Dell sees future in miniature notebooks

In a sign that the convergence trend is reaching even technology's stalwarts, Dell has hinted that its customers could drive it to release a laptop with an eight-inch screen.

Dell recently quashed rumours that it would buy troubled mobile-phone company Motorola and make a move into the smartphone market. Instead the company said it would prefer to focus on mobility via laptops designed to serve the growing mobile workforce.

"We see mobility as a big trend. Clearly what we see is that notebook sales will cross and overtake desktops by 2009. We're one company that says the desktop will stay, but the notebook is flying high," Paul-Henri Ferrand, president of Dell Asia Pacific South, told ZDNet Australia.

Last week Gartner predicted that, by 2012, around half of the developed world's workers will be running virtualised desktops transported on portable storage devices like the iPod, rather than carrying laptops between work and home.

But, according to Ferrand, convergence between smartphones and laptops will increase as hardware manufacturers seek to create the ideal device for mobile workers.

"Some companies have come up with low-cost, tiny notebooks and suddenly it's taking off because there is a form factor for each usage. There's a convergence of these products," Ferrand said.

"Some work well, like the Blackberry — but it's designed for one application: email. You also have the iPod, which is primarily for music, whereas a notebook can run your Windows applications, connect to the internet and it's a pretty efficient tool. So we believe there will be an expansion of the form factor upwards and downwards," Ferrand added.

While mobile workers drive demand for smaller laptops, other laptop-user categories have emerged too — from large-screen laptop home users who typically move within the home, to users who prefer Linux operating systems.

"Interestingly, we've seen actually that customers want bigger screen sizes. We've seen with flat panel and the notebook that customers want 17-, 18- and 19-inch screens. But they also want lighter and smaller notebooks. We can't say if we will go below an eight-inch screen, but clearly there is some demand and I think consumers will lead the way in terms of smaller gadgets," Ferrand said.

Dell gives Ubuntu, but Linux fans want MacBook Air
"[Desktop] Linux is driven by customers asking for it. We can't deny that Linux has been a success on the server side and continues to be an option that people want to have on the desktop. So, we have made it available and it's working well," Ferrand said.

But while Dell's customers prompted it to launch its Ubuntu machines, open-source users could be more attracted to another laptop manufacturer: Apple.

Asked what he thought of Apple's MacBook Air, outgoing president of Linux Australia, Jonathan Oxer, told ZDNet Australia: "I want one". But, rather than running the Leopard operating system on it, Oxer said he would install Linux.

"In terms of the profile of the device, the hardware, it pretty much suits my personal usage requirements. That's because, when I'm after a laptop, I want it to be small and portable but I also want reasonable performance, so I'm seriously considering getting a Mac Airbook and running Linux on it," Oxer said.

Although many applications on the MacBook Air are for Apple only, the fundamental architecture is based on BSD, which makes it easier to add open-source software to the machine, said Oxer.

"[Installing Linux] shouldn't be a problem at all. Mac hardware over last few years has been based on an industry standard architecture, which means that — with a few exceptions, such as the notorious wireless Ethernet cards used a few years go — most of the hardware is extremely well supported," Oxer said.