Are You Ready to Ditch Your Laptop for a Smartphone?

CIO - Have you ever wanted to ditch your clunky laptop? Perhaps you were meeting a client for dinner or friends at a bar after work. Or you were trying to catch a flight in the morning and had to fumble with your laptop at the airport security check.

Sure, laptops have become lighter, thinner and less cumbersome (think: MacBook Air, Dell Adamo and netbooks). But a laptop still needs to be carried around town in a backpack or other carrying case (or so that's what IT says). And this means checking it at coat-checks, making sure you don't forget it inside taxi cabs, and keeping a constant eye out for laptop thieves.

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But help is on the way: As smartphones grow in functionality (the iPhone 3G S and iPhone 3.0), you might be able to forego the laptop in favor of a smartphone. Imagine the freedom that comes with a computer on your hip, not strapped to your back.

Before we get carried away, though, it should be noted that a smartphone can't replace a computer-at least, not yet. "Smartphones are still content consumption devices, not content creation ones," says Gartner analyst Ken Dulaney. "Every knowledge worker has to do content creation, so you've got to have a desktop or a laptop to do it."

Today, a smartphone might be able to replace a laptop when you're on the road and then sync to a desktop at the home or office where you'll do most of your content creation. "That's a very valid scenario in some cases," Dulaney says.

In the past, mobile laptops replaced desktops even though desktops were cheaper and more powerful. Now desktops-thanks to smartphones-have an opportunity to turn the tables on laptops.

How to Make the Scenario Work

That's what Don MacRae, a former investment bank executive and avid laptop user, hopes to do. He's making the leap: dumping his old laptop, buying a cheap PC and hoping his BlackBerry 8330 will handle all his computing needs when he's on the road.

One of the reasons for the decision, MacRae says, is that his BlackBerry now runs "critical" apps comparable to those on his laptop. His critical BlackBerry apps include: Opera Mini, reQuall, Documents to Go, Yahoo Go, Viigo, among others. He's also getting a Bluetooth portable keyboard to keep in his suitcase for content-creation emergencies.

"If you're going to be crunching numbers on an Excel spreadsheet or writing documents all day long, you're not going to want to do that on a BlackBerry," MacRae says. "But if you're managing people and on the phone a lot, or in sales and going on a quick overnighter to see a client, you could make a good case for traveling light with just a BlackBerry."

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