Do We Really Need Sexed-up Business Laptops?

CNET’s Scott Stein notes that there’s been a mark business laptops lately. “Not your father’s business laptop.” “A business laptop for the cooler set.” Whatever you want to call them, these notebooks are defined by thin profiles, sleek bodies, and features more often seen on “consumer” laptops, examples being Lenovo’s ThinkPad X1 and ThinkPad Edge E220s, Toshiba’s Portege R835, Dell’s Vostro V130, and the HP ProBook 5330m,all of them in Stein’s estimation worthy of consideration for nonbusiness users.

Why, then, call them business laptops? Perhaps to stake out other turf than the consumer laptop arena, which is increasingly dominated by Apple, which designates none of its portables as “business” machines. Higher-end MAc laptops get the “Pro” tacked on to the name but are marketed as laptops for everyone, and iPads don’t come in business and consumer versions, either – only a selection of storage capacity and wireless connectivity variants.

That contrasts with the Windows PC laptop space, cluttered as it is with often-confusing streaming of various products as business or consumer hardware, with business-targeted models differentiated by security features like fingerprint scanners or office-friendly dock connectors.

That may play to what the intended market expects, but it’s demonstrably arguable that Apple’s simpler approach offering a modest range of laptop sizes with a few build-to-order power-user options available for customers who desire them, has paid off handsomely in part because it doesn’t cause unnecessary confusion for the purchaser – consumer or enterprise.