Damaged. Lost. Stolen. Too big, too small. Insecure and unreliable. And just plain annoying. If you’re in IT, there’s just not much to like about laptops.
To be sure, portable computers have changed the way business operates, so much so that we literally cannot imagine a work life without them. That said, IT professionals, whether they’re dealing with accident-prone users or keeping the network secure, say laptops are nothing short of a support nightmare.
Some cope by outsourcing support altogether, others by rigidly adhering to standards and trying not to personally take the hate mail they receive from disgruntled end users. Either way, IT executives have a lot to say on the subject of laptops, nearly none of it good.
And that’s ironic, or maybe just tough luck, because sales of laptops in the business sector are growing 20% a quarter, while sales of desktop computers are declining sharply, according to IDC in Framingham, Mass. By this time next year, IDC says, shipments of business laptops will have surpassed that of desktops, and the gap will continue to widen. This year alone, laptop sales in the U.S. are expected to hit 31.7 million units.
IT has to support those 31.7 million machines, quickly and efficiently, whether the units are ensconced at a Starbucks or being dragged around remotest Africa, or even when the machine is run over by a train and sliced in half. See When bad things happen to good laptops on the next page for more horror stories.
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