless, while Intel?s kit is closing the gap between desktop and mobile performance, and enhancing mobile designs as a whole, notebooks? price premium is still holding back corporate buyers.
But there is an arguable economic case for buying notebooks, despite this premium. A 1996 Gartner Group study found that more expensive notebooks can actually pay for themselves in a matter of weeks. This saving over desktops occurs, Gartner says, by letting managers and other pro- fessionals operate effectively outside of the typical office environment and conventional office hours. Corporations now seem to be saying ?we have a large quantity of professionals who can be more efficient with a notebook than a desktop machine?.
The portable manufacturing community has smelled the coffee and is seizing the opportunity. The sales figures reveal the increasing corporate interest in notebooks: sales are rising and IDC estimates the number of portables sold in the US rose by 34 per cent in 1996 to 4.8 million units. By the year 2000, notebooks will account for 40 per cent of all PCs sold to business.
New notebook features enable a shift in working style driven by the desire to have computing power and access to information anywhere, anytime ? almost a lifestyle choice. In the US, some corporations have set up loan pools of portables for users who need computing power out of the office.
The more traditional role for notebooks as field sales devices, however, still remains strong. Martin Clarke, sales and marketing director of Lapland UK, confirms the benefits of notebooks as a crucial tool for field sales staff. ?With a properly managed hot-desking system, with sales staff coming in, say, just one day a week, you obviously only need 20 per cent of the office space to house them,? he says.
According to a recent report by UK management consultancy Pagoda Associates, called Managing the Mobile Workforce, the move towards notebooks and away from desktop PCs is part of a growing trend of more flexible working practices. No less than half of the UK?s permanent workforce work in an office environment, occupying 500 million square feet of office space.
However, the Pagoda study also reveals that as much 80 per cent of the average office worker?s tasks are performed alone at a desk, and thus could be performed anywhere.
While it would cost as much as #4,000 per head per annum to equip a worker to work away from the office, it would save up to #10,000 in reduced premises costs. There are further gains, mainly in productivity, caused by reduced travel time and the absence of ?non-work? interruptions.
As many as two-thirds of staff have the potential to work more flexibly though some prefer the interaction of the office to the isolation of working alone. Eventually, Pagoda predicts that the role of corporate HQs will be to function as corporate identity symbols and for social interaction.
Murray McKerlie, product marketing manager at Toshiba, agrees that the current trend is very much towards mobility. ?Notebooks form as much as 50 per cent of all PC purchases among the larger corporate customers,? he says.
Sales of docking stations and port replicators are another trend indicator. McKerlie says four out of 10 notebooks are sold with these desktop accessories. ?However, they?re not a perfect replacement for the desktop, as they still cost on average about 50 per cent more,? he confesses. ?In some areas of work, notebooks will never replace desktops.?
Perhaps the biggest cloud on the notebook horizon concerns Windows NT 4, which is at present notebook-hostile. Although Windows 95 is particularly well suited to the needs of mobile computing, with excellent power management and simple PC card configuration and hot swapping, its take-up in the desktop arena by corporates has been faltering to say the least.
Most large corporates have taken the decision to leap-frog Windows 95 entirely when transitioning to a 32-bit operating system, moving instead directly to Windows NT 4 to take advantage of its superior manageability, security, stability and scalability. But with remote access and distributed environments becoming more important, the need to extend mission-critical Windows NT-based applications and networks to the mobile user has become crucial.
The bad news is that Windows NT 4 lacks almost all the mobile-friendly features found in Windows 95. One millstone is the extensive hardware resources demanded by the heavy-duty operating system ? nothing less than a 150MHz Pentium with 32Mb of fast Ram will do.
Microsoft itself recommends that W95 and not Windows NT be used as the mobile platform of choice if you need features such as plug- and-play or power management. As a result, many notebook vendors specifically do not offer support for Windows NT 4.
Although Windows NT 4 may at first glance look like a clone of Windows 95, the truth is very different. It lacks several of the key features that make W95 the operating system of choice for notebook users, such as:
J Plug-and-play: a major gap in NT 4?s notebook armoury. There is a workaround that can ease the pain of using a docking station ? multiple hardware profiles, where you have a separate hardware profile for your docked and undocked notebook.
J Power management ? perhaps a more serious omission; indeed in most cases you have to specifically disable any hardware-based power management in order to use Windows NT 4 reliably. As a result, batteries tend to have miserably short lives when running it.
J Hot-swappable PC cards ? there is a PC card option on Control Panel, but you can?t insert or remove cards while the laptop is running ? it has to be powered down first.
J Infra-red support.
These omissions are serious enough to inhibit the widespread adoption of notebooks with pre-installed operating systems, and this will continual to be the case until Windows NT 5 is released in 1998.
For those users who can?t wait until then, alternative third-party solutions are available from Phoenix Technologies and PC card specialist Systemsoft. Both offer a suite of utilities that effectively fill in some of the gaps and make mobile computing with Windows NT 4 a realistic option.
When you buy notebooks from Digital or Dell with Windows NT 4 pre-installed, they come with versions of this software which confer power management and PC card hot- swapping capabilities.