It all depends on what you are using it for. Can my pocketpc do everything that my notebook does, no. But for a lot of people, a notebook could not effectively serve as a desktop replacement either for that matter. Obviously there are many things that a ppc can not handle or handle as efficiently as a full fledge computer, and there is a greater gap between a ppc and notebook then a notebook and a desktop, but it is all a matter of perspective. For a lot of people, it absolutely could meet there short term business travel needs i.e. take notes, word processing, email, scheduling, instant messaging.
IT’s one and only goal is to put chaos into order. Period. We do this by streamlining and implementing technologies and ideas but not in some willy nilly fashion. My boss once said our job is to make ourselves unemployed by making everything so streamlined and easy that one person can do everything. Now take your PDA idea and shove it into a well functioning environment that uses SMS, RIS or ghost, remote control for helpdesk and a host of other technologies and breaks that streamlined environment because some exec thought wow wouldn’t this be cool.
And there we have the crux of the IT mentality; that the company exists to provide justification for their services rather than that their services exist to support the company. Does your company sell 'order'? Of coure not; your company sells something else (services, products, education, etc.). So your IT goal takes no account of how what you do actually affects the real goal of your employer. All too often, IT people forget that their narrowly-defined goal only exists within the larger perspective of what the company is trying to achieve. Your goal shouldn't be to put chaos into order, it should be to balance order and chaos to support the overall goals of your company.
I notice you belittle some exec thinking 'wow, wouldn't this be cool', but what do you really know about his needs and how these devices might help his people do their jobs? For most IT people, the answer would be 'I know nothing about their jobs and needs, but it would be a big pain in the butt so I'm going to resist doing it, and I'll pretend he's stupid for wanting to, even though he makes 10 times my salary and is the one who must sit in front of the board of directors and account for the company's success or failure.' If it ever occured to you that this might be a legitimate need for his people and that it might make them more productive, and that it might translate to higher earnings for your employer, and that it might mean more job security, higher salaries and more IT people to help with the support tasks, then you'd be one of the exceptional few who ever did so.
So while I may not agree with every single word that Felix said, I'd say that he comes closer to hitting the mark about this writer than you do. Of course, none if this is directed at you personally, but your comments have hit a nerve. People who actually do the activity that is the business of their employer are getting sick and tired of having their own IT people create barriers to achieving the goals of the institution.
Now I'm not suggesting that there be no restrictions on computers in large companies, or that anyone be allowed to install anything they want on their computers, open the network to risk, or things like that. I am suggesting, though, that if the boss sees a need for PPCs to help out the people conducting the business of the company, then it should be IT's role to make it work.
OK, for me, there are five 'killer' apps and everything else is just noise:
1) Web : Most important
2) Phone : Critical but not most used
3) Email : Critical, used more than phone
4) Work : In my case a full-blown IDE, Office for other people
5) Games : 'nuff said
Only a phone can be a good phone. using a PDA with your ear to the screen is moronic (IMHO) that is what Bluetooth is for.
Only a laptop gets it done for me as far as work. I have yet to be able to write programs with a PDA although I would really love to be able to do that productively (key word here is productively) I suspect those who use Office or other business tools have similar opinions.
For everything else a PDA works just fine thank you.
[Yada yada yada complaining about my previous post.]
You want to know why I said what I said?
Money. Period. End of story. If you can’t get the fact that doing new and interesting things costs money to implement correctly then this conversation is over and it’s pointless to go on because you guys just don’t get it. You and Felix seem to miss one critical point when talking about this. My goal. Hell my mandate from the folks above is to save the company money. This is no longer the .COM boom anymore. I was there when money flowed like the Mississippi. When implementing a new tech was as easy as asking for it. Things have changed in the last few years and my mandate beyond simply creating an organized working environment for the user to do their business in is also to be frugal. Heck that is on this little card I have to carry in my wallet with our business goals. Save the company money. The fact isn’t lost on me that I’m the employee and if the business has a desire then by all means I will fulfill it when possible. But do you know how many various PDA like devices we have here? I count at least 18 systems ranging from cell phones to smartphones, to at least a dozen types of PDA’s. I had to stop the madness last fall with picking 4 models of PDA’s and 2 types of cellphones to support because right now last week I sent someone up to fix one of these Sony Erickson smart phones and he didn’t have the faintest clue as to fix the syncing because its just another one off device that people aren’t trained on. I ended up having to stop work on setting up a laptop for a user because of this madness. So you will excuse me if I see first hand how this impacts not only IT support but the business because the user couldn’t get his calendar info to sync with Notes. At the end of the day it’s about money. Chaos into order boils down further into spending the company’s money efficiently and frugally. But when every service call from an employee who has an issue that needs resolving that is time tracked, metricsed, and billed back to the BU and when the execs up above look at IT costs and bitch about it, adding new tech is not an option.
Half of our office is made up of people who could be termed execs. All think this is cool or that would be the greatest to have. And I would be more then happy to accommodate each and everyone’s request. Just give me the money, resources, software, and manpower to do it. And there’s the problem. When you mention money an exec tightens up tighter then a snare drum at the mention of handing over money. And herein is the crossroads of the issue. New tech vs cash flow.
Do you think I would be hanging out at pocketpcthoughts.com if I wasn’t a tech geek? I love new tech. I would love to implement it all over the office but again it comes back to the previous planning issues I mentioned in my previous post and $$$.
Finally let me ask you one quick question. If a user comes to me and says. Can I bring in my home laptop and hook it up to the network because it will make me more productive should I let them? If a user comes to me and asks me to install the CD burner and software that is their hardware in company owned hardware should I let them? If a user brings in their own software from home and says please install this because it will help me at my job should I let them? Now add another 30 to infinite more items to that list and support becomes not a nightmare but impossible. Standardization goes right out the window. Knowing how a desktop will function after a patch from using my ghost image becomes impossible because we’ve lost any type of standard in the office. You claim that I’m not thinking of my employer when I’ve made such statements in the past couple of posts. In fact that’s all I am thinking of. My employer, their money, their time, and their efficiency. Could we make them more efficient with new tech? In all likelihood sure, but only if it’s implemented in the correct fashion.
And I think Jason has prob had enough of the off topic posts so I'm done here. Good discussion at any rate.
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PDA History: Palm Pilot 5000 -> Apple Newton 2100 -> Casio E-11 -> iPaq 3650 (64MB Upgrade) -> iPaq 3700 -> Casio EM-500 -> HP Jornada 568 -> HP iPaq hx4705 www.spreadfirefox.com
[Yada yada yada complaining about my previous post.]
I wasn't complaining about your post, I was complaining about the attitude expressed in the article that is the topic of this thread. I responded to you because you seemed to support that attitude. I very clearly indicated that my comments were not directed at you.
But that's all really moot anyway because what you said and what you actually do, seem to be two different things in the end. This author objects to the idea of any PDA... period. That's the attitude I spoke to. Yet here you say...
Quote:
Originally Posted by Jonathan1
I had to stop the madness last fall with picking 4 models of PDA’s and 2 types of cellphones to support
So what's wrong with that? Your company has a need for PDAs and you made it happen. That's all I'm saying anyone should do. The author of that article, however, doesn't get that. His complaint is about having any PDAs at all in his organization and I don't agree with that. If you do agree with that (as your post seemed to me to), then I don't agree with you either. I'll be the first to admit to being surprised at seeing you supporting a no-PDA policy given your obvious interest in the technology. Now it doesn't look to me like you do.
I would stop here, but you asked a direct question.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Jonathan1
Finally let me ask you one quick question. If a user comes to me and says. Can I bring in my home laptop and hook it up to the network because it will make me more productive should I let them?
If you read my post then I'm not sure why you're asking this. I tried to be very clear that I am not saying there should not be restrictions on corporate computer users. (See the last paragraph.) I am saying that an executive (regardless of how many you have) probably knows more about his work than you do, and if s/he see a need for some technology, then the IT people shouldn't whine and throw a fit, they should look at what it would take to do it, advise the executive of the costs involved and be willing to examine whether the benefits will outweigh the costs.
This nut case from Infoworld doesn't see things that way, and my experience has been that most IT people where I've worked don't see things that way. So I disagree with him... and perhaps you too, though now I'm not sure that your position is as hard-core as you first expressed. Now I've said everything I have to say on the topic, so I'm done too.
What strikes me most about the article, though, is the holier-than-thou arrogance that comes through with every word.
Quote:
Hear me, Motorola?
Like that one. Why on earth should Motorola listen to him? Just because he has written a poorly researched article? And did he miss, as Sean pointed out, that Motorola is a little ahead of him?
In my consultancy, I always recommend that users carry a laptop and PDA when traveling. They both balance each other out. It is impossible any ther way in my opinion to get by using only one type of device when traveling.
Wouldn't it be nice to have a mobile device the size of a small PDA, but can "unfold" into a full-size notebook PC with a large screen? Of course it's science fiction right now but sure it'll be a reality around 2015.
The author was clueless, and it's not a zero-sum game
It amazes me how some people get to positions where they can do an article and there are those who consider their writings to be of any import whatsoever. The author clearly had no clue about either technology, and his limited knowledge only illustrated that. I just laugh every time I see the PDA-vs-Laptop debate heat up. Obviously, there's a place for both. The fact is there is a pyramid of users in the world. At the bottom of the pyramid you have the largest group of users who are lucky to be able to spell LAPTOP or PDA. They'll never get more use out of EITHER than they can just by turning it on and clicking on icons already on the first screen. In the middle, and a sizeably smaller group, are educated users, who can actually go so far as to locate files on their device and even install an application or two. Last, but not least, you have the people who really make full use of either device, they know each one's limitation, and they know what things they can add to each to expand its capability.
My users are happy to drag one of our laptops on their business trips, because it's closes to how their desktop works and I have loaded what needs to be loaded on them to do what they need to do. I, on the other hand, have never ever taken a laptop on a trip. Why? Because, contrary to some of you nay-sayers, I CAN do everything on my PocketPC that I could do with our laptops except one thing: burn CDs. Which is something I feel is useless on a laptop in the first place. I convert things that I might need from CD to a memory card and negate the need for a drive altogether. I have WiFi and a modem, both in CF format, so my connectivity issues disappear. I have my folding keyboard, so I can do some real typing. With the VGA card I can do my presentations, again with no problems. I can keep myself entertained during my trips much easier than I could with a laptop, too.
My point is, my PocketPC easily replaces my laptop in my work, and that the same can virtually be said by anyone who WANTS to have their PDA take the place of the laptop. It wasn't originally designed to, but clearly enough third party components and apps are erasing the line. Ultimately, you have the choice which way to go. There's room in all businesses for both. I treasure the convenience of carrying a LOT less weight and size, not to mention the airport hassle, by using my PDA alone on trips. If I don't need to have most of my add-ons during the actual trip, I can simply pack them in my carry-on or in my checked baggage. You can do what you want with either device if you know enough about the device to do it. It's that simple.
IMHO
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