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The Cheap Laptop Revolution
Throughout the history of computing, there have been trade-offs. For years, desktop computing was priced just out of reach of the middle middle-class, only accessible by the upper middle and upper classes. As technology improved - more memory, faster processors, and more disk space - the prices stayed the same. Finally, the icicle of desktop prices began melting, slowly thawing with a few drips at first but eventually turning into a roaring river.
Can you remember the early laptops? Besides being clunky and heavy (in retrospect, though at the time they were state of the art), they were expensive, and even people in the upper middle class could not afford them. Like so many things, instead of getting cheaper, the quality just improved dramatically year after year. For the same money, the laptops were speeding up and becoming more user friendly. The problem was that the laptops were still out of reach for most household budgets.
As a stand-in for mobile technology while waiting for the laptops to come, hand held devices such as Palm Pilots and Blackberries have held the consumer lions at bay while they wait to devour the latest greatest technologies. With cheap laptops costing no more than those hand held devices, it is easy to see that there could be another laptop growth spurt.
The consumer will have more freedom than ever to have full computing power away from the desk. Whether the employee is working at a home office, or in the local park, or on the top of a mountain 500 miles away, the capability is there for an affordable portable computer solution. So many more people will have connectivity, allowing the world to be more flexible and in touch.
The impact on society probably will not be fully understood for years to come, but the revolution of the cheap laptop will have the same magnitude of impact that such technologies of the past - televisions, mainframe computers of the 1960's, and cell phones - have had on society.
This will change how businesses operate, especially the more low tech shops that have had little use for technology in the past. The employee in the field who has relied on phone calls to relay information may soon have access to laptops that are as affordable as cell phones. It's not that much of a stretch to think of anybody in the service industry pulling out a laptop to record or retrieve data or to issue a billing statement.
Applications will have to think more about performance and scalability than ever before, especially as more people with more laptops use some of the social networking and E-commerce functionality available. This is a time for innovation. It's exciting. Making this technology affordable for everybody will change the landscape, long term, in ways we cannot predict. It is exciting to imagine the possibilities!
About the Author Matthew Kerridge is an expert in electronic products. If you want more information about laptops or are searching for a cheap laptop please visit http://www.ebuyer.com
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