I’m on the market for a new laptop. It’s long overdue – I’ve put this off for nearly a year, during which I’ve had ample time to read every tech blogger’s opinion on Core 2 Duo vs. Arrandale, how much RAM I’ll need in two years, and why the iPad is the greatest thing since Italian gelato. And the more opinions I read, the less relevant they become.
When I was in college, relevance meant recreational web surfing, constant music playback without losing power, elaborate lab reports and poster presentations, coding in MatLab, and lots and lots of email. Sufficient RAM, a decent processor, and something that could handle the stresses of four and a half years of engineering school with its sanity intact.
Fast forward to my life now. Relevance has taken on a whole new meaning, and the ways in which I create and consume are vastly different. Important now - email on my phone, web-based research and news, networking through LinkedIn and occasionally Facebook, syncing my Nike+ runs without much hassle, and carrying a laptop that doesn't weigh enough to leave red marks on my shoulder as I run through the airport. Sufficient RAM, a decent processor, and something that can handle the stresses of work-life balance (or in my case, work-life overdrive) for years to come.
The same features that were relevant then are relevant now, but the embodiment of those things is completely different. My custom-built desktop from 2004 is still humming along with Photoshop, HD video, and my music and photo collection. My professional Dell laptop can run several browser windows, SolidWorks, Outlook, and Pandion at the same time for hours. My iPhone takes care of my push email and quick Wikipedia checks.
My year of waiting has corresponded with a year of work experience in product development, and part of what I’ve learned is that there’s a big difference between tasks and functions. Functions are things that the device can do. Tasks are things that a user does with a device. It may seem trivial, but as any product designer worth their salt will tell you, those two concepts can be vastly different. My computer needs to function with iTunes, MS Office, Picasa, and a browser. My tasks, though, are doing research while sitting in airports, composing email from my back porch, and sharing blog posts, pictures, and video calls from hotel rooms across the world. Any computer on the market today would perform my needed functions. But for my computer to be relevant to my life, I need a very portable, writing-friendly laptop that plays nice with my iPhone.
My year-long quest to find the best computer was less about the laptop and more about me. Relevance isn’t interchangeable from person to person. Relevance isn’t detailed for you on someone else’s blog. And relevance doesn’t come from your best friend’s opinion – even if your best friend is a respected technologist and web dev (sorry Shan, it’ll likely be a Mac). Finding a computer that performs relevant functions is far less important than finding a computer that allows me to perform relevant tasks.
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When I was in college, relevance meant recreational web surfing, constant music playback without losing power, elaborate lab reports and poster presentations, coding in MatLab, and lots and lots of email. Sufficient RAM, a decent processor, and something that could handle the stresses of four and a half years of engineering school with its sanity intact.
Fast forward to my life now. Relevance has taken on a whole new meaning, and the ways in which I create and consume are vastly different. Important now - email on my phone, web-based research and news, networking through LinkedIn and occasionally Facebook, syncing my Nike+ runs without much hassle, and carrying a laptop that doesn't weigh enough to leave red marks on my shoulder as I run through the airport. Sufficient RAM, a decent processor, and something that can handle the stresses of work-life balance (or in my case, work-life overdrive) for years to come.
The same features that were relevant then are relevant now, but the embodiment of those things is completely different. My custom-built desktop from 2004 is still humming along with Photoshop, HD video, and my music and photo collection. My professional Dell laptop can run several browser windows, SolidWorks, Outlook, and Pandion at the same time for hours. My iPhone takes care of my push email and quick Wikipedia checks.
My year of waiting has corresponded with a year of work experience in product development, and part of what I’ve learned is that there’s a big difference between tasks and functions. Functions are things that the device can do. Tasks are things that a user does with a device. It may seem trivial, but as any product designer worth their salt will tell you, those two concepts can be vastly different. My computer needs to function with iTunes, MS Office, Picasa, and a browser. My tasks, though, are doing research while sitting in airports, composing email from my back porch, and sharing blog posts, pictures, and video calls from hotel rooms across the world. Any computer on the market today would perform my needed functions. But for my computer to be relevant to my life, I need a very portable, writing-friendly laptop that plays nice with my iPhone.
My year-long quest to find the best computer was less about the laptop and more about me. Relevance isn’t interchangeable from person to person. Relevance isn’t detailed for you on someone else’s blog. And relevance doesn’t come from your best friend’s opinion – even if your best friend is a respected technologist and web dev (sorry Shan, it’ll likely be a Mac). Finding a computer that performs relevant functions is far less important than finding a computer that allows me to perform relevant tasks.
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