Nov 17, 2020 12:42 AM
https://arstechnica.com/information-tech...ration-04/
EXCERPT: . . . many organizations now having a significant portion of staff working remotely ... is going to be the longterm reality. [...] I've already covered some of the issues related to having a home-based workforce in previous articles in this series. ... And we've already gone over the network security and architecture challenges that come into play as well. But as we push closer to a full year of full- or part-time home work with no end in sight, the old model for what is considered "mobile worker" support on the hardware front is starting to show some serious gaps.
[...] A laptop is built for mobility first. And right now, many of us are not particularly mobile. While laptop computers are adequate for part-time home work in many cases, they aren't in and of themselves suited to work that involves significant data input of the keyboard-entry variety or fine-detail analysis work that requires long hours of staring at pixels on a screen. We've gone over some of the ergonomic issues of laptops previously, but to summarize succinctly: as a rule, compromises made for mobility make them horrible for extended use.
Ergonomics can be solved to some degree by an external keyboard and monitor -- and any company that has people working involuntarily at home should be providing for those, either through that home office allowance or through direct provision. But laptops are not well-suited for extended home work for other reasons: They are not great at heat management ... They are more expensive to provision and deploy than many desktop computers ... Hardware support for laptops is more expensive or totally outsourced to the manufacturer, or both. Another common complaint about laptops is their lack of expandability—not enough USB ports and, increasingly, no physical Ethernet support, for example. But for most people working from home, these aren't really issues -- as long as there's a way to plug in a hub...
On the other end of the spectrum is the thin client. [...] One solution I've seen some companies turn to is all-in-one desktops pre-configured for use with corporate remote access. All-in-ones may not be significantly more powerful than laptop computers, but they’re better designed for cooling and ergonomic considerations, and they can be (depending on the manufacturer and model) somewhat less expensive to support.
In a similar vein, small desktops (like Intel NUC devices) may be a better solution for home workers than laptops from a cost-of-ownership perspective—especially for companies that adopt a cloud desktop model for remote workers or leverage remote desktop services from their own networks... (MORE - details)
EXCERPT: . . . many organizations now having a significant portion of staff working remotely ... is going to be the longterm reality. [...] I've already covered some of the issues related to having a home-based workforce in previous articles in this series. ... And we've already gone over the network security and architecture challenges that come into play as well. But as we push closer to a full year of full- or part-time home work with no end in sight, the old model for what is considered "mobile worker" support on the hardware front is starting to show some serious gaps.
[...] A laptop is built for mobility first. And right now, many of us are not particularly mobile. While laptop computers are adequate for part-time home work in many cases, they aren't in and of themselves suited to work that involves significant data input of the keyboard-entry variety or fine-detail analysis work that requires long hours of staring at pixels on a screen. We've gone over some of the ergonomic issues of laptops previously, but to summarize succinctly: as a rule, compromises made for mobility make them horrible for extended use.
Ergonomics can be solved to some degree by an external keyboard and monitor -- and any company that has people working involuntarily at home should be providing for those, either through that home office allowance or through direct provision. But laptops are not well-suited for extended home work for other reasons: They are not great at heat management ... They are more expensive to provision and deploy than many desktop computers ... Hardware support for laptops is more expensive or totally outsourced to the manufacturer, or both. Another common complaint about laptops is their lack of expandability—not enough USB ports and, increasingly, no physical Ethernet support, for example. But for most people working from home, these aren't really issues -- as long as there's a way to plug in a hub...
On the other end of the spectrum is the thin client. [...] One solution I've seen some companies turn to is all-in-one desktops pre-configured for use with corporate remote access. All-in-ones may not be significantly more powerful than laptop computers, but they’re better designed for cooling and ergonomic considerations, and they can be (depending on the manufacturer and model) somewhat less expensive to support.
In a similar vein, small desktops (like Intel NUC devices) may be a better solution for home workers than laptops from a cost-of-ownership perspective—especially for companies that adopt a cloud desktop model for remote workers or leverage remote desktop services from their own networks... (MORE - details)