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The yuppie lifestyle is often marked by a fast-paced, hectic
schedule, a hefty salary and a never-ending urge to splurge. Between
sleepless nights and nonstop partying, the young professionals of
today, often call center agents or Makati office dwellers, carry the
highest purchasing power than any other age bracket in the same line
of work.
The question is, where do all these purchasing power go?
Yehey!
News reports that most of it go down the drain of consumer
electronics, specifically gadgets that characterize this
generation’s yuppie lifestyle.
And rightfully so. The mobility and portability of newly-developed
electronics and gadgetry seem to blend well with the hyped-up,
fast-paced yuppie lifestyle of today. This is why most electronic
companies target their products to this sector which thrives on
gadgets and new technology, no matter how created their needs may
be.
With the deluge of generations of music players, digital cameras and
cellphones, technology these days has become more and more compact
that heavy and bulging gadgets tend to become obsolete. This is
where the line of attack of certain electronics companies takes
place—on to a more compact and portable yuppie lifestyle.
One piece of technology that has been scaled down to fit this
certain lifestyle is the personal computer. From a machine that used
to fill an entire room, it has been scaled down to a single box, and
more recently to a portable lap gadget one can take anywhere. But
the miniaturization did not stop there, as laptops become more and
more portable these days that they will soon be called
“ultraportable laptops.”
ASUSTek, a Taiwanese company, started this revolution. As if a 3kg
laptop was not light enough for them, they developed the first-ever
ultraportable laptop there is: the Asus EEE PC. It has a 7-inch
screen that displays an 800x600 resolution quite well, an Intel
chipset, 512MB RAM, and a Linux as the primary operating system
which comes with a multitude of applications ready for use. The
upside is that it costs an average of Php18,000 at any local
computer store in the mall (much cheaper than the usual laptop), but
the downside is that it can only store up to 4GB of space in its
solid-state device that acts as a hard disk. Also, it doesn’t have
an optical drive, but an external one that can be attached into one
of the three USB ports is available.
Apple, the giant Steve Jobs’ company, took notice of the EEEPC’s
worldwide success and released its own version of the ultraportable
laptop in the recent MacWorld Expo: the MacBook Air. As Jobs said,
it is as “thin as your index finger” and can perfectly fit in a
Manila envelope. Think MacBook squished down to three quarters of an
inch, and you get the MacBook Air. Some people weren’t too receptive
to the idea, though, as what the MacBook Air brags about in
thickness and weight, it loses on its proportionate size—the 13.3”
screen is still a lot of laptop real estate to carry around,
considering a 7” alternative at a much cheaper price is readily
available. Apple aficionados, however, were on a high because of
this latest development.
The third wheel in this battle of ultraportability is the Everex
Cloudbook, a recent player in the market. It is basically the size
and weight of the EEEPC but it runs on a different version of Linux.
Also dubbed as the Alternative PC, the Cloudbook threatens to take
some part of the ultraportable laptop share of the market. The
Cloudbook, however, fails miserably for obvious reasons: it does not
have the “edge” that the EEEPC has, save for its size and weight.
People have complained about its hard disk too, which tends to slow
down the booting time of the Cloudbook.
The first one to enter the race is usually the best one, and all the
other players are mere imitators. Asustek paved the way for the
laptop to be a bit more affordable for those who can afford, without
sacrificing quality and usability. While its competitors have
pledged to take a huge piece of the cake, EEEPC undoubtedly still
rules the ultraportable laptop market.■ |
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