Change The Desktop DummyChange The Desktop Dummy

What about redefining holistically the PC/laptop desktops for real time communications?

What's getting stuffed into Microsoft's software and loaded onto the desktops might require pause. In the past, as software got fatter; the desktops were replaced with faster-better processors, more memory and gadgetry to keep users up and running. Form factors for the desktops have been unimpressive.In a recent post Eric wrote in Poor Man's Xobni, that he was skeptical that we can put all this stuff in the PC/laptop desktop, and will it work? Eric also cross-posted a link to an older post he wrote, What It'll Take for Softphones to Work. A reader (Etherdude) and I have been going back and forth on that subject (I do not disagree with Etherdude) and I started thinking about the old days--(I was having a geezer moment) about Nortel's then new product called the Display Phone. Yes, I had one back in 1982 and I used it to dial up from corporate the PBXs that I had laid in with modems all around the country-saving travel expense and time to respond to issues and to manage changes. Life was good.

Here we are today and I think that a question needs to be asked about the user's desktops. It seems that a holistic view and examination is in order to review exactly what do users do and what do they need at their desktops? How can convergence, communications and technology improve upon and make available a new and improved desktop that eliminates the churn of the past, of replacing desktops every year or two, and provide a solution that makes sense? I don't think PCs or Macs were ever designed with the holistic view of including data, voice and video and now UC as we use them or want to use them today in business--they simply evolved. My argument is simple: build better mousetraps; while Etherdude correctly argues that you can't really blame the network and that we should set user expectations.

Even so when you get to the heart of Eric's questions--what does it take to get a softphone and all this UC stuff to work--and then consider again what's provided to the user and how it benefits the user and how it works. If you read the posts between Etherdude and myself here--then think about the general attitude of softphones: they're not really supported well enough by desktops to elicit that confidence we have in desktop phones. Now, I've had customers' employees thanking me for not pitching softphones. No one has said that UC tools that end up stuffed into the desktop won't be supported, but they haven't addressed the desktop from the standpoint of real time communications either. Then, when I read Dave Michels post: Remember When IP Phones Were Cool? I can't help but say, hey wait a minute-long before IP phones, life was good.

So my question is what about redefining holistically the PC/laptop desktops for real time communications? All the futuristic stuff involving distributed routing, neural networks and eliminating desktop phones can't mean that we can keep avoiding the PC/laptop desktop. You can't pitch a tool (UC, softphone, or any other) and then say, "it can't support itself."What about redefining holistically the PC/laptop desktops for real time communications?