Notebook Systems Should Be for Real Work, Real Play
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Free Download - A Gazillion Tweets, but What Makes the Cash Register Ring? By Andy Marken |
A Little Help – As powerful and versatile as notebook computers are it is a little frazzling and frustrating when the system goes dark after a few hours of working on a long flight. If that isn’t bad enough your hair becomes a mess and your brush is in the belly of the plane. Photo Source -- Paramount
“Our only hope is to build this man up. We gotta give him all the confidence we can.” – Rex Kramer (Robert Stack) – Airplane (1980)
Face it…you don’t fly anymore just for the fun of it.
Arrive two hours ahead of time. Fumbling full body search. Extra fee if you want to take a bag along (you know clothes). Extra fee for a drink of water. Extra fee for a snack. Quarter to use the restroom.
Shoehorned between a guy who drank his lunch and dude who forgot about physical hygiene. Behind a lady who wants to lie down the entire flight.
When we fly, we’d really like to be in control and say, “No dice, Chicago. I'm giving the orders and we're coming in. I guess the foot's on the other hand now, isn't it Kramer?”
Unfortunately the way agents, security and flight personnel push you around the trip that isn’t going to happen.
In the waiting area we watched a guy whip out his cute little Asus Eee and go thru his email. Cute but not really designed for a lot of “real” work.
Game On Dude
Sitting across the aisle we watched a young guy whip out some serious hardware, Alienware. Obviously he wanted to get some real work done.
Wrong…he came to play!
The graphics were awesome! The action was more so!!
We figured we could spend the time editing some family video on our new dual-core, 2GB RAM, reasonable weight notebook.
The work went reasonably fast but rendering took “a little horsepower” and time.
Three hours into the project the tray table had melted and the “save or else” battery warning light had the flight attendant stopping by to see what we wanted.
Gamer was still playing and the Eee user sitting two rows up was happily juggling his expense report.
As McCroskey said, “Looks like I picked the wrong week to quit sniffing glue.”
Our business system wasn’t cheap but right then it seemed like a poor compromise.
There are a lot of gamers but there are a lot more people who just want to work on their notebooks.
Figure 1 - More Than Games – High performance notebook computers are not just for gamers any more. People want to spend the time while flying working with their photos and music. They want to edit and author their video. Some of us even like to get a little work done. Source -- IDC
Why should the kid across the aisle have all the power?
CPU, GPU
Depending on whether you believe Intel or Nvidia (ok so you can throw AMD in the mix also) the secret isn’t the CPU alone but the best video power is generated by the GPU (Graphics Processor Unit) and its storage buffer.
Figure 2 - Complex Chips – Today’s advanced GPUs incorporate unique design features and advanced capabilities to relieve the CPU from the difficult task of background rendering. The specialized chips feature thousands uniquely designed cores to enhance the quality and performance of complex graphics. Source – Nvidia
To hear Intel tell the story they’ve embedded new capabilities in their CPUs that deliver the clock speeds and core-to-core communications that deliver the power and strength people like ourselves occasionally need when we’re using the system to render multi-layer video segments.
Oh yeah…the software has to be completely rewritten to be optimized for multi-core, multi-threading.
To which Nvidia responds, “The white zone is for immediate loading and unloading of passengers only. There is no stopping in a red zone.”
Ok!
We got the message loud and clear…they don’t agree as to what the system or the software should do.
Nvidia says that you really need a dedicated GPU and firmware. Then the video post production software needs to be designed use all of the GPU’s processors for video transcoding.
That’s all fine and dandy for the system at home. The kid had just souped up the system with a new $400 Nvidia card.
Figure 3 - Soft Side – Whether it is the specialized software that allows you to take advantage of the specialized GPU chips or third-party production software for content post production, today’s notebook computers deliver superior performance and capabilities to people who want everything at their fingertips…all the time. Source -- Nvidia
Made his games stream look like the best highdef TV you’ve seen.
Allowed the wife and daughter to fly through their photo and video editing.
Let us quickly cut the 10 commercials from the Dr. Who shows we wanted to watch on our trip.
Didn’t do much for our notebook because there was no slot available!
When we got home and looked at the notebook specs we found the GPU listed in the mouse type.
Buffer storage? 512K…we’ve got $10 USB drives with more memory than that!
Worker’s System
If you look at the numbers notebook system sales nearly equal desktop sales. Very few of the units sold are low end Eee or Apple Air systems.
They’re computers people want for all of their work – at the office, at home, on the road!
Today’s notebook user really wants it all. We want a system that will handle the information explosion.
Figure 5 - Everything, Everywhere – Today’s midrange and above laptop computers have the speed, power and capabilities to go beyond high performance number crunching and work processing. Today’s systems have become major repositories for all of our content – personal/family moments/memories, music, time shifted TV and even on-the-go communications. Illustration -- NYTimes
You know:
- 10 trillion person-to-person emails each year
- 220 billion digital camera photos
- Billions of hours of HD video, music
- Billions of document, ppt and other files
It doesn’t take a brain surgeon to see that people are now using their go-everywhere systems to do…everything.
That’s especially true of video whether it’s shot with a camera or a camphone.
Increasingly people are taking, post producing, sharing, storing more content.
Figure 6 - Drama Queen – The combination of economic, highdef cameras and camcorders, powerful notebook computers with lots of storage capacity and HD/AVCHD post production software puts a complete Hollywood studio in the hands of anyone who is ready to show their creativity. As a result – and the availability of online video outlets – more high quality video content is moving to the web. The entertainment shift has not gone unnoticed to Hollywood and broadcasters (and advertisers). Source -- eMarketer
That’s why 120GB drive in the notebook is overloaded and we carry a 120GB USB external HD to handle “the other stuff!”
We’ve got video. We use it. Even though some people look at it and say, “I haven't felt this awful since we saw that Ronald Reagan film.”
Of course working with all that content on the notebook during a flight helps raise the temperature 10 degrees thus forcing the airline to use more fuel to run the air conditioning.
Darn…bet they’ll start charging you a $10 fee for opening your notebook because you’re using more fuel than the obese person in the seat next to you!
We agree with McCroskey, “Looks like I picked the wrong week to quit amphetamines.”
Of course all of the power and storage capacity doesn’t really matter with today’s notebooks because since lithium ion batteries were pulled from the market. Sales were a little sluggish after a paltry few of them blew up.
The industry quickly modified the designs to solve the overheating and “poof” issue.
Power Solutions
Right now firms are aggressively trying to develop high-performance, long-life, economic portable computer power solutions that don’t weigh too much.
Figure 7 - Processor Support – Even as engineers work diligently to reduce power consumption of processes and minimize system overhead, it still requires a lot of battery power to keep portable systems moving forward without a long extension cord.
Problem is cobalt is in short supply.
And if you haven’t quite noticed it, almost everything your kids use today runs on batteries.
It’s not that the industry isn’t trying to solve these “minor” issues.
All they have to do is give us the:
- performance of an Alienware or Acer Ferrari notebook
- weight of a netbook
- graphics power of a GeForce card
- processing power of a quad-core CPU
- low power intelligence
- liquid cooling system
- dynamic load balancing and balanced architecture
- “reasonable” system price
We only want to take our system on the road with us.
That’s right… “I’ve been hearing that crap ever since I was at UCLA. I'm out there busting my buns every night. Tell your old man to drag Walton and Lanier up and down the court for 48 minutes.”
When will it happen?
Rumack simply replied, “I'm doing everything I can... and stop calling me Shirley.”
Until then we’re taking one more accessory with us on our business flights…a long extension cord.
Oh… “Excuse me doc, I got a plane to land.”
Steady Power – Today’s high power GPUs can make aircraft flight simulation extremely realistic. All it takes is a steady hand, lots of practice and a ton of battery power to land safely before the battery crashes! Photo Source -- Paramount
photos, illustrations can be obtained by contacting andy@markencom.com
Notebook Systems Should Be for Real Work Real Play - To learn more about this author, visit Andy Marken's Website.
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