MANILA, Philippines—Less is more in laptops these days. Not in features (although it’s often a necessary consequence), but in weight. The lighter the better, both for peace of mind and improved posture. But you won’t believe how ridiculously light today’s laptops are getting.
I’m from the generation that saw the birth of the first portable computers. I remember those that looked like suitcases whose tops came off to become keyboards, and whose monitors were the size of video door-answering devices. These weren’t even called laptops yet; not by a long shot. You could have used them on your lap of course, but they had the weight and consistency of a pile of bricks. With a tiny screen and the functionality of a calculator.
As technology marched on, we saw a radical reduction in size, but the weight was still the big deal-breaker for a lot of people. Or back-breaker, more like it. When the first optimistically named laptops emerged, they weren’t much lighter than the portables, and they ran hot, which made working with them on actual laps a pretty dicey proposition. Talk about hot and heavy.
Back then, manufacturers have little options: apart from shrinking the components, which was hard to do, loads were lightened by removing features and making them external options (which missed the point), or generally leaving off a lot of the good stuff people had come to expect from their desktop computers, like speed and storage, but the cuts never really flew with the market.
The fact that miniaturization meant more money also had something to do with it. Asking people to pay more for less was never really a sound business model. So the hobbled versions languished on the shelves. People made do with the clunky and the chunky, and resigned themselves to regular visits to the chiropractor.
It was much like this through the past couple of decades, where manufacturers struggled to find that sweet spot where weight and usability overlapped.
Ultra mobile
Fast forward to the 21st century.
Say hello to the UMPC, or the ultra mobile personal computer.
Also variously known as the ultraportable, ultralight, netbook or handtop, these tiny, capable little buggers weigh less than paperback books, aren’t much bigger, work nearly as well as their big brothers, and, surprise surprise, are dirt cheap (with one or two notable exceptions).
Asus started the ball rolling with the EEEPC, an admittedly ugly and ungainly name that stands for Easy to learn, Easy to work, Easy to play PC. But other than that, it was a beauty. It had a relatively small screen and keyboard (the biggest compromise for UMPCs; if you can get over it, these things are the bomb), no hard disk (it had a tiny 2 or 4 gigabyte solid state drive-think USB flash, only faster and more reliable), no CD or DVD drive, and limited memory.
But it works, believe it or not. And works well. Seemingly ignorant of their own limitations, these UMPCs run like a real computers. Within reason, they’re about as capable as anything out there, despite the shortcomings. Even more amazingly, we’ve realized we can live with less.
They can connect to virtually anything, wired or not-wired, and usually have a built-in memory slot for expanding storage (some even have hard drives). The battery life is respectable, and the processors are fast enough to run Windows XP or other less demanding operating systems like Linux. Stretch a bit and spring for a memory card and a cheap USB optical drive and you’re good to go. Literally.
Size fits all
Apart from usefulness, the size is the thing. These UMPCs can fit into a purse. (A slightly big one, yes, but it can.) They’re so small they can fit into the accessory pouch of a typical laptop bag. And the weight is negligible; it’s lighter than the power brick of your old laptop. No big deal bringing it anywhere, everywhere.
We haven’t even gotten to the best part—the price. Some of them cost about as much as a mid-range cell phone. You can get the low-end version of the Asus EEEPC for a little over 10k now if you know where to look.
How is this even possible?
We’ve reached the stage where the needed components are cheap and plentiful, and the tech has advanced enough to be really small. Someone only needed to put them all together. Make some judicious choices as to what you can leave off, and there you go: the UMPC.
Everyone’s gotten into the act now since Asus came out with the EEEPC: Hewlett-Packard’s 2133 Mini-Note is a glossy, slightly heavier, more expensive and fuller-featured glamour version of the UMPC, but it’s still in that sweet spot. So are entries from MSI, Astone, Redfox, Blue and Neo, in various permutations and combinations of price and features.
A notable exception is the entry from Apple, which, while still in the same functional category, is in an entirely different upper-class neighborhood altogether. The Macbook Air is the high end of the spectrum, and a questionable entry into the UMPC market. It fits the category well enough, save for the price: one Air can buy you a half-dozen Asus EEEPCs.
Even better, lighter, cheaper options are on the horizon. We ain’t seen nothing yet. In the best sense of the word, with UMPCs we have nowhere to go but down.
