By KELSEY HEELEY
Computer technology has advanced rapidly over the past 20 years, from the desk top monitor and tower computer to laptops.
Victor Dinh, computer supervisor at Best Buy who grew up with either a high performance computer or a portable computer, said that computers nowadays have found the sweet spot.
“In my generation, you had your conventional laptops which were the 15.6 inch that would give you your best bang for your buck, but the netbooks were much more portable around the 10-inch range.” However, he said netbooks were of limited use because of their processing power due to a single core processor.
A netbook usually only had two or three gigs of RAM (random access memory) Dinh said, while the conventional laptops had plenty of extra RAM but weighed a lot and were too heavy to carry. So, the laptops that are sold today meet in the middle.
With technology innovations, companies that construct laptops are able to make smaller, more portable laptops without sacrificing good performance or battery life.
However, Dinh said newer laptops are required to reach a certain benchmark. They’re supposed to be under a certain weight, under a particular thickness and be able to start up in a certain amount of time. Dinh said these new laptops are also a little more costly.
Amanda Whaley, a WalterFedy administrative assistant, thinks otherwise.
“I type for a living. I can get a PC that is a lot more powerful and a lot less expensive than a laptop. You’re constrained by battery life and, depending on how much you need open to get your task done, that can wear it out and it will not only slow it down but it will chew on your power faster. I also find that the screen sizes are kind of small.”
Whaley said laptops are great if you need to be portable at all times,
“Portability is absolutely a hands down sell, but for me, for not being a huge laptop user, the portability is the only feature that sells it.”
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