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Saturday, January 26, 2008

One expo... One tool... A world of perplexity

Yo! Name the second person who conquered Mount Everest. Don’t know, OK, at least name the second person who tangoed on the land of the US after Christopher Columbus (1451 – 1506).

Yeah, I don’t have any idea about their names either. We people don’t remember the seconds, thirds or fourths. We only consider the firsts. Like the first kiss, first days and the like. I remember the first computer fairs during my school days. So much fantasy. A computer! What a thing! In those fairs seeing the Windows™ 98 SE logo fluttering, we’d get charmed. And in some pavilions you’d find internet facilities. We’d get happy browsing at a top speed of 3.1kbps! Aha, those were the days. I still keep in mind the day I bought my first desktop (February, 2000), AMD 450 MHz; I was too fascinated.

So is the first ever Laptop fair. A country where people hustle every now and then for continuous flow of electricity to roll on their day to day business activities, studies, and other operational works, laptops can come forward ensuring continued-unbroken work. The usage of laptops are better not to be stated, rather let me point out some usefulness of using laptop in Bangladesh. Now who to start with? Yep, the small and medium enterprises. In Bangladesh, the term SME has a vast outline. Why don’t I keep my article narrowed to some certain areas? Firstly, businesses that are being rolling around NILKHET, Dhaka University area can make more out of a laptop. Since 90% of those shops use at least a computer for their operations, they’ll certainly gain a lot using a laptop. A desktop in those tiny-little shops takes more room than a laptop is likely to take. A desktop doesn’t work when there is no electricity, but a laptop does. If it comes to the prices, I’d say if they can buy a desktop worth 30K-45K, they afford to purchase a laptop to get more productive. Any SME identical to the Nikhet Biz, can use this idea. Again for the other SMEs and businesses it’s always true that connectivity is productivity. Well, if you want to be connected to the world around you, you must switch to a laptop. Same thing goes for the students as well.

Now, what if we start to buy more laptops than desktops? This is for sure that the price of a standard laptop is very likely to decline. Another important issue would be our mobility. It’d increase at least by 50% or more if we start using laptops instead of desktops. You may raise some arguments regarding the versatility of using a desktop, i.e. working, gaming, entertainments etc. Well I don’t have any logic to refute your statements. Every coin has two parts, isn’t it? But when your concern is on the productivity of the country which side would you fall for?

I can’t think of the market for laptop during the next five years. What’s really going to happen? Bangladesh is undoubtedly an emerging market for the laptop producers, and big manufactures like hp, Toshiba, acer, Sony, ASUS, Lenovo are partnering with local companies to market their products. Here, they have a great opportunity to grab a voluminous amount of dollars. Which ever company is dropping the price of its laptops first is going to take a lead in the rat-race.
Perhaps this thought flamed the first ever laptop expo torch in Bangladesh. But things are not always as cool as you think. I believe, you have not overlooked that in these fairs companies sale most of their products at a reduced price. Have you ever known why? Because in these fairs they sale from their unsold stocks, in a way to getting rid of the goods which have not been sold due to unavoidable circumstances! Often goods come from abroad, just as the reconditioned cars we ride in. So be very careful when you purchase a machine from these fairs.

Photo Credit - Syed Zakir Hossain, The Daily Star

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