Rethink the Business Laptop
Two years ago, Intel launched an initiative to rethink the business laptop. The goal was to bring the portable computing experience closer to the one on the desktop. The project originally called Athena, has evolved into the Intel® Evo™ Platform. They introduced a design specification that manufacturing partners can use to create the next generation of laptops. The specification was derived from extensive research into how people use their laptops and what their biggest frustrations have been with past platforms. A set of goals was then developed to address the most critical issues and set some lofty standards.
Skeptics have been predicting that business laptop sales would see a significant decline. As the popularity of tablets and increasingly capable smart phones grow the competition increases. But the laptop is still chugging along and continues to evolve maintaining its position as a business staple. Statista now forecasts that sales of notebook or laptop computers will surge to 225 million units in 2021. That’s up more than 60% from just four years ago.
The popularity of these mobile workhorses is only likely to increase in the wake of the shift to a remote workforce. Global Workplace Analytics estimates that between 25% and 30% of the labor force will work from home at least a few days a week by the end of 2021. A Price Waterhouse Coopers survey found that 83% of office workers would like the option of working remotely at least once a week for the long term.
With office schedules likely to remain fluid for years to come, providing reliable, secure and flexible workstations to staff will be more important than ever. In the past, that has meant a trade off of portability and battery life for slower speeds, dim displays, bad sound, and low-resolution graphics. With limited memory and storage space, adding critical functions likevirus and malware protection bogged down performance. And even with all those tradeoffs, many laptops still ran out of power on a long flight.
A new standard for laptops;
To meet the new standard devices are also subjected to a gauntlet of 25 tests to achieve certification.
Specifically, Evo-certified partners must build products that include:
- Minimum of nine hours of battery life on a 1080-pixel resolution screen
- The ability to wake from sleep in less than one second
- Consistent responsiveness
- Minimum of four hours of battery life from a 30-minute charge
- Wi-Fi 6 and Thunderbolt 4 connectivity
With the new 11th Gen Intel Core Processors, Intel is doing its part to make these groundbreaking capabilities possible. introducing such innovations as autonomous dynamic voltage and frequency scaling, which dynamically matches the system-on-a-chip’s frequency and voltage to the bandwidth of the workload to deliver the most power-efficient operation. The processors can also vary the number of cores according to the power requirements of the task, add a 1.25 MB midlevel cache for faster performance and incorporate an onboard graphics processing unit that delivers significant gains in power efficiency as well as massive performance improvements.
Intel is also leveraging its work to bring artificial intelligence (AI) to the chip level for mobility applications. For example, the onboard Gaussian Neural Accelerator (GNA 2.0) uses neural noise cancellation to automatically filter out background noise and blur out video conference backgrounds for a more secure and professional experience. These features are on dedicated hardware for the first time, reducing performance overhead and broadening the range of use case scenarios.
The combination of Evo and the built-for-business Intel® vPro® platform brings enterprise-class security, reliability, and manageability features to the world’s lightest PCs, with instant-wake responsiveness, unprecedented battery life and a variety of flexible form factors.
New products from key manufacturers rethink the business laptop.
The Intel® Evo™ vPro® platform offers the best laptop experience for business users. More than 60 new laptops from top manufacturers will be available this year. The following is just a sampling:
The Dell Latitude 9520 is the world’s smallest, lightest and most intelligent 15-in. business PC. It uses built-in AI and Intel Adaptix technology to adjust performance levels according to use and a PC proximity sensor to detect the user’s presence and instantly log in. It delivers an incredible 34 hours of battery life and charges to 80% capacity in 40 minutes.
The HP Elite Dragonfly series offers the world’s most secure PC and, with configurations starting at less than 1 kg, one of the lightest. The Elite Dragonfly incorporates such security features as the HP Sure Shutter one-button camera mask, display technology that prevents viewing from side angles and AI-optimized performance. Its battery charges to 50% in just 30 minutes and supports the new Wi-Fi 6 standard out of the box.
Lenovo’s ThinkPad X1 Titanium Yoga features an Intel 11th Gen Intel® vPro® processor, always-on responsiveness, 2256 x 1504 video resolution powered by Intel® Iris™ Xe graphics rendering, up to 1 TB of SSD storage and nine hours of battery life packed into a unit that weighs less than 1.1 kg.
Innovations like these will keep laptops in sync with the dynamic and unpredictable needs of the post-pandemic workplace and a business environment that demands the utmost performance in any place, at any time.
About JK Technology Solutions
JK Consulting began offering managed services in 2006 and has grown into a leading Managed IT Service Provider (MSP) servicing the Chicago Land area and SW Florida including Naples, Ft Myers, Estero, and Bonita Springs. We service clients with offices in over 20 states.
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