Laptops have been getting better for years. Back around 2002-ish, you were delighted if your laptop could run Microsoft Word without slowing down and lasted over an hour away from mains power.
But nowadays we’re reaching the point where a laptop battery can last a full working day. Even the cheapest laptops can handle common business applications. You’re even slightly less likely to hurt your back when lugging one around.
Although they have got sleeker in recent times, many laptops are still chunky, uninspiring to work with and heavy to carry. Choosing one can be tricky, because often you’re faced with a series of compromises.
If you want lightness, you have to sacrifice power. If you want a keyboard you can type on with ease, you’re going to have to find a bit more space in your bag.
But now we’re faced with what some think is a fundamental change to the world of laptops. In 2012, manufacturers are racing to release ultrabooks. These super-thin laptops are designed to end those compromises.
The idea of an ultrabook is to give you all the power you need in a small, stylish shell. You should get enough battery power to work all day and a decent screen and keyboard so using your laptop for hours at a time isn’t a painful experience.
As more ultrabooks appear on the market, we’re starting to see how well they live up to what they promise.
Take the new Dell XPS 13 Ultrabook (pictured). It has garnered excellent reviews (four-and-a-half stars from PC Advisor, and PC Pro’s recommended status) and has all the key characteristics you’d expect from an ultrabook:
There’s one other thing that sets ultrabooks apart from more humdrum laptops. And that’s the price. They tend to be more expensive. In general, you’ll pay £900 or more.
Although that may seem steep compared with a bog-standard £500 laptop, when you get your hands on an ultrabook you can see where your money has gone. It takes a lot of engineering effort to fit so many high-spec components into such a small space.
As there’s no official definition of what constitutes an ultrabook, expect to see plenty in 2012 which don’t tick all these boxes. Indeed, over time, some of those ultrabook features should start trickling down into more standard laptops. And wouldn’t it be great if super-light, super-thin laptops became the norm, rather than the exception?
Every Friday afternoon we bring you a great business IT tip. From nuggets that make repetitive tasks easier to simple ways to banish business tech annoyances, we’re here to help.
If there’s something you’d like our help with, send an email to info@itdonut.co.uk or just leave a comment on this post. We’ll try and cover it in a future IT Donut tip.
If you shut your laptop lid right now, what happens? Depending on whether your laptop’s plugged into the mains or an external monitor, it may go to sleep, shut down, hibernate or do nothing at all.
But did you know you can set exactly what happens when you shut your laptop lid? If you’re using Windows Vista or Windows 7, it’s easy.
The settings for what happens when you shut your laptop lid can be found in your computer’s power options. To reach them:
The settings in the box that appears let you choose how your laptop should behave when you shut the lid.

Use the drop-down menus to choose what should happen. You can set different behaviours depending on whether your laptop is plugged into the mains or running on battery power.
Once you’ve chosen the settings you want, just click the Save changes button. That’s it – next time you shut your laptop lid, it’ll do what you told it to.
What are your laptop’s battery settings? Do you have any good battery-saving strategies? Leave a comment to let us know.

I run a small IT company and I make no apologies for making my customers keep their hardware up to date. I feel it makes a real difference to the productivity of their staff. Modern, reliable, stable hardware returns investment many times over. It’s all about keeping your staff able to do their jobs and not waiting around to get problems fixed.
About five years ago we took on a client with about 40 computers. It soon became apparent that their hardware was flagging and that their computers would need to be replaced.
We put together a replacement schedule and upgraded a couple of machines each month to make sure we didn’t blow the IT budget. As a smaller business this worked for our client, and gradually things improved.
Productivity improved and their people started to think differently about IT. But, of course, several years later we we’re about to run into the same marathon again. The customer wanted to upgrade to Microsoft Office 2010 and their new line of business application required a little more memory than the standard 2GB that most of their computers had.
Upgrade time again! The trouble was that this time we needed everyone to get up to speed quickly to fall in line with the new application. That worked out at a cost of about £10,000 for new computers.
Obviously we didn’t want to spend all that cash but knew that in order to maximise the investment in software we would need to do something. Up steps thin client computing.
Thin client computing means your software and applications are run on a server. Your PC only handles the screen, keyboard and mouse movements. Most of the computing power is centralised. In other words, the server does all the hard work so the client PC doesn’t need to be upgraded.
There are lots of business advantages to thin client computing:
So there you go. I see this as a win-win situation, and as a result I’m sure there will be a big push towards thin client computing over the next five years. In fact, Dell is so confident about this that at the start of this month they announced they had acquired Wyse, a PC manufacturer which specialises in thin client terminals.
Thin client is the perfect accompaniment to cloud computing. It’s a technology that has been around for years. However, the next two years are when it’ll really shine.
Lee Wrall is founder and MD of Everything Tech, an IT support and service provider based in Manchester
Today’s Friday tip explains how to increase your laptop battery life, so you can work away from a power point for longer.
If there’s an aspect of business IT you need help with, email info@itdonut.co.uk or comment on this post. We’ll try and cover it in a future IT Donut tip.
Laptop battery life has improved immensely since the days when a battery the size and weight of a couple of bags of sugar barely got you an hour of working time. But flat laptop battery syndrome is still a real problem, and always seems to occur at an awkward time.
These easy tips will help you increase your laptop battery life so you can keep working longer no matter whether you’re in a café, on the train or simply forgot to bring your laptop’s power cable to work.
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1. Tweak your power options. Assuming you use Windows, the easiest place to start is with the battery icon in your taskbar. Click this and you’ll usually see two or three power plans (see image).
The Power saver option offers settings to increase laptop battery life. For fine control over power settings, open your control panel and click Power Options.
2. Dim your laptop’s screen. The screen uses lots of power, so reducing brightness can really increase the laptop’s battery life.
You can usually change brightness using the keyboard – try holding the FUNCTION key and tapping the up and down arrows, or look for brightness symbols (like a big and small sun) on the top line of keys. You should also be able to find a brightness option in your power options (see item one).
3. Disconnect external devices. Anything plugged into your laptop is likely to draw extra power, so to increase battery life, only connect essential items. External hard drives without their own power supply and anything that charges from your laptop (like an iPhone) are particularly bad for battery life.
4. Don’t use CDs, DVDs or Blu-rays. It takes considerable power to spin a CD in your laptop, so avoid installing software from CD, watching DVDs or burning files to CD unless your laptop is plugged into the mains. Watching films is particularly bad, because these require a lot of processing power too – placing further strain on the battery.
5. Keep it cool. As your laptop heats up, it’ll turn the fan up to high in order to cool things down. This uses more power, reducing your battery life. Keep air vents clean and uncovered and try not to run too many programs at once, as this forces the processor to work faster, increasing its temperature.
Have you found any good ways to increase laptop battery life? Leave a comment to let us know.
Ok, I’ll admit it. I may have judged things a little early when I said I couldn’t quite see the point of tablet computers. They’re here to stay, without a doubt, and they’re being put to all kinds of interesting uses by all kinds of forward-looking businesses.
But there’s still a barrier to mass adoption of tablets, and that’s the price. The most popular, most lusted-after tablet computer by far is Apple’s iPad.
It starts at £399, but you’ll need to spend more like £500 if you want space for lots of files and apps (particularly if you need to store lots of video) or want to be able to get online when you’re not in a Wi-Fi hotspot.
Unless you were lucky enough to snag a dirt-cheap HP TouchPad last year, the iPad’s competitors aren’t much cheaper either. The Samsung Galaxy Tab is powerful enough to give the iPad a run for its money, but you’re still looking at spending at least £350. For a gadget which is still – if we’re being honest – a bit of a punt for a lot of companies, that’s a fair bit of cash to splash out.
Actually, there’s no shortage of cheap tablet computers on the market. The thing is, most of them either lack the power for serious use, or have simply had too many corners cut in an effort to keep the price tag down. Buy one for your business and you’d be virtually guaranteed disappointment. Hardly a fair trial for new technology in your company.
Things may now be changing, albeit slowly. There’s a relative newcomer that seems to have a powerful processing chip, lots of memory and a decent screen. It’ll almost certainly lack the hewn-from-granite feel of an iPad, but then at half the price you won’t be complaining too much.
This affordable-yet-powerful tablet computer is the Archos 80 G9. Together with its larger sibling, the Archos 101 G9, it represents impressive value on paper. Prices start at under £200, and for £250 you can get a tablet that looks like it’ll give far more expensive models a run for their money.
Spec-wise, it ticks all the important boxes:
Crucially, the Archos runs Google’s Android operating system. Tablets running Android have fast emerged as the main rival to Apple, ensuring you’ll be able to access a good range of applications and tools. It scores over other cheap tablets by being able to run the very latest version of Android (called, amusingly, Ice Cream Sandwich), which virtually guarantees it’ll last a good while.
As with all cheap tablet computers, the Archos will have its compromises. Reviews have suggested it feels a bit plasticky, and if you compare it side-by-side with an iPad, it’ll be obvious where the extra cash goes.
There’s an excellent chance this end of the market will grow significantly in the months to come, particularly if Amazon decides to release its impressive Kindle Fire in the UK. As the choice of cheap tablets go, better options may emerge.
But right now, it’s finally possible to trial a tablet computer without spending the same amount you’d spend on a decent desktop computer. Perhaps it’s worth considering for your company.
Have you bought a cheap tablet computer? Was it up to scratch or did it disappoint? Leave a comment to let us know.

An early version of the Raspberry Pi (Image: paz.ca on Flickr)
One of the hardest tasks facing small or independent businesses is choosing and using appropriate IT. These days technology is an essential part of almost any business, be it for social media, keeping accounts, sending invoices or simply phoning customers. But there’s such a bewildering choice of available tech that it’s hard to know what’s best.
Members of the younger generation, having grown up with technology as an integral part of their lives, speak a language that the pre-IT generation is still struggling to learn. The concern now, though, is that these users have become so familiar with the end product that they have forgotten what a computer really is.
They either don’t know or are not interested in how it is put together in the first place or what building blocks make up computer software.
Step forward Raspberry Pi, a cheap and fun new product that is, in effect, a simple computer you can build on yourself and use to learn the basics of computer coding.
Although its aim is to help people learn about computer coding and the nuts and bolts of computing, it’s perhaps worth reminding us all that what we have in front of us is simply a tool. Seeing a computer’s component parts may be a good way to demystify technology, helping us all to look beyond the shiny new screens and the sophisticated software and get back to first principles.
What is your business about? What would help to streamline its processes? What technology is available to help?
Perhaps by seeing this kernel of a computer for what it is, small businesses can gain the confidence to ask and look for technology that will work for them rather than thinking that somehow they have to find a way to fit the business to the available IT.
After all, a top of the range BMW may be fun to drive, look good and cost a fair bit to run, but perhaps for now all you need is a bike.
Last week’s launch of the new iPad was met with the excitable coverage that inevitably accompanies any Apple product announcement. But beneath the hype, does the new iPad herald wider business adoption of tablet computers?
In November 2011, a study of IT adoption trends among UK small and medium businesses (SMEs) found 37% were using tablet computers. Another 37% said they were planning to purchase them.
So there’s a definite enthusiasm for and move towards tablet computers like the new iPad. And perhaps the emergence of cheaper competitors will accelerate this trend.
The real beauty of tablet computers is their portability. Their smart design, integrating everything into one neat, light panel, makes them ideal for use on the move.
They’re particularly useful for visual tasks, like running presentations or referring to spreadsheets, websites or designs when visiting a client. Many tablets let you take notes using a stylus or digital pen. Some will even convert your handwriting into type.
Tablet computers tend to cost the same as, or a bit less than laptop computers. But can you really replace a laptop with a tablet? And would you want to?
Tablet are fun to use, at least initially. If you’re not used to using a fast, intuitive touch screen then your first days with a tablet can be really enjoyable.
However, when it comes to processing power, laptops have the edge. The latest iPad has heaps of power by tablet standards, but it won’t hold a candle to many laptops. Still, for everyday tasks that may not matter. You won’t notice a great deal of different when browsing the internet or using email.
If you’re considering buying a tablet, think carefully about how you plan to use it. Typing on a touch screen can be awkward and may even be harmful. At least one study has found tablet users have a higher potential for neck and shoulder discomfort.
“It’s best to avoid typing for any length of time directly on a tablet computer,” warns back pain therapist Diksha Chakravarti. “It’s better to use a peripheral keyboard and stand, and remember to take regular breaks to stretch.”
A real bonus for tablet users is that the battery life of these slate-type devices tends to be much better than that of laptops. Your typical tablet computer’s battery will last more than twice as long as your average laptop’s.
This is partly due to the lower power demands of the solid state storage tablets rely upon. They also have other components specifically designed to minimise power use.
One of the trade-offs for this efficiency is in storage space. Tablets are able to hold much less data than your average laptop. Using cloud-based storage can make up the shortfall.
Indeed, tablets and cloud computing are natural partners. Touch screens lend themselves well to navigating web-based applications and you can get a whole host of business tools designed specifically for tablets.
What’s more, because these tools are hosted online (in the cloud), they put less strain on your tablet’s own storage capacity and processing power and are generally more secure, because the data isn’t stored on your easily-stolen tablet.
If you currently rely on a laptop as your main computer, replacing it with a tablet is probably not a good idea. Although tablets are super-portable and enjoyable to use, you’ll miss your laptop’s power, storage capacity and keyboard.
However, as a mobile device to complement your main desktop or laptop computer, a tablet can be ideal. Used in combination with the right cloud-based applications, it can seriously increase your productivity.
This is a guest post from Integral IT, a Yorkshire IT support company.
If you were listening to Radio 4's Today Programme this morning you might have heard the BBC's technology correspondent Rory Cellan-Jones attempting to broadcast live from Barcelona over a state of the art 4G mobile phone connection.
There’s a big mobile technology conference happening in Barcelona at the moment and 4G is the 'next generation' mobile internet connection, promising speeds that'll eclipse our existing 3G phones. However, it wasn't this bleeding edge technology that stymied the BBC expert's attempts to broadcast live from Barcelona. It was bad design.
To accomplish the broadcast, Cellan-Jones needed to plug both a USB microphone and a 4G dongle into his Apple Mac computer. But – as he revealed on Twitter – the two plugs were too close together to connect them both at once. He ended up making the broadcast over a hotel’s wireless network.
Most of us will sympathise with this predicament – we’ve all probably left behind a crucial cord, charger or connector when travelling with technology, or struggled to squeeze one connector in when it's tight up against another. Embarrassingly, when I first started using a laptop I went through a phase of finding myself in the office with the charger at home (or vice-versa).
But does this highlight a crucial failing of technology? With so many different connectors and sizes of plug (especially when it comes to power cables and transformers, which all seem to be different), isn’t it time for better standardisation?
Listen to the segment for yourself on the BBC website. The 4G broadcast starts at around 1 hour 44 minutes in.
Has a forgotten charger, cable or connector ever left you in hot water?
Over the years, new types of computer have come and gone. Remember the ultra-mobile PC? Or the Amstrad E-m@iler? I wonder why Alan Sugar never mentions that on The Apprentice. And whatever happened to tablet computers with rotatable screens, built-in keyboards and a stylus for writing on the screen?
But every now and then, something comes along that does change things. And at the end of last year, a piece of news suggested that one new kind of computer is having a real impact – both at home and in the workplace.
Apple’s iPad reigns supreme in the UK tablet computer market. It accounts for almost three-quarters of all tablet sales. And perhaps most impressively, it turns out that Apple is selling more iPads than Dell is selling laptop computers.
Given that Dell is one of the world’s biggest computer manufacturers (the company claims it ships over 10,000 systems a day), that’s astonishing. And it strongly suggests that long-term, the iPad – plus other tablet computers, should anyone start buying them – could have a huge impact on what sort of computers we use and how we use them.
People are embracing the iPad enthusiastically, swapping full-spec laptops for the thin, light, super-easy-to-use Apple gadget. Who can blame them? No long waits while it starts up, no fiddly keys or buttons ... just a touchscreen anyone can use, plus thousands of apps.
It’s not a stretch to say that 2012 could see tablet computers establish themselves as the mobile computing tool of choice. Unless you need a full-size keyboard, it’s becoming more difficult to see what benefits are offered by traditional laptops for typical on-the-move tasks like checking email or reviewing documents.
Just ask the companies which sell netbooks, the small, cheap, low-powered laptops that just a few years ago were poised to reshape the PC industry. Things don’t look great for them: sales have slumped 40%. Blame is being laid at the door of the iPad.
The argument stands up: to many people, netbooks are just compromised laptops. If you can’t type comfortably on the keyboard and you have to squint to see the screen, a tablet computer might well be a better option.
What’s more, machines like the iPad are developing fast. Will the combination of impressive hardware and versatile apps persuade more people to swap their netbook or laptop for a tablet?
Laptop makers certainly are worried. You can tell, because the big players are rushing to release ultrabooks, another type of computer which is like a netbook but thinner, more powerful and much more expensive.
These sleek machines have enough punch to replace your desktop computer, but are designed to start instantly and be small enough to take anywhere. They look great, they perform well and – although they can be expensive – they’re finding a spot in the market.
But hold on – guess who makes the most successful ultrabook. Yep, that’s right: it’s Apple again, this time with the MacBook Air. This is the computer which pretty much defined what an ultrabook should be – and it certainly represents what other ultrabook manufacturers aspire to.
Put aside the ultrabook vs. netbooks vs. laptops vs. tablets debate. The real story might be Apple itself, and whether it can take a much bigger slice of the business IT market in 2012.
This is a guest post from Integral IT, a Yorkshire IT support company.

Does your business IT break down often? (Image: fauxto_digit on Flickr.)
Japanese electronics firm Casio found itself on the wrong end of a news story earlier this year when classified documents released on WikiLeaks linked the company's F-91W digital watch with terrorists.
Never mind that the watch is a popular, affordable model which has been a huge seller for years - apparently US officials still considered it a possible sign of terrorist links.
Perhaps keen to put this association behind it, the firm recently commissioned some research to find out just how big a role brand plays in business IT purchasing decisions.
We all know that certain brands have more power than others. For the real heavyweights, look not further than Interbrand's list of top brands.
But does that power translate to the workplace? When business owners are considering a new IT purchase, does the pull of the brand make them more likely to opt for Apple over a no-name PC from a local supplier?
According to the YouGov research Casio commissioned, the answer is a definite no. Just 1% of British workers surveyed reckoned brand was an important factor in choosing office technology.
When asked to give the most important factors, respondents rated reliability top and performance second.
But if the most important factor is reliability, how do you judge that? Aren't some brands perceived as more reliable than others?
Whether you're buying technology, toiletries or t-shirts, brand perception isn't just about the 'cool factor'. It's composed of all sorts of elements, unique to each specific brand.
Some brands are perceived as rock-solid reliable. Others as cheap and disposable. That's just the way it is.
Sure, there are lots of ways for business owners and IT managers to judge reliability. Their own experiences, product reviews and recommendations can all play a part. But survey results be damned: I find it hard to believe than brand isn't part of that mix at all.
Quite simply, some brands are perceived as being more reliable than others. And if you're investing in IT for your business, those perceptions may well influence your decisions.
Do you think some technology brands are more reliable than others? Does that affect your purchasing choices? Leave a comment and let us know.
Both the technology industry and UK start-ups are crucial in determining the health of the nation’s economy, but which holds the key to the economic recovery?
In October, technology experts and entrepreneurs were invited to fight it out in attempt to answer this question as part of the Dell Solutions Tour. It all happened in Twickenham, under the watchful eye of referee Charles Ward from Intellect.
Championing the cause for start-ups, entrepreneurs Dan Scarfe from Dot Net Solutions and Chris Book from Bardowl kicked off proceedings. They used some impressive figures to highlight the power of start-ups.
Half a million start-ups set up shop each year and 49 per cent of turnover comes from small companies. What’s more, research from the US has demonstrated that existing firms lose one million jobs per year whereas new firms are generating three million each year.
But technology champions Tristan Wilkinson from Intel and James Griffiths from Dell were quick to point out that technology is at the heart of the small business community. They said 99 per cent of start-ups are either building innovations on existing technology or enabling their business growth through efficient use of technology.
While hardware and structured technology sit firmly in the realm of large businesses with the resources needed to develop them, start-ups have the freedom and flexibility to innovate in the service and software space. But as Dan noted: “start-ups can scale fast and fail fast.”
Surely technology is an enabler for both small and large businesses alike? Tristan highlighted that we’re not even close to breaching the limits of technology.
After all, the power of technology is universal. The mobile device in your pocket has more computing power than was used to put a man on the moon. What’s more, technology empowers people to work on their own terms and on the things they’re most interested in.
In effect, argued James, it’s technology which enables today’s small businesses to exist. It’s also levelled the playing field between start-ups and larger companies - it’s never been easier to get your message out there and alongside the established corporate players.
Perhaps the most fitting conclusion came from referee Charles who noted that this is the classic ‘chicken versus egg’ argument.
Technology and start-ups go hand-in-hand. Remove technology and you limit start-ups. Remove start-ups and you limit the innovation that is so important for the economy. So, far from fighting it out in the ring, our panel experts fast realised a love-in was more in order.
This is a guest post from Dell Small & Medium Business.
I've just lost a brilliant, inspiring potential sales director. Here I am, a hot startup in the search space with tons of VC backing, an emerging market and offering a great salary and significant stock options and I lose to a huge American corporation.
Aren't big corporations supposed to be terrible to work for? Aren't they supposed to be nasty to their people and only attract second raters?
The corporation in question in this case is Apple. As an ardent Apple fan of four years (since the first MacBook Air) I can't even get bitter and twisted over this loss. I actually found a worthy competitor. And for the first time in my life I actually didn't mind coming second.
Steve, you did a brilliant job of being clever more than once. Everyone is allowed to be clever once, few achieve it. But Steve, you did it time after time after time. iMac, Air, iPod, iPhone, iPad.
How?
It's in the team. Steve was a talent magnet. And a generous one to boot. Some of his key people had stock options in the range of hundreds of millions of dollars. Many middle managers are millionaires.
Whilst he was clearly becoming sicker over that last year he was neatly handing over the responsibility of the business to trusted lieutenants – the likes of design genius Jonathan Ive and logistics genius Tim Cook.
What you have bequeathed us Steve is not only brilliant products (you have to try the iPhone's new artificially intelligent assistant, Siri, it’s incredible) but a world class example of how to run a business that is capable of repeating success through talent acquisition.
What was it Lyndon Johnson said? "If you recruit someone who is better than you then you conclusively prove you are better than they." So true.
Thanks Steve.
John Straw is an expert contributor to Marketing Donut and the founder and VP of Business Development of Linkdex.
1 “What made the Macintosh great was that the people working on it were musicians and poets and artists and zoologists and historians who also happened to be the best computer scientists in the world”
2 “Be a yardstick of quality. Some people aren't used to an environment where excellence is expected.”
3 It’s not the consumers’ job to know what they want.”
4 “Your time is limited, so don't waste it living someone else's life. Don't be trapped by dogma – which is living with the results of other people's thinking. Don't let the noise of other's opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most importantly, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary.”
5 “Things don’t have to change the world to be important.”
6 “Being the richest man in the cemetery doesn't matter to me. Going to bed at night saying ‘we've done something wonderful’, that's what matters to me.”
7 “We don’t do market research. We don’t hire consultants. We just want to make great products.”
8 “The most compelling reason for most people to buy a computer for the home will be to link it into a nationwide communications network. We're just in the beginning stages of what will be a truly remarkable breakthrough for most people – as remarkable as the telephone.” (speaking in 1985)
9 “Simple can be harder than complex. You have to work hard to get your thinking clean to make it simple, but it’s worth it in the end because once you get there, you can move mountains.”
10 “My model for business is The Beatles: They were four guys that kept each other's negative tendencies in check; they balanced each other. And the total was greater than the sum of the parts. Great things in business are not done by one person, they are done by a team of people.”
11 “What a computer is to me is the most remarkable tool that we have ever come up with. It's the equivalent of a bicycle for our minds.”
12 “I'm the only person I know that's lost a quarter of a billion dollars in one year. It's very character-building.”
13 “You can’t just ask the customers what they want and then try to give that to them. By the time you get it built, they’ll want something new.”
14 “Your work is going to fill a large part of your life, and the only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work. And the only way to do great work is to love what you do. If you haven't found it yet, keep looking. Don't settle. As with all matters of the heart, you'll know when you find it.”
15 “You have to trust in something — your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever. This approach has never let me down, and it has made all the difference in my life.”
16 “When you're a carpenter making a beautiful chest of drawers, you're not going to use a piece of plywood on the back, even though it faces the wall and nobody will ever see it. You'll know it's there, so you're going to use a beautiful piece of wood on the back. For you to sleep well at night, the aesthetic, the quality, has to be carried all the way through.”
17 “It’s really hard to design products by focus groups. A lot of times, people don't know what they want until you show it to them.”
18 “Innovation comes from people meeting up in the hallways or calling each other at 10:30 at night with a new idea, or because they realized something that shoots holes in how we've been thinking about a problem. It's ad hoc meetings of six people called by someone who thinks he has figured out the coolest new thing ever and who wants to know what other people think of his idea.”
19 "I don't think I've ever worked so hard on something, but working on Macintosh was the neatest experience of my life. Almost everyone who worked on it will say that. None of us wanted to release it at the end. It was as though we knew that once it was out of our hands, it wouldn't be ours anymore. When we finally presented it at the shareholders' meeting, everyone in the auditorium stood up and gave it a five-minute ovation. What was incredible to me was that I could see the Mac team in the first few rows. It was as though none of us could believe that we'd actually finished it. Everyone started crying.''
20 “Stay hungry, stay foolish.”

You can play solitaire on your iPad too... (Image: bark on Flickr.)
It’s impossible to deny that the iPad has been a real sales success. Apple sold 9.25m of them in the last quarter alone. It might only be a matter of time before iPads become another piece of equipment that people bring to work – just like their mobile phone.
But is there a place for the iPad in your company?
The iPad’s usefulness as a business tool has been questioned, not least on this very blog! But for many, it’s proving to be a revolutionary device. It’s easy to hold, easy to transport and easy to use.
It uses the same operating system and interface as the iPhone, and doesn’t bother with conventional input devices like a mouse or keyboard. You just tap, swipe and drag your fingers on the screen.
Part of the iPad’s success is certainly down to the wide availability of apps. You can download nearly 100,000 of them, covering every category from entertainment and media to productivity and business.
It’s these apps that really enable you to make productive use of an iPad in the workplace. Here are some specific scenarios where you might want to consider using an iPad:
Software like Apple’s Keynote lets you import and edit PowerPoint presentations, and you can even hook it up to a monitor or projector (if you don’t mind buying an adaptor from Apple).
There are also applications available that will let you do ‘virtual presentations’ – so you can show your presentation to people on the internet.
There’s a built-in calendar and address book, so it’s a good replacement for a paper planner – and the larger screen means it’s easier to read than your mobile phone.
You can also choose from a range of apps to manage your tasks, monitor projects, share files, read and post items in social networks and more.
You can even use it as a point-of-sale device (like a till). Other companies are using iPads to replace printed manuals, and some schools are using it in place of stacks of books.
There are lots of other ways the iPad can be used for business. Are you considering using one in your company as well? And if your company doesn’t own its own iPads, would you be happy for staff to bring in their own? Leave a comment and let us know.
Word has reached us (thanks PC Pro) that Dixons will slash the price of HP's TouchPad Tablet PCs from 6pm today. According to the company's Mark Webb, you'll be able to pick up the 16GB version of the tablet computer for £89. The larger 32GB version will cost £115.
The reason for the huge reduction? HP announced last week that it's pulling out of the tablet computer business, triggering a fire sale in the US that now looks like it'll be mirrored over here.
With these products previously retailing for £400 or more, and competitors like the iPad 2 similarly expensive, this does look like a real bargain. But even if you can get on the Dixons site to buy one (we're predicting enormous demand for the limited supply), is it worth it?
You'll be paying around £100 for a tablet PC with no real app 'ecosystem' (so there's not much you can install onto it). Still, you'll be able to browse websites, watch video and use maps. And that might be enough to persuade many people to part with the cash. We're seriously considering it.
But do be aware of the limitations if you're tempted. Going by this review you can expect sluggish performance compared to an iPad 2, limited (or non-existent) abilities to load and edit Microsoft Office documents, and a unit that's less-pleasing to hold than many of its competitors. There's another review here to help you make a snap decision.
Despite these drawbacks, a bargain HP TouchPad might still be worthy of consideration if you want to dip a toe in the world of tablet computing. HP is promising to provide support for the tablet, and expects customers to continue to receive updates and enhancements.
Don't expect the TouchPad to match an iPad, In fact, to be safe, see it as a web browser that can play video and show you maps, and not much else. But even with those relatively low expectations, this is one £100 tablet that could be a bit of a bargain.
You should be able to buy online from 6pm today at Dixons, PC World and Currys. Good luck!
This is a guest post from Integral IT, a Yorkshire IT support company.
Relatively speaking, computers are cheap these days. You can purchase powerful servers and computers for surprisingly little money.
The thing is, most computers are used for day-to-day jobs like accessing the internet and creating presentations. And that means even the very cheapest have much more power than you're ever likely to use.
The same goes for servers, only the effect is even more pronounced. Plenty of businesses spend £1,000+ on a server, then end up using it to 10% - 20% capacity. Bonkers.
So, there could be lots of spare computing power kicking around in your business. At first glance, it appears wasteful. But if you're about to buy even more new computer hardware, it seems crazy.
Virtualisation can help you use the spare capacity. It lets you take one computer, but split its resources (memory, disk space, processing power, etc) into several ‘virtual machines’.
Each virtual machine is like an individual computer. You can install software and use it as you wish.
When you create virtual machines, each one will have less computing capacity to call upon, because it has to share resources with other virtual machines. However, this doesn't matter if you're running everyday applications.
Here's an example. Say your main network server is running at 20% capacity. You can split it into four virtual machines, any of which can do that job - and there'll be a bit of spare capacity left, just in case.
If you're not trying to run really demanding software, virtualisation can be handy. For instance:
The obvious upside of virtualisation is lower costs - you get more done with one piece of kit.
Virtualisation isn't the easiest of technologies to get started with. Generally, you'll have to run some special software on your computer or server, so you can create virtual machines.
Common virtualisation software is provided by companies like VMWare and Citrix. However, as it can be tricky to get started with if you’re not technically minded, it's probably an idea to speak to an IT supplier.
Still, if you fancy trying virtualisation on your own computer, have a read of this guide on the Lifehacker website. Seeing it in action is a good way to get familiar with the concept, which can be a tricky one to grasp.

Google's first Chromebook (Image: karlnorling on Flickr)
If you keep your fingers on the pulse of technology (so to speak) then you've probably already heard about the Chromebook, Google's latest attempt to take over the world change how we think about computers.
A Chromebook (there will eventually be several models, from different manufacturers) looks just like a bog-standard netbook. It's basically a small, light-ish laptop that's thin and has a good battery life. So far, so-so.
The real difference comes when you turn the thing on. According to reports, it starts up superfast (we're talking under ten seconds) and the first thing you see is a web browser. With the Google homepage on, we assume.
Other software? There isn't any. All you have is your web browser. And - of course - your internet connection, which is about to become more important than ever. Because with the Chromebook, everything is stored online, in the cloud.
You access everything on the internet. Your files, your applications, the lot. Want to check your email? Forget about installing Microsoft Outlook; you'll need to log in to your Gmail account (or your preferred email service).
Need to work on a document? Google would prefer you to use Google Documents, though you could also use Microsoft's Office 365 beta.
If you've ever been confused about what cloud computing means, the Chromebook is a great illustration of it in action. Virtually everything you do with it, you'll do online.
You've probably spotted the flaw by now: what happens when you're not connected to the internet? Well, Google's own Chromebook page is keen to point out that not all is lost: 'many apps keep working, even in those rare moments when you're not connected'.
'Rare moments'? I wonder. Sure, some Chromebooks will have a built in 3G connection which means you don't need to be in a Wi-Fi hotspot to get online. But this costs extra - and as many netbook users will know, there are parts of the country where you'll struggle for any sort of signal at all, never mind a fast one.
So, with all your files stored online, all your programs accessed online, and your web browser the only way you have of doing anything, is this taking cloud computing a little too far - especially for business use?
Well, although more and more companies are relying on the cloud to provide various aspects of their IT, it's rare to find one confident enough to move everything to the cloud. But that, effectively, is what the Chromebook does.
There are big management advantages. As Google's co-founder Sergey Brin puts it: "The complexity of managing your computer is torturing users. It's a flawed model fundamentally. Chromebooks are a new model that doesn't put the burden of managing your computer on yourself."
He has a point. I'd dearly love to never see another stupid dialog box urging me to update and restart my computer now. But I'm not sure I'm ready to sacrifice the control I have over my own data just yet. And I suspect a lot of other businesses will be feeling the same.
But then maybe they don't have to. As Google explains, you can 'run your browser-based apps instantly, whether in the cloud or behind your firewall, as well as apps virtualised through technologies like Citrix'. In simple terms, that means you can hook a Chromebook up to servers that you own or operate (your own 'private cloud', in effect). Any more tempted?
Chromebooks should be available from Amazon and PC World soon. We can't find UK prices yet, but they'll start at $350 in the US.
What do you think of the Chromebook? Would you use it in your business?

Waste paper bins. Photo from orphanjones under Creative Commons.
This is a guest post from HP Business Answers. Check out our website, blog and Twitter feed. You can also join the HP Business Answers LinkedIn group for conversation, advice and expert tips.
Reducing how much paper your business uses is one of the easiest ways to go a bit greener, cut costs, and perhaps even improve your productivity.

This ink has definitely been wasted. (Image: buyalex under Creative Commons.)
This is a guest post from Huw Carrington, who heads up sales and customer service at Stinkyink.com.
If you own a printer, at some point you're likely to ask: "How much printing will my cartridge do?" Unfortunately there’s no simple answer.
It is not even a simple question for computer printer manufacturers to address. Differences in printing technology, resolution and colour production mean that a cartridge containing five millilitres of ink from one manufacturer will produce a different number of pages compared to one from another company. Confused yet?
After several manufacturers requested a method of measurement to address this confusion, the International Organisation for Standardisation (ISO) stepped in.
The obvious starting point for any printing standard is the document bring printed. So ISO first produced a standard document for performance measurements to be based on. The current version has the snappy name of ISO/IEC 24712:2007.
It's a five page document, consisting of four 'typical' documents, like a standard presentation document or letter, and one diagnostic page.
There's no standard for photo printing, so you will never (or at least should never) find a photo cartridge with an expected yield on.
Once this standard document was in place, standards could be created for the performance of printer cartridges. These standards are split into three individual areas, with the following codes:
With these standards established, it became possible to measure the 'print-till-dry' yield of cartridges with the same settings, same documents and same environment being used. In short: when it comes to printer cartridge lifespans, you can start comparing like with like.
The results from these standards are used to calculate how many pages a cartridge will print based on the paper having five per cent of its surface covered in ink.
You might have seen a figure quoted as being 'at five per cent page yield'. These standards are where that figure comes from. You see it on manufacturers’ cartridges, where they use this set of standards.
In reality, five per cent coverage on a normal text document only amounts to about a third of a page using a common font, like Arial in size 10. So, when a cartridge says you might get 1,000 printed pages, you're more likely to actually get a few hundred. Throw in a couple of images and you can quickly be getting through an ink cartridge three times as quickly as you expected.
But that's just the start. With a three-colour cartridge, the yield is based on a five per cent coverage of each colour in the cartridge - so the whole paper is covered with 15% of colour. If you have individual colour cartridges this doesn't make a huge difference as each will print as much as it can. However, if you’re using a three-colour cartridge (as many inkjets do) then the same size cartridge is trying to cover three times as much, and so can print, at best, a third as much.
In the world of printer cartridges, there's rarely a simple answer.

How not to clean your computer. (Image: jblyberg under Creative Commons.)
So, after the first of two super-long weekends, it feels a bit like Christmas - only with better weather. With only three working days this week, you might be wondering whether there's much point getting stuck in to anything. Some companies have even closed down for the duration.
If you've found yourself in an otherwise deserted office this Tuesday morning, maybe you can take advantage. It's an ideal opportunity to spring clean, spruce up and service your business computers. Here are our suggestions:
If all that sounds like too much work, perhaps you should take a break too - if you have the luxury of being able to do so. It's a long time until the next three day week...
Printers: Laser or inkjet, every business has one. They're essential and, to be fair, they behave themselves most of the time. So why, when you come to print something important, do you know full well that your printer is going to play up?
Here are ten ways your printer can ruin your day, plus one that seems unique to me.
However, my favourite error is this last one. Maybe it's just me. I send a print job to my new Epson printer, as shown here:

Does it print? Not exactly. Instead, I get this wonderful message:

I don't know why this happens, and haven't managed to fix it yet. Maybe I should try sending the print job to my mouse.
John Sollars is MD of Stinkyink.com
What are your humourous or frustrating printer problems?

Add a keyboard and perhaps your iPad will be more useful. (Photo: Stefan Evertz)
It's hard to deny that the iPad 2 is cool. And if you weren't one of the crazy enthusiastic punters who queued up last week to get one, demand for Apple's new gadget means that if you want one, you're probably in for a bit for of a wait.
Maybe we should all use that time to step back and ask: is the iPad actually much use for business? And, for that matter, do other tablet and slate-type devices like Motorola's Xoom or Samsung's Galaxy Tab really deserve a place in your company?
I don't own an iPad, nor any other kind of slate or tablet computer. A few years back, I used Toshiba's M200 Tablet PC as my main work computer, but although it was one of the best laptops I've ever had, I rarely used the tablet features (you could fold the screen over and use a pen to write on it).
Sure, there's a big difference between Microsoft's clunky attempt to adapt Windows for a tablet device - which was running on that computer - and Apple's super-slick interface. But ease-of-use alone is not enough to establish the iPad as a must-have business tool.
The business applications I've seen for the iPad so far have been limited. I've spotted people at events using them to sign people up to mailing lists. And I can see how they'd be useful for people who need access to information but are on their feet all day. iPads could replace clipboards in warehouses, dentists' surgeries and the like.
But what about the sort of repetitive business tasks you take care of every day? Writing letters and emails. Running accounting software. Accessing your customer relationship management system.
For these sorts of jobs, my distinctly un-glamorous netbook (a cheap, cut-down laptop) is far better than an iPad. Here's why:
In fact, the more I think about it, the more it seems that the only advantage that slate devices offer is that you can use them standing up. If there's a desk or space where I can sit and type at my netbook, it's the better option. Although, to be fair, I won't look as cool.
What's more, a netbook like mine is cheap. Figure £250 or so for a very capable netbook, compared to £399 for the entry level iPad.
Is it just me who can't see the point of the iPad for businesses? Do you use one in your company? Leave a comment and let me know.
Funny thing, nostalgia. It makes you yearn for things from the past, just because you can't have them any more - even though at the time you probably didn't think they were all that.
Of course, in the world of tech, it's only new stuff that's really cool. Just look at the rush to purchase iPad 2 today. Who wants a first generation iPad now?
So, as nostalgia is an underappreciated phenomenon in the world of business IT (and as it's Friday) I've decided to embrace it. Here are the top five pieces of business IT that I miss.

Built like the proverbial brick outhouse, these keyboards were first manufactured in the early 80s and I bet most of them are still going today. With a unique 'buckling spring' mechanism, the keys make a tactile click as you type. They're responsive and pleasing to use, and I don't think anybody's ever made a better keyboard.
Heavy enough to crush a substandard desk, solid enough to serve as a battering ram and noisy enough to disrupt a quiet office? Every keyboard should be like this. And, believe it or not, you can buy this keyboard today. IBM sold the manufacturing tools to another company - which still produces them. What other business tech has lasted over 25 years?

These seem to have disappeared from our desks with surprising speed. Yet it's only a few years ago that optical mice - with their fancy light on the bottom - were expensive luxuries that needed special mouse pads to work properly.
I miss the 'rolling over rubbers bands' effect that occurred if you didn't clean your mouse often enough. And I miss the strange pleasure that came from cleaning out the rollers. Where did all that fluff come from? But most of all, I miss being able to steal the ball out of a colleague's mouse and feign ignorance when they discover it missing.

The fitness of your average IT worker must have dropped considerably since most people ditched bulky CRT monitors for flat screens. In a former job I once had to shift some 21" monitors. Those things weigh a ton.
But the thing about them was that you really knew when you had a good monitor. You paid a small fortune for it and lifting it into position frequently took two or three people. Nowadays, you can pick up good, big monitors for pennies.

I loved the stacatto noise they made, the ink ribbons that produced prints that got gradually fainter and fainter, and the continuous feed paper that was perfect for printing reams of figures that then had to be trawled and annotated by hand.
I guess the equivalent today is office laser printers which run out of paper, then spit out pages of queued print jobs when someone actually bothers to make the trip to the stationery cupboard.

Windows 3.1 is the first graphical operating system I can remember using. And while it certainly had its limitations, it was also pretty stable, relatively easy to use - and for many of us, was the first time we were able to swap cumbersome keyboard commands for a mouse and clicks.
Sure, it wasn't the first ever graphical user interface (GUI). But it was the first I used. And that's why it's on this list. (If you want to remind yourself just how Windows 3.1 felt and functioned, here it is recreated in your web browser. Some people have too much time on their hands.)
So, there are the five bits of workhorse business IT that I miss. What are yours? We'll give extra points for particularly esoteric or geeky suggestions.
(Images are all from Flickr users under Creative Commons. Keyboard / jhritz. Mouse ball / L. Marie. Monitor / Collin Anderson. Printer / blakespot. Windows 3.1 / Roger Schultz.)

The rise of the internet has created a repository of knowledge and services that are accessible from nearly anywhere in the world.
Of course, none of this comes free. So, almost any service you use online will require you to surrender some personal information. The companies who use this data have to protect it at every stage.
If your business stores and processes sensitive data (and let's face it: whether it's your accounts or customer database, most do), are you sure you know all the places it ends up?
Did you know that printers and scanners store information sent to them?
They do this for performance reasons; to minimise the amount of data being transferred or to reduce the time it takes to get ready to print.
For instance, imagine you send a print request for ten copies of a document. Your printer will save the document once, then print the additional copies from this memory. This means it doesn't have to receive and process ten individual files.
The same happens when you scan, fax, or utilise pretty much any feature on offer from your reliable office all-in-one device. When you tally the amount of print requests you send, the information at risk can soon mount up.
Take a quick guesstimate: how many customer-related documents are sent through your printer each day?
If you’re thinking of a number higher than zero, this issue should be of concern to you whenever you are looking to replace your office hardware.
Disposing of equipment responsibly, paying particular attention to any memory built into it, will protect you from future problems. At Stinkyink.com we crush the memory chips of any printer we discard.
It’s the only way we can guarantee that the 100,000 people on our customer database are fully protected, to the same level we ourselves wish to be.
Did you know your printer memory could hold hidden secrets? Do you know of anyone who has struggled with security issues like this? Are you concerned about misuse of your own information?
John Sollars is MD of Stinkyink.com
(Image of a printer graveyard from Flickr user wonderferret under a Creative Commons Attribution licence.)
The difficult economy and resulting emphasis on cost savings has drawn attention to managed print services (MPS). But do the benefits really outweigh the loss of control your company would experience? John Sollars from Stinkyink.com explains.
MPS typically refers to outsourcing the performance and maintenance of your company's printers. There are three main aspects:
There are a number of benefits to using MPS:
Sersious problems with MPS providers are now relatively rare, as tough competition has helped iron out implementation and performance problems, creating a very reliable system. However, it's still larger companies that will benefit most from MPS - even though many providers have options for lower quantity users, the benefits low-usage companies will enjoy are limited.
MPS contracts can also lead to complications, so I would encourage you to check your MPS contract with great care. Ridiculous as it sounds, some will even prohibit your employees from changing cartridges in printers. Having to wait for an approved ‘engineer’ to come and replace a toner cartridge will lead to completely unneccesary delays!
Also be wary of single manufacturer agreements. Linking you to one brand of printer for the duration of the contract means there's a chance you will lose out on new functions if your manufacturer is slow to react to market innovations. However, in such a competitive environment most manufacturers are on the ball, so the risk of this occurring is limited.
Does your company employ MPS? Have you heard any good or bad stories? Add your comment here.
John Sollars is MD of Stinkyink.com