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Last year, the theft of a Wells Fargo contractors laptop—with the banking records of more than 200,000 customers—made some enterprises think twice about storing valuable corporate data on portable PCs. Maxspeeds solution is a simple one: A laptop without a hard drive.
Or more precisely, a thin-client system in a portable form factor. With its black chassis and 12.1-inch display, the 2.9-pound MaxBook 810 looks like a typical ultraportable PC. But unlike other portables, the MaxBook stores a pared-down operating system and thin-client programs in its built-in flash memory.
It runs Windows XP Embedded and can be ordered with a customized mix of thin-client programs (Citrix ICA, Windows Remote Desktop, VNC, terminal emulation clients) based on your enterprises needs.
Within the walls of an organization, the MaxBook can connect to a LAN via the built-in 10/100 Ethernet adapter or a Wi-Fi–compliant wireless card (the price includes an 802.11b adapter). When you are on the road, you can still access your corporate applications and the Internet with the built-in 56K modem or via WAN wireless services now offered by Sprint and others.
That said, our experience with the MaxBook using the Sprint PCS service was mostly frustrating, due to the long latency in the wireless network. A modem connection will be your primary lifeline back to the home office. And because there is no hard drive, you wont be able to work on files locally when youre away from a phone jack (on a plane, for instance).
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