The environmental impact of tablets

Industry analysts predict that tablet purchases will outnumber laptop purchases by 2013. The increasing use of tablets, both business and personal, has quite an impact on the environment. Their use results in lower ink and paper consumption, lower CO2 emissions, as well as lower water consumption during production.

Twenty-five percent of adults in the U.S. own tablets, compared to only 4%  in 2010. And 45% of tablet users say they have decreased printing. 

–morganstanley.com and appleinsider.com 

Uberflip, a Canadian company that helps organizations to deploy content on electronic platforms, identified four environmental sustainability trends related to tablet use:

A decline in printing. Although many people feel that they still require hard copies of just about everything, this is no longer the norm.  Printer manufacturers like HP are feeling the crunch as the demand for ink shrinks.

I work with more electronic documents than paper documents these days. I buy less paper and ink than I have bought in the past. When I need a paper copy, I print wirelessly from my iPad or notebook computer.

Eco-friendly devices. Over their lifetime, tablets result in lower CO2 emissions, notably when people use their tablets as e-readers rather than buying paper books. The CO2 equivalent emissions from a tablet are about 1/3rd that of a small notebook and 1/25th that of a 60-watt incandescent light bulb.

E-waste. The volume of electronic waste will double by 2025. To combat this, electronics manufacturers and big box retailers have implemented recycling programs. I took advantage of this free recycling service at least four times this year, giving up an old notebook computer, a desktop computer, a laser printer and an inkjet printer. I reused the computer hard drives, converting them into external hard drives with a simple enclosure kit.

Green business. More and more businesses use tablets to demonstrate products and services, and for sales transactions. My local grocery chain uses iPads to sign up customers for their loyalty coupon program, which has computer and mobile apps. This replaces printing and mailing costs.

A national electronics chain uses iPads to demonstrate how tablets connect to big-screen TVs to display streaming videos. The Apple store uses iPads that allow customers to compare products and view features. A sales technician is on hand to answer questions and complete the sale–by entering transaction information on an iPhone and then swiping a credit card. You get a small paper receipt and an electronic receipt by email. There is no cash register evident in the store (there may be one in the back for cash sales) and no waiting in lines.

See the full Uberflip InfoGraphic on Sustainability of Tablets.

TIME’s “top 10 tech gadgets” list for 2012 has pleasant surprises

Most of us are familiar with David Letterman’s “Top 10” lists, the “best-dressed” and “worst-dressed” lists, etc. Time magazine released its “Top 10 of Everything 2012 with a whopping 55 lists in numerous categories. Here’s their list of the top 10 tech gadgets for 2012:

1. iPhone 5
2. Nintendo Wii U
3. Sony Cybershot RX100 camera
4. Raspberry Pi Model B
5. Lytro light field camera
6. Apple Macbook Pro 15″ with Retina Display
7. Microsoft Surface with Window RT
8. Samsung Galaxy Note II
9. Nest thermostat
10. Simple TV

The list includes two of the best smartphones, a new tablet and a notebook with a stunning display–no surprise. What did surprise–and intrigue–me is the innovation and ingenuity in three items on the list:

• 

  Raspberry Pi is a $35 computer. Yes, you heard this correctly! It’s stripped down to bare essentials; all you need is a monitor, mouse and keyboard.

• The Lytro camera captures the direction of light rays, as well as color and intensity, letting the user refocus photos after they’re taken. It’s by no means a pocket camera, but it is affordable. 
  
• The Nest learning thermostat incorporates simple form and function, with a touch screen display. Former Apple employees designed it.

You can view all 55 TIME Top 10 of Everything lists here.

Converging IT trends cause IT organizations to refocus strategies

Four trends–cloud computing, mobility, big data and social networking are changing the face of how we manage, analyze and apply information–in a positive way. Like Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) or Bring Your Own Technology (BYOT), these trends are an example of IT Consumerization, which Wikipedia defines as

the growing tendency for new information technology to emerge first in the consumer market and then spread into business and government organizations.

These trends impact individuals, businesses and IT organizations. According to Aternity in Managing IT through the Lens of the End User,

The emergence of consumer markets as the primary driver of information technology innovation is seen as a major IT industry shift, as large business and government organizations dominated the early decades of computer usage and development.

These four trends cause IT to shift from a business and operational focus to a user-centric focus. IT organizations need to consider IT availability, performance, value and ROI.

 

Tech toys in the executive suite

Among the tech gadgets in executive suites, tablets rank third (78%) behind smartphones (84.8%) and laptop computers (82.6%). About 33% use mobile apps and 33% use the Cloud. Execs prefer iOS and Blackberry smartphones for personal use, though they have employees use Android and Blackberry devices more often (69%) than iPhones (54%). Source: CEO.com.

iPad ownership by CEOs and small business owners quadrupled in the last year (CEO.com)

Count me in! I use all of the top three technologies. As the proud owner of a 4th Generation iPad, I find it easy to use. Of course, having an iPhone and being familiar with iOs helps, though I find a new world of opportunities with the larger, iPad retina screen. The tablet format allows me to visualize much more data than I can using the same apps on my iPhone. Reading email and browsing the Internet are a pleasure. I can read documents, presentations, books and .PDFs with ease. The 10-hour battery life is a real plus.

Ultimately, my tablet will replace a somewhat heavy notebook computer for certain purposes. I am testing different  office and productivity apps and will see where this leads… the consumerization of  business continues.

You can view an infographic on CEO gadgets topic here.

Gartner lists top 10 strategic technology trends for 2013

At its Symposium IT Expo in Orlando this week, Gartner analyst David Cappuccio laid out 10 critical tech trends and technologies for the next 5 years.

Cappuccio said that in the last minute, people sent 204 million emails, listened to 61,000 hours of music Pandora, viewed 20 million photos and uploaded 3 million uploads to Flickr,  sent 100,000 tweets, viewed 6 million Facebook posts, logged in to 277,000 Facebook accounts, and performed 2 million plus Google searches.

The trends clearly point to Mobile, Cloud and Internet. In fact, they capture 5 of the top 10 spots for next year. The top 10 strategic technology trends for 2013 are:

1. Mobile devices battles. In 2013 more people will access the Internet by mobile device than by PC.
2. Mobile applications and HTML5. JavaScript and HTML5 will become the mainstream app development environment.
3. Personal Cloud. The Cloud and Cloud services will become more important with increased use and the need to sync several mobile devices.
4. Internet of things. An increased number of “things” with sensors will connect to the Internet.
5. Hybrid IT and Cloud computing. The trend towards increasing information managed in hybrid and Cloud applications allows IT departments to take on a coordination role.
6. Strategic big data. To make strategic decisions, organizations need to aggregate and analyze data from multiple internal and external sources. This differs from the single data warehouse approach.
7. Actionable analytics. Big data and analytics meet in the Cloud to allow rapid analysis and simulations. People will be able to conduct analysis via mobile devices.
8. Mainstream in-memory computing. Increased memory capability can improve performance and decrease response time. New software will take advantage of memory capabilities and will allow self-service analytics.
9. Integrated ecosystems. Software and services will be packaged as “appliances” to address infrastructure or application workload.
10. Enterprise app stores. Organizations will deliver business applications through private app stores.

The rising tide of bring your own technology

I just read a Forrester Report: Charting The Rising Tide Of Bring-Your-Own Technology. It provides lots of data to back up what I found a couple of months ago when researching an IT Insight column, Tech Trends: Bring Your Own Device to Work.

Forrester’s findings include

• a large percentage of workers pay for their own technology (e.g. smartphones, tablet computers and software) out of their own pockets
• workers use a range of self-provisioned devices, software and services to do their jobs
• BYOT is growing today, and will become second nature within three years
• Chief Information Officers (CIOs) cannot afford to ignore BYOT.

Organizations that do not have BYOT policies today should develop them now, because, within a few years, these same organizations will encourage employees to bring their own devices to work.

How this “consumerization” of business with personal tech devices impacts productivity is a topic for another post.

Smartphones and tablets–21st Century “beepers” or productivity tools?

Smartphones and tablets are cool and fun to use—so much so that workers check their mail at all hours of the day and night, at the dinner table, at their kids’ sporting events and at social gatherings. They check mail before going to work in the morning and after supper. They send business-related text messages at times when a phone call might be too intrusive. A YouTube video went viral; it showed a woman texting while walking, and she fell head-first into a fountain.

In some ways, smartphones and mobile devices make us more productive, and our bosses expect us to be on call 24 hours a day. Being on call with a smartphone is only marginally better than carrying a beeper.  I prefer to work only half days—from 7 am to 7 pm. As they say on Facebook, “LOL” or 🙂 .

Data at your fingertips v2.0

A number of years ago, I was an early adopter of the first color Palm OS device—the Handspring Visor. This device replaced two pounds of paper in a junior desk size Covey planner, and did more—it allowed me to keep my calendar and contacts electronically, where the planner only organized my calendar. Eventually my Visor became unreliable and I replaced it with a much faster, slimmer, cheaper, multi-featured Sony Palm OS device.

Fast forward to the 21^st century… smartphones with more computing power than my first few laptop computers are ubiquitous. People want data at their fingertips and they want it “to go.” Mobile devices provide information, convenience and social networking across a variety of screen sizes and types, and market analysts predict that tablet sales will surpass PC sales in a couple of years.

Devices like the iPad did not even exist three years ago, and they have changed the way we live and work. With excitement, I look forward to being part of this revolution.