Scotch Tech: Does Size Matter?

Ever since the first ‘portable’ computer was introduced in 1981, the Osborne 1, with a monochrome screen size of only 5” diagonally, there has been a virtual arms race to see who could produce the laptop with the biggest & best screen.  It was not until 1981 that the first laptop had a VGA capable display and not until 2003 that screens reached 17” in diagonal size.

Today, you can buy laptops with a truly high definition display in terms of both resolution and color palette that rival the one in your home theater.  The laptop I am writing this post on sports a quite spiffy, if not power hungry and downright heavy, 17” display.  When I made this purchase decision a few years ago, I had the intention of taking it on the road with me, using it in the car and on the plane and being able to do everything I could do at home on the road.  And I can.  This is my primary computer.  I want to say I paid about $2,000 for this now obsolete and overpriced system.

Immediately after I bought this laptop, the paradigm of the portable systems arms race flip-flopped.  In 2007, the Netbook became all the rage.  Overnight it went from showing off how big your laptop screen was to how small and light it now was.  Led by the Asus Eee PC, this new class of sub-laptops became all the rage with tiny 7” screens!  Seven inch screen?  Come on, I can Photoshop my son onto the Eiffel Tower on my 17” Dell, tell me you’re going to edit video on this 7” screen?

The timing was right however - more and more tasks people performed were becoming “web-based” or “in the cloud.”  Where formerly one would run an e-mail client, Outlook or Thunderbird, people were now going to gmail.com.  Where one used to run an instant messaging client, they now posted on Facebook walls; rather than use Word or Excel, they used Google Docs.  The Desktop Application was giving way to NetApps.  The need for a powerful computer that could do things was quickly becoming unnecessary.  The vast majority of things you do on your computer are either done inside of a web browser, or quite probably, can be done inside of one.

Which leads us to today’s smart phones and tablets.  Last year I did something I hadn’t done in, well, years.  It was a significant step of faith - I took a vacation without my laptop.  All I had was my Motorola Droid and its little 3.75” screen and thumb-based Chiclet™ slider keyboard.  No Intel inside, no surround sound, no HD display.  Just my little Droid.  And you know what - not a single time did I find myself lacking - everything I needed to do, which mostly consisted of checking e-mail, logging cache finds at GeoCaching.com and looking up local restaurants for dinner - I was able to do it all on that little screen & kludgy keyboard on my Droid.  Smaller, yet more powerful, than that much-maligned 1981 Osborne 1 - which weighed in at 25 lbs.

So this begs the question, does size matter, any more?  For someone with reading glasses, I would suppose it does more than for the rest of us.  But can sitting in your La-Z-Boy with a 10” iPad or Motorola Xoom in your lap give you the same functionality as sitting at a desk with a 15” or 17” laptop?  Call me, finally, a believer, but I say: Yes it can.

I am not ready to proclaim the desktop or laptop computer dead.  There are still applications power users must run on true computing devices.  Adobe does have a version of Photoshop for both Android and iOS.  Both major tablet operating systems also have rudimentary video editing capabilities.  Google Docs is a powerful web-based Word & Excel replacement.  But none of these is as powerful as their desktop counterparts.  You can purchase a wireless bluetooth keyboard for much easier typing of your emails and documents, but as of now, only the Motorola Xoom has an HDMI output that permits you to see your web page, photo album or downloaded movie on a larger monitor - be it a 15” LCD in your office or 54” plasma in your home theater.

Thus the next question is whether to replace this aging laptop with a new $1500 model or with a $400 eMachine stationary desktop and $600 Motorola Xoom or iPad 2?  What would you do?  Do you have thoughts on the “smaller is better” revolution?  Post them in the comments.  Have a question about smart phones, tablets or laptops?  Either post it in the comments or send it to me as a topic for an upcoming column.

Side Note: In terms of size when it comes to memory or storage, you can never have too much. Always buy as much as you can possibly afford - you will almost always regret having bought too little.  Especially with non-expandable iOS devices, this is not a place to skimp.

Scotch Tech is a weekly technology blog written by Caleb Cohen, an IT professional and all-around geek.  If you have any Tech questions from which digital camera to buy to how to rid your computer of a virus, drop him a line at Caleb@Hail2Pitt.org and we’ll try to address it in an upcoming post.