Some Thoughts On Laptop Rental
As the price of computers comes down it can be difficult to justify laptop rental especially when many business travelers already own a laptop of their own. The idea of laptop rental was extremely popular when laptops were very expensive and owning several of them for one company was cost prohibitive. Companies would send sales people out with their laptop rental and floppy disks and ask them to conquer the world.
Rather than buy laptops for engineers engineering firms would use laptop rental companies to help put engineers in the field with fully loaded laptops that got the job done and then saved the company money on computing costs as well. But now that you can get a fully functioning laptop for less than $600 it doesn't make much sense to use laptop rental services anymore. However there are times when laptop rental makes all the sense in the world.
Some people just do not like laptops and prefer their trusty desktop computer. Writers, for example, get set in their ways and will not leave their trusty desktop to write on some portable machine for any reason. At least that is what I have heard. But if a writer has to go on location for a little while to do some research and will need a computer with them then a laptop rental probably makes a lot of sense.
The writer saves money by not investing in a laptop but still gets to enjoy the ease and benefit of having a powerful portable computer with them that helps them get the job done. Writers can be so backwards and stubborn sometimes it is amazing they ever get anything done. But in an extreme case such as this a laptop rental makes sense.
But I Will Be Getting My Laptop Back
Ok so you broke your laptop and you will be without it for 4 to 6 weeks. What do you do? Simple. You go with a laptop rental of course. This is where some repair companies make a small fortune and also why it is almost impossible to get a free loaner laptop while yours is in the shop. Everyone is entitled to make a buck and in the world of laptop rental there are few enough bucks available that it makes the business a little cut throat which is always bad for the customer.
So as you can see the concept of laptop rental is one that used to be very popular and has now become very specialized. The era of renting expensive laptops came and went and the rental companies that could not adapt just faded away. That is why you always need to be looking forward, and not back, when you are a technology company of any kind.
