3 posts tagged “mobility”

I think it's about time 3 months into the Western New Year of 2009 and 1 month into the Chinese Buffalo Year that I make a public declaration on the 2009 goals that I am 90% confident that I will not fail to accomplish. 

I just blogged about my new mobile laptop, a Lenovo Ideapad s10.  Buying the notebook as part of my desire to become more mobile for the year of 2009 has got me thinking about this relationship of mobility and the technologies that make a mobile lifestyle possible. 

This will the first entry of a series of three posts on Mobility and Tools.  This entry is about our mobile tools as a modern reinterpretation of the purse or hand-clutch.  The next post in this series will be about how mobile tools can enrich the consumer experience of clothing shopping and finally the final post will be about the relationship between the size of mobile tools and gender norms. 

This series will also be the first entries on my new blog, Cultural Bytes, that I am launching in 2009.  Cultural Bytes is where I will comment on the cultural aspects of technology use from a theoretical and practical point of view, highlight research that values cultural knowledge and practice in technology research, and use my research and work experience as case studies. So stay tuned!  For now I will but these posts on mobility right here on hi tricia!


Post 1 of 3 on Mobility Series: Why Lenovo s10 is a modern reinterpretation of the purse-clutch

There's something culturally innovative about the new stylish netbooks on the market.    If you don't know what I am referring to, check out  hp's collaboration with fashion designer, Vivenne Tam (the photos below of the woman in a black dress carrying the clutch is actually an hp laptop that tam designed) , or the Lenovo s10 that I just bought.  These netbooks embody the notion that objects should become deeply integrated into the socio-cultural context in which the object is actually used.
 

The beauty of the Lenovo s10 or tam's hp  is that it  is examplerary of how a popular technological object can balance the symbolic and pragmatic demands of an everyday tool.  This is the exact innovation behind Post-its  - and the same can be argued for netbooks.  Post-it's took the idea of writing, noting, jotting to a whole new level by integrating its innovative design and technology (3M stickiness what what!) into the everyday.

When I started carrying around my Lenovo s10 this past weekend, I realized that i so badly wanted to put a chain on it and carry it around like my hand clutch!  If you know me well, you know that I am obsesed with purses, in particular small, mobile, fashionable purses - the exact words I would use to describe the new Lenovo s10 - small, mobile, and fashionable.     A balance of symbolic status and pragmaticism are the qualities of the modern purse - seems like the Lenovo s10 could be a play on this idea!

Symbolic boundary
The purse is a symbolic boundary between the person and the world, much like the laptop.  And technically, you can only connect to the world through a laptop (email, skype, internet and etc).  The things inside your purse (or wallet) connect you to the world, your driver's licence, passport, cash, credit cards, photos, cellphone, and keys to your car.  If you think about it,  all the things in our purses/wallets are reproduced on our laptops in some shape!    You access your online back account through your laptop with a password key - this isn't too far from the your house key that gives you access to all the things you own.  The photos in your wallet are in your iphoto/flickr or picasa album.  The levels of comparison are endless!  

Value
We are making a statement about what we find to be valuable when we decide to put something in our wallet or purse.  We are saying that these possessions are so important to me that these things need to be close to my body and within arms reach.  In a world of mobility and virtuality the body doesn't lose its importance - if anything it gains importance in new ways. Ultimately it is still mediating all the communication and doing so in a very physical way.  The cross-over quality of netbooks is that they can be held against the body comfortably - comfortable is the key here.  You can hold a heavy 4.5-6lbs apple laptop that looks beautiful - but with it being so heavy it's really not mobile!   At the end of the day, a useful purse is a mobile purse - it goes with the owner and is an extension of her/his body.  It's a utiliarian statement that says "these things need to be with me constantly when I am outside of the house."

Status
The purse symbolizes the carrier's status - it is a public statement that one is taking the things they own, putting them into a purse, and carrying all of in this external, untransparent shell outside the private home.  The purse is signals to potential things inside - expensive purses signal to expensive things - same thing with our tech tools.   Laptops symbolize who you are, what you own, and where you are going.  When used in public, one can extrapolate a lot of information about a person from the way they use their laptop, from the case they carry it in, to icons to documets on their desktop to the decorations on the laptop and to the additional accessories for the laptop and etc.

 "What you put in your bag is very important to you. That makes a bag very personal because in it you have a secret. A secret gives you some sort of power," says Farid Chenounne of  Carried Away: All About Bags.  A purse carries financial capital and also points to the social and cultural capital of the carrier - and again the laptop does the same.  The laptop itself speaks to the finances of the owner and indicates the owner's social and cultural capital.  How many times have you noticed someone's laptop in public, such as at the airport or at a coffee shop?  Did you see stickers on their laptop cover?  Did they have a special case?  A special mouse?  All these things speak to the public display of status in the tools we use.  It's the same thing as in suburbia when neighbors check out each other lawn mowers (I think this is what people do in suburbia) - whenever we  have bring somthing into the public, it takes on a voice of its own and symbolizes parts of "you."

Design Catch Up
Netbook and Purse-Clutch-Wristelet designers have some major catching up to do with each other.  Netbook designers need to pay more attention to the design of clutches as mobile purses, and purse designers need to design more fashionable clutches that accomodate a netbook along with a tube of lipstick,  business cards, and cellphone.   

What I see my Lenovo s10 being most akin to, is the wristlet.  I LOVE wristlets!  In nyc, wristlets make the perfect wallet to put inside a bigger purse so that for your night parties you check your day purse and carry your wristlet around as you schmooze.  

So I conducted a little experiment and took out some of my favorite wristelets and did a visual comparison with my Lenovo s10.   As you can see from these pictures, none of the wristlets I tried to put on the Lenovo worked out.  And it only barley fit in my doggy purse and it was definitely contorting the dog's body - I know a doggy purse doesn't count as a wristlet but I just had to try it out!

 So the next phase of netbooks can further explore the balance in symbolic status and pragmatics of the equipment, while at the same time considering how the object can more closely mirror the clutch/wristlet.  With a netboook, carrying around a laptop without a backpack becomes a possibility.  Well and really who wants to carry around a backpack - it's so ugly - but even I've resorted to using backpacks after backpain of carrying around a heavy macbook - well surely a backpack is one of the most unsexy and unfashionable carrying devices ever!  Not digging the external hump on my back..   

The design and use properties of a successful mobile tools must be integradable into the specific socio-cultural context of usage.  The culture of purse carrying (value, status, fashion, symbolic boundary) is a critical factor to understand for anyone developing mobile tools.   

I am preparing for 2009 - and 2009 for me is the year of mobility.  I will soon complete my 2008 goals of cellphone heaven (swtiching to AT&T and buying the best mobile phone ever - nokia n82). 

So in preparing for my mobile year, I have finally bought a foldable bike (will blog about that in my next post) and a mini-laptop that I could carry around with no more backpain.  I bought a netbook because I need something so light that I could throw in my purse while I am in a car or on my foldable bike or on public trans.  In NYC, I walk a lot and take public trans, while in CA I drive a lot and bike to destinations within a 5-10 miles radius.  I just couldn't walk around with my macbook anymore - I would go home with welts on my shoulder and extreme back-pain. 

While I love apple and love my macbook, I don't love how immobile their laptops are.  And although the macbook air is light, it still takes up too much space in my bag (plus i never buy 1st generation apple products after my macbook nigthmare).  I work in urban to rural areas and thus I value mobility and space a LOT when I am on the road.  So  the macbook air has never been an option for me.  But I have been left in a situation where I am laptop-less and therefore reliant on internet cafes - which sucks as a workplace because I'm not exactly in posh, air-conditioned environments - or I am stuck bringing my 100lbs macbook everywhere!  So now that netbooks are affordable with the option of working in a stable platform - osx - I thought it was time to invest in one!    So that's right - I am not turning into a pc chic - hell no - unless I lean how to program (which I will one day), there is no reason to ever work in windows - it's dumb, clunky and unsafe platform.  so osx + lenovo here I come! 

I settled on the Lenovo s10 for several reasons - it was fashion friendly in white, it's Lenovo - a very reliable brand, has great tactile feel to the keyboard, has the multi-touch trackpad and seems to be friendly to OSx install. 

I was thinking of buying the msi wind because it has been known as the most OSx friendly netbook, but it's around $50-$100 more than the Lenovo s10 and it has probs with the wifi with the osx install (though this seems to be easily fixable).  So I was very tempted to buy the msi Wind but as of last week, every place was out of stock on the white msi wind!  Then I read that the new msi Wind with the 6-cell was going to be release, but bloggers have complained about the new trackpad - so that worried me. Oh and I've typed on the msi wind before and I was not a fan of the keypad - too slippery.   The newest Acer Aspire 1 160G 6-cell  will be out later this month at $400 (and you can get it in white, pink and blue!), but I don't like the keypad and is not as osx friendly as the other netbooks.  And I wanted something NOW and when I pre-ordered the Acer on Amazon, I received a notice that it wouldn't be shipped until Oct. 21-25 - I could not wait that long!  The Dell Inspiron was also an option - but it was priced around $500 and was also not as osX friendly. So the decision seemed very obvious for me to just go with the Lenovo. 
 
Some features with my thoughts after 1 day of use:

• 1.6GHz N270 Intel Atom Processor - AWESOME

• 1GB PC2-5300 DDR2 SDRAM 667MHz - OKK

• Windows XP Home Edition (SP3) - ICKKK HATE WINDOWS - SUPER PIG FAIL

• 10.2" WSVGA AntiGlare TFT with integrated camera 1024x600 - LOVE THE CAMERA!
  

• 80GB 5400rpm hard drive - THIS MAY BE A PROBLEM FOR SOME PEOPLE, BUT THIS IS MY MOBILE LAPTOP AND I WILL BE WORKING MOSTLY OUT OF GOOGLE DOCS AND TRANSFERRING TO USB DRIVE IF NEEDED - MY MACBOOK IS STILL MY MAIN LAPTOP WITH MY PHOTOS AND ETC
  

• Intel GMA 950 Integrated Graphics - LOOKS GREAT TO ME

•  Broadcom 11b/g Wi-Fi wireless and Bluetooth

• 4-in-1 Media card reader and ExpressCard slot

• 3-Cell Li-ion battery - 3-CELL DEF NOT ENOUGH - I NEED TO BUY ANOTHER 6-CELL SOON!

• Size: 9.8" x 7.2" x 1.2" (including feet) - LOVELY - JUST LOVELY
  

• Weight: 2.64 lbs (with 3-cell battery) - SO LIGHT I LOVE YOU BUT YOUR BATTERY LIFE SUCKS!!!!  
  

• Starting price: $439 (with 512MB RAM and 80GB hard drive)  - MUST BUY MORE RAM NOW - AT 512RAMS I CAN't EVEN PROPERTY RUN SKYPE!
  

For some tech-intense reviews, check out the following blogs that have reviewed the Lenovo s10, LapTop Mag, Gizmodo, Geek, Notebook Review, DigitGeek, cNEt, and the mobile Experience.   and wired says it's the best netbook to date!