Building a Better Laptop: 5 improvements the industry should make to stop the Apple juggernaut
1. Recycling programs for old laptops and peripheral devices
Best Buy recently
started a recycling program for a whole range of electronic devices, including
laptops and desktops. They completely scrap the devices and grind
them down to recover the metals and plastics. Its sounds like a great program on the surface, but I think that Best
Buy could do more. In the actual Best Buy promotional video, they show a nearly new hard drive having the data wiped just before they grind
it into scrap. It seems like a waste of a good hard drive to me. Why not wipe
the drive and donate the computer to a charitable organization like Computers With Causes?
2.
Upgrade-able Laptop
If your cooling fan breaks in your laptop, it’s so expensive to
have it repaired that you might as well buy a new laptop. A cooling fan should be a twenty dollar fix. I know from personal
experience that repairing a laptop is a complicated and very labor intensive process.
Apple laptops are widely considered less vulnerable to viruses and hardware malfunctions
than many other popular brands. That longevity comes with a significantly more expensive
sticker price, but a lot of people don’t mind paying extra for a better
machine. I think the rest of the industry could compete by filling a niche that
Apple ignores. In the long, long ago days of desktop computer superiority and
Wolfenstein 3D, a man armed with a screwdriver was the master of his own machine.
3. High Capacity
Solid State Drive
I bought myself a Kindle Fire for Christmas this
year. My only complaint is the measly 8 gigs of storage space with no option
for an upgrade. A touch screen optimized version of Grand Theft Auto took up a
gig by itself. I filled my Kindle to capacity in less than a week. If
Amazon had added an SD slot, I could have spent another 50$ and stuck a 64GB
memory card in that bad boy. With a 199$ price tag, Amazon was able to severely undercut Apple's iPad. I think Amazon could have stolen half of the tablet market overnight if they had included additional memory options with the Fire.
4. Touch Screen
My laptop doesn’t have a touch screen and my tablet doesn’t have a
keyboard. And neither has the option to upgrade. Why can’t I have both? It
would be like mashing together a carrot cake and a chocolate cake and eating
them at the same time. More is usually better.
5. Free Programs Included Standard
The last laptop I bought included 30 days of Microsoft Office. 30 days!? That
means if I don’t shell out another 150$ after 30 days, my laptop won’t even
have the same capability as my grandpa’s old typewriter in the attic. I know
Windows can do better. I want Office to be free again. I think photo editing
software should be included standard. And I want more games too. And where is the Windows equivalent
to Apple’s Garage Band? The only useful program Windows does include for free these days is Movie Maker, and it’s not anywhere near as good as Apple’s iMovie. If
Windows and the PC world don’t get their act together soon, I'm afraid that Apple
could completely dominate the industry in ten years. And I don’t have 2,000$ to spend on a Macbook Pro.
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