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For mobile professionals, the ideal computer is probably an 'ultraportable' laptop -- a device suitable for carrying day in, day out, in a briefcase or backpack. Obviously it needs to be lightweight and relatively compact, but at the same time it should be robust enough to cope with the rough-and-tumble of life outside the office. It also needs to pack a specification that allows real work to be done -- not just content consumption -- without running out of battery life before the working day is over.
And increasingly, ultraportable laptops need to look the part in whatever out-of-office spaces itinerant workers might find themselves in. After all, who wants to be seen tapping away on a dull-looking 'corporate' device on a train or in a hotel lobby?
That's quite a challenge for engineers and industrial designers, which is why debate is often fierce over which ultraportable laptop is the 'best'. As ever, the answer depends on exactly what the user wants to do with the device, and therefore which combination of features is most important.
"It's really dealing with this new way of working," Chad Paris, HP's Industrial Design Manager, told ZDNet recently. "No longer are our customers trapped in cubicles all day -- they're working in coffee shops and at home, while office environments are becoming more open. A lot of our features and designs try to take these new environments into account."
What is an ultraportable laptop?
Although Intel attempted to 'own' the ultraportable space with its trademarked Ultrabook[1] concept back in 2012, the concept is now somewhat less tightly defined. For example, Gartner currently typifies ultraportables as devices with displays ranging between 7 and 13.9 inches and weighing less than 1.6kg (3lbs), but other