You see them at trade shows, in seminars, in airports—sometimes even in your own office building. They pace a room’s perimeter and scan its walls, eyes perpetually roving from floor to midline. They sneak behind counters and crawl under tables and thrust their hands into dark and cobwebby corners. Who are these people? And what do they want?
They are the Laptop Power Nomads, and they are searching for the elusive wall outlet.
I count myself among them. I’ve often found myself in uncomfortable (and possibly unseemly) positions looking for juice when my laptop unexpectedly died on me. I recently went to a meeting with a division head of a major chip company, and the poor guy ended up on his hands and knees under his desk trying to find a place to plug in my laptop.
It’s embarrassing, is what it is. But maybe there’s a better way.
I’ve heard much debate within the industry lately about whether the market for “Mobile Internet Devices” (MIDs) is just wishful thinking on the part of certain chip vendors. After all, do people really need yet another gadget to lug around? (Especially a gadget that does something that’s already done by the laptop they’re lugging around?)
But having been a Laptop Power Nomad myself and witnessed its ugliness firsthand, I believe that there is indeed a market for MIDs. Today’s laptops are just not good enough—four-hour active and one-day standby battery life doesn’t cut it, especially when you’re travelling. Not to mention the fact that I’m bent over backwards from carrying the stupid heavy thing. These are problems that MIDs can solve, and I, for one, will be happy to buy yet another gadget if it means I’m not always hunting for power or in need of chiropractic attention. I suspect that many of my fellow Power Nomads feel the same way.
Give me a lightweight, Internet-ready device with a readable screen, 20 hours active and 100 hours of standby battery life, and I’ll be so very grateful. It’s not just a matter of convenience. It’s a matter of human dignity.
Jeff Bier is the president of Berkeley Design Technology, Inc. (www.BDTI.com), a benchmarking and consulting firm focusing on digital signal processing technology. Jennifer Eyre White of BDTI contributed to this article.
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