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By silicon.com, 10 May 2007 09:52

We know the technology world changes quickly but it comes as quite a shock to hear an executive from a major IT vendor talk about the immaturity of laptops just two years ago.

That happened at the HP Making Connections event being held in Shanghai this week. And perhaps it's no surprise. No one ever got a buyer excited by talking about what hasn't changed.

But has the market for laptops - or PC notebooks, in the official vernacular - really moved on that much of late? Launches this week by not just HP but rivals Dell and Lenovo go some way to telling us.

As with most things in tech - and most things in life - there is now more choice in laptop technology than ever before. And for most of us this is a good thing - and yet for others, it's a nightmare.

Complexity is the bane of a well-run IT department. And for small companies and one-man bands, complex IT can sink the business.

So while we have vendors touting laptops with leather cases, giant adjustable screens, remote controls, '15-hour battery life' (an extreme we haven't verified, by the way) and more, spare a minute to think about what's going on in the background.

Many of the machines debuting this week take advantage of Intel's latest technology offering, referred to as Centrino Pro in business laptops and code-named Santa Rosa.

On desktops, Intel has been touting a technology called vPro for a while. It's all about manageability. With a device that is mobile and - usually - wireless, this gets more complicated and arguably even more important.

So Intel's Active Management Technology (AMT) within Santa Rosa steps up a gear for the new launches. Long-time Intel exec Sean Maloney - credited with much of the company's recent success in wireless - even demoed a machine that had been hit by a virus, hung but was heroically repaired by a remote engineer tapping in thanks to vPro technology, which runs alongside the regular chipset functionality.

So much for the demos. In reality, vendors aren't only saying this is important. Some aren't exploiting the Intel offering but - they claim - going even further, choosing their own approaches to problems such as remote configuration and fixes, device lock and wipes - especially important given recent figures revealed by this publication on the extent of laptop losses and thefts in public.

In short, it's an arms race between satisfying end users - the distinction here between 'end users' (all of us) and 'users', meaning mainly those in charge of corporate IT is important - and keeping IT manageable.

Few of us are any longer content with a device, even a work PC or phone, that is merely functional. We want something that feels and looks good. After all, they're next to us for extended hours.

But none of that is any good if your data is being stolen or your smart phone is seizing up. That's when the guys back in IT are worth their weight in gold. That's when they need to know vendors are thinking about both sides of the equation.