Laptops for Daily Use

When selecting office computers for daily use, there is a dilemma between cost and functionality. Non-portable desktops and towers are much less expensive than most laptops. Data capacity on laptop disk systems comes at a pretty price and with today’s data hungry applications, especially audio and video, it can be difficult to configure a laptop that can handle day to day office needs and still be portable enough to take the office with you on the road.

We have used Sony Vaio laptops for years with overall good results. Sony has excellent service that will repair and reload the laptop if it experiences disk problems, which seem to be the real weakness of most laptop systems. Combined with a docking station and some good USB externals, the VAIO premium line combines lightweight functionality with adequate compute power for most of our needs. Especially when traveling to remote areas of Africa in small planes, every ounce was important, but we had to have a laptop to help us process digital photographs and create backups of the huge quantities of images we were collecting.

Later in this series, we will discuss the peripherals that make a laptop really useful as a desktop computer, but the one mandatory item that should be purchased with the laptop is a docking station. Without the ability to use a full size monitor and keyboard while in the office, trying to use a laptop for an office computer can be frustrating.