The Changing Face of the Laptop Rental Industry

The computer rental world is changing.

Where customers used to call in and request laptops from all of the “standard” tier one manufacturers, like HP, Lenovo, Dell, IBM, etc. – their selection in the future may change.

For starters, manufacturers known for their mobile innovations, like Samsung and Motorola, are getting in to the notebook game.

And HP has been notoriously prominent in the printer market lately, as it was the first printer maker to start offering WiFi “air printer” technology suited for Apple and the other manufacturers. The company has also been vocal about its entrance into the public cloud sector – and a future that will likely entail a hybridization of IT infrastructures. Businesses will get their cloud computing, to be sure, but they will rely on HP equipment for it.

So where does that leave laptops (and the companies that rent them).

An article on CNET, written by Stephen Shankland, takes a pragmatic, non-sensationalist reading of the industry – in which we can find our answers.

Shankland said, “First and foremost, tablets have a touch-screen interface rather than the traditional combination of a keyboard and a mouse or trackpad. They're smaller and lighter. What they lack in processor power they make up for in battery life. They come with a different operating system that means the vast array of PC applications won't run. And at least in the case of the iPad, they lack the profusion of ports to connect external monitors, digital cameras, wireless network dongles, backup systems, thumb drives, and, yes, heated slippers.”

Today’s new age tablets, it seems, are nothing more than yesterdays personal computers dressed up in a shiny new user interface.

Shankland decries the marketing manipulation employed by Steve Jobs at the Apple iPad 2 reveal – especially Jobs’ use of the phrase “post-PC era.”

A personal computer is a personal computer (or a laptop) is a tablet. Got it? It’s just that tablets lack much of the processing power that laptops possesses, so when it comes to business functions they will continue to be the workhorses that they always have been.

Luckily for our corporate customers -- no matter which kind of user interface you need, we’re happy to have plenty of them in stock here at Vernon Computer Source.

Feel free to give us a call at or visit our website for a laptop rental.