The Laptop Rental That Was Also a Smartphone and a Tablet

It seems like all manner of technologies are advancing rapidly these days, and in the rental business, it can be hard to keep up. Just a short year ago, the iPad created a stir that prompted other manufacturers to spring in to gear with their own product innovations.

The tablet evolution was a natural one – it continued on what smartphones started.

But is there room in the market for something of a middle-man? Motorola seems to think so, and this late-comer to the tablet market might have an Ace up its sleeve: the Atrix.

Sanjay Jha, Motorola Mobility’s CEO, summed up the Atrix’potential quite nicely. He said, “This is the computer that fits in your pocket.”

The Motorola Atrix is a 4G smartphone, powered by Android, offers an HD display, dual-facing digital cameras, and room for 48 GBs of storage. But those are fairly standard specs these days – they don’t’ really stand out in the market.

Luckily for the Atrix, Motorola did invest in some innovation this time around. The Atrix has a biometric finger reader which is frankly, pretty cool.

But the Atrix has one more trick in its own deck of cards, and one that neatly circumvents some of the issues surrounding tablet adaptation. Because tablets and smartphones are cursed with such small screens, they haven’t really made their way into mainstream business adaptation yet.

But now, they will.

The Atrix comes with an accessory known as the “Lapdock” docking station, which is essentially a thin, lightweight shell that looks like a laptop – minus the processor and all of the heavy innards. The processing power comes from the Atrix, which you simply plug in – the tabletized smartphone becomes the computer, the Lapdock, the screen and keyboard.

Curiouser and curiouser still, but we will see what this means for corporate adaption.

The end goal for many companies is the development of a powerful, lightweight mobile device that isn’t doomed by teeny tiny letters and hard to press keys.

And for the enterprise market, this might be the end of the road.

Vernon Computer Source will likely get Lapdocks into our rental inventory’s circulation soon enough, but for those individuals who would like to take a stab at a free version, Motorola is offering a contest to win a free Atrix, Lapdock and Media Dock.