Should You Equip the PMO with Netbooks?
Posted by Brad EgelandLet me answer that right now…NO. However, are they bad? Again, NO. Now that I’ve gotten my feelings off my chest on this, let’s dive in a little further.
Don’t get me wrong, I wholeheartedly approve of netbooks. I’ve purchased two of them in the past four months. They’re great in the right situations and some of those can be PM-related.
First, I feel that there are some misperceptions with netbooks that most people have and need to overcome – I was included in this group at one time:
- The screen is too small. It’s not. It’s small, but unless you’re working heavily on graphics, the size is a plus rather than a minus. I’ve grown tired of the large, widescreen laptops. I’m much happier on my 13” Macbook than I ever was on my cumbersome 15.4” Gateway and I’ve used one of our home netbooks to surf, write a document, etc. and had no problems at all with it’s screen size. Granted, it’s of the 10” variety, not one of the 8” netbooks.
- The CD/DVD drive is critical. I can’t tell you when I last used a CD/DVD drive unless it was to load a CD into iTunes (which I almost never use anyway). I purchase software online and download so I know it’s possible to live without those drives. But, if you must have one, you can purchase an external one and some of the models at Costco actually come with the external drive included. The CD/DVD drive is no longer a necessity…it’s a ‘nice-to-have’ and an ‘almost-never-used’ extra.
- The processing power won’t be there. I don’t see it. I bought two of the the Asus Eee PC netbook. It has the Intel Atom processor which operates at 1.60 GHz and the netbook comes with 1 Gb of DDR2 RAM. Now, they aren’t being used on Photoshop, but for high school and college work and for low-end photo editing, writing, some video editing, etc. the netbooks have done everything we’ve asked of them.
- They are more fragile than a regular notebook. Again, not true or at least I don’t see it. In fact, because they are smaller and easier to carry around, dropping them or hitting on something as you walk by is far less likely. My 15 yr old daughter has gone through two phones in that time period by her netbook doesn’t have a scratch on it and she takes it everywhere.
So at this point, I seem to be a netbook proponent. And I guess I am. However, is it a good idea to equip your entire PMO workforce with netbooks and send them out into the world? I’m not likely to agree with that.
I think it may be a decent concept to have some around for checking out by PMs for travel or if your company has that much money to spend, give each PM one to make traveling easier. But I do not think the netbook is ready to be someone’s only work machine. It’s a good add-on if you have the money to spend, but it’s not ready to be a primary machine. I wouldn’t equip my whole family with netbooks as a replacement for all laptops (and I’d NEVER give up my Macbook), so I know I would not condone making this standard fare for all of your PMO’s workforce.
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