24 Feb 09 What’s the difference between…

…an old Dell laptop and an iPod Touch?

I have a failing, old Inspiron 600m running gOS (esssentially a dressed-up Ubuntu) which I tote around with me on campus. My Linux machine is what I use in class for a quick boot-up to check my gCal or edit an essay in Docs.

Time has taken its toll on my Inspiron 600m and now the screen has more than a few dead pixels.

…the sound doesn’t work either in the speakers or via the headphone jack.

…I am missing the shift key (the one you actually use, on the left side).

…And the battery has lost most of its charge, lasting about 75 minutes running just one window of Firefox with five or so tabs open.

As this has happened, my iPod Touch has entered my life.

And the more I sit in class with a depleted laptop battery, the more I turn to my iTouch.

…I check my Gmail.

…I sync my Calendar application with gCal over-the-air thanks to Google’s arrangment with Microsoft Exchange.

…Since my computer can’t play sound, I am better off watching YouTube videos on the iTouch anyways.

…I can play games, edit spreadsheets online, write messages on Facebook (but no Facebook Apps).

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The point is, the covergence point between my Dell Inspiron and my Apple iPod has been nearing– and may have finally arrived.

I am no big fan of Apple, Inc. (In fact, I rather detest the company). That is not what this post is about.

The time has come when there is little difference between a crappy old laptop and a beautiful new iPod. That’s a pretty remarkable statement, when you think about it. A few months ago, there was a story on Techmeme from ReadWriteWeb proclaiming that The iPhone is Apple’s Netbook. To corroborate that, my Dell is in many ways my netbook but the iPod is increasingly competing with it for my attention.

I think there are three factors at play. As I said before, this is not just a testament to  (1) Apple. I don’t think it’s just a product of (2) Moore’s Law on expanding computing power, either. The prevalence of (3) the cloud, and of the ability for web-apps to run neatly either in the iPhone/iPod environment or in the browser, is the third critical piece of the puzzle.

When you see it the way I do every day when I sit down in class, you can choose from an iPod Touch and a Dell Inspiron 600m. And when you measure what you can do with each of them, like I do, you start to wonder:

“What’s the Difference?”

Tags: battery life, Dell, gcal, gmail, google calendar, inspiron, ipod touch, itouch, productivity, sound, sync, YouTube