Enough With Big, Fat Notebooks!

A CNC-milled aluminum body. Dimensions that rival the svelte Apple MacBook air. Is this the pitch for the latest consumer notebook? As it turns out, no. Meet the new generation enterprise products.

- Koh Wanzi

Just consider 2009’s Dell Precision M6500 workstation. It was fat, cumbersome, and ungainly, even by standards then.

Think of what a business device looks like to you. Are you picturing a black, thickset laptop with nearly inch-long bezels and a rather drab look? Yup, for the longest time, that was us too. Enterprise and consumer devices used to be in two entirely different categories. While companies focused on pouring their design dollars into the latter and sprucing them up to look their Sunday best, it always seemed like no one cared as much about the aesthetics of business devices. Productivity and functionality came before everything else. And much like business attire, god forbid if you walked into a meeting with a casual machine! Just consider 2009’s Dell Precision M6500 workstation. It was fat,cumbersome and ungainly, even by standards then. Fast-forward four years to 2013, and the Precision M6700 may look slightly thinner, but not a whole lot has changed.

After our brush with next-generation business devices like the HP Elite x2 and Elite Book Folio G1, we can’t help but feel that the winds are shifting.

Enterprise devices are starting to look better and better in a really short span of time. In fact, going by their design and specification trends, it appears increasingly likely that you’ll end up using the same device for work and entertainment by your next upgrade.

Enterprise devices are starting to look better and better in a really short span of time.