While we miss the engineered style of the Surface Book 3 Dynamic Fulcrum Hinge (and its name), the new Surface Laptop Studio is probably a better bet for users in the real world.

The Surface Book (and the new Surface Laptop Studio) compete with 360-degree 2-in-1 laptops including the Lenovo Yoga and HP x360s hybrids.  Unlike those models, flipping the screen on the old Surface Book required detaching and reattaching the tablet display.   This meant users had to interrupt the connections to their ports, keyboard and graphics card, all of which were housed in the Surface Book’s keyboard.  This required some disruption to the user's workflow, as well as a bit of fumbling.

The new hinge should be less disruptive than the 360 alternatives, which need to be picked up from the desktop to flip the display.  It's certainly less disruptive than removing and re-attaching the display. 
​We might be seeing a few more 2-in-1 hybrid laptops like this.  We know of one or two already.

​The Surface Laptop Studio can switch from laptop, to easel, to tablet without interrupting any applications or needing to unplug anything.  From laptop mode, you can flick the top half of the screen back and pull it forward in to an easel position (with magnetic tethers to hold in place) or pull forward until fully flat for use as a tablet.

​The non-detachable screen means the display can no longer be removed for use as a lightweight standalone tablet. That said, using the older Surface Book's detachable screen as a tablet meant forgoing the NVIDIA graphics that were housed inside the keyboard.  Otherwise, the screen needed to be detached, rotated, and reattached to the keyboard, making a bulkier tablet overall. 
​
By comparison, switching between modes on the new Studio is a matter of push and pull.

The Laptop Company supplies and maintains device fleets for critical services including emergency services, DHBs, local and central government agencies, and utility providers.  For these teams, as well as the companies that depend on us for their own resilience, we have developed and tested a business continuity plan that works for us in the real world.  Given this is New Zealand, we have had the benefit of experience, activating our BCP for events including the Christchurch and Kaikoura earthquakes, as well as the lockdowns of 2020-21.  Here's what we have implemented to help mitigate as many of the health and commercial risks as possible, so we can continue to provide consistent services to our customer community while keeping our team as safe as possible.

The following provides some guidance on what we do, and why.

1. Work from Home. 
   All employees that can work from home are equipped to do so.  We sell laptops, so for us this is straight-forward.  Internet access, desktop accessories and their ability to accommodate a workspace are all factors we worked with.
2. Cloud services. 
   We have migrated a number of services that we use operationally to support our customers from on-premises to the cloud.  This reduces our dependence on servers at our premises and their uptime for delivering and supporting critical teams.
3. Duplication of capabilities.
   By having multiple employees who have the training and access rights necessary to fulfil critical roles, we provide operation redundancy for critical roles.
4. Duplication of facilities.
   With service operations in Auckland, Wellington, Christchurch and Dunedin, we provide the capability to divert service and maintenance jobs between our locations in the event any location needs to close or isolate.  We also run duplicate teams split between our Auckland and Wellington offices for managing customer device fleets, with team members who are equipped for work from home
5. Split workforce.
   In our Wellington HQ, essential operations teams are split by floor.  Team members do not travel to other floors, share communal spaces with team members from other floors or meet with them physically.  Critical roles have duplicate capabilities split team members on different floors. 
   ​This helps prevent an infection on one floor from spreading across our HQ.
6. 100% vaccinated workforce.
   Much like 95% of the eligible population, each of our team members have sought to be vaccinated to help protect themselves, as well as those around them. 
7. Mask usage and good hygiene.
   Mask wearing is required for all visitors, and our team members are masked for the safety of visitors.  Masks and hand-sanitiser are available at each of our locations for visitors.  Where our employees are required to be present on-site at a customer location, mask usage and adherence with any additional guidelines set out by the customer apply.
8. Restricted Access and the Vaccine Pass.
   During the Red light setting, all visitors, including couriers and suppliers, are required to present a valid Vaccine Pass as a condition of entry to our locations.  Access under the Red light is via prior appointment, which enables us to provide separation between customers in common spaces.
9. Car-pooling for essential on-site staff.
   Public transport is a risk for virus transmission, because of this, most operators will be running at reduced capacity to increase physical distancing.  This creates capacity issues that can affect riders.  To reduce the exposure of essential on-site staff in our fulfilment and service teams, we have implemented a car-pooling arrangement.  This is based on floor-separated team membership and geography.  By car-pooling, team members can reduce their exposure to the public while minimising their impact on traffic volumes.

Covid has disrupted supply chains, and its impact overseas has been felt in New Zealand.  We have created additional supply chain redundancy and capacity through:

1. Duplicate supplier sources for key brands.
   If one source needs to lockdown, we have alternative options.
2. Sourcing from supply chains outside of Auckland, as well as within Auckland.
   This reduces our exposure to local regional lockdowns.
3. The use of multiple redundant courier and freight suppliers.
   This reduces our dependence on supplier workplaces remaining unaffected.
4. Advanced forecasting for our customers.
   This helps our customers secure stock from the factory.
5. Active supply chain management.
   Allows us to source stock from alternative distributors when required through stock and supply chain monitoring within their operations.
6. Increasing our stock holdings.
   Allows us to ship in-demand devices directly without depending on global and national supply chains.

1. Equip your team members for work from home. 
   This includes suitable computers setups, system access, internet, security, and support.  If your workplace has specific requirements for desk setups and ergonomics, these will likely apply for employees at home too.  Contact us if you need assistance doing this – we have been helping many organisations on this.
2. Reduce single points of failure in your team. 
   If you have individuals who perform functions that cannot be done by anyone else, then you cannot afford for them to become sick. Identify your team’s single points of failure and get suitably skilled peers from within their team to upskill to take on their responsibilities in the event of illness. 
3. Create split teams for critical functions. 
   If your entire staff becomes ill, your business is too.  Splitting teams by floors, locations or by on/off days can help your team members create redundancy and reduce the spread of illness. If one team becomes ill or needs to isolate, your other team can fill in the gaps.
4. Plan your procurement and communicate with your suppliers. 
   Just-in-time delivery of things that your business needs is the ideal in normal times - but it creates the risk of late or non-delivery when supply chains are compromised.  We have been working with multiple organisations who have discussed their requirements and timelines with us.  This in turn allows us to forecast and secure stock from the factory, instead of depending on distribution networks alone.  A firm customer order is prioritised at the factory for most industries.
5. Create some room. 
   All plans go out the window if you don’t have the resources to fulfil your requirements.  For us, this meant increasing stock holdings, for you it could mean increasing staff levels for critical activities, reassessing project timelines, increasing cash reserves, or holding spare equipment.
6. Follow Ministry of Health advice. 
   Much of the rest of the world has been impacted economically and individually by Covid-19.  The actions taken by New Zealanders to date have reduced the impact, and reduced spread throughout our communities.  With good luck and good judgment, we will be well placed for a post-Covid world. 

Click the Contact us button, speak to your account manager or call us: 

Having the right tools for the job is critical in every profession. If you have staff who are working with large amounts of data and need more powerful devices, we can make it easy and cost-effective to swap out existing devices or add to your fleet. In this article we’ll talk you through who can benefit from AMD Ryzen™ PRO processors and how we can help you migrate from old to new devices.

Who is best suited to devices with AMD Ryzen™ PRO processors?
If you’re looking at our range of HP devices and you’re not sure whether to choose Intel Core or 5th gen AMD Ryzen™ PRO processors, here is a quick summary of when it’s better to go with the AMD. When it comes to the HP EliteBook and EliteDesk range, there are no bad choices either way.  If your staff are crunching numbers, creating large media files, compressing large files, or developing software, AMD processors can provide the speed and power they need due to their six or eight-core design and innovative Zen 3 architecture. If you’d like to know more, we recently published an article that goes into more detail about AMD Ryzen™ PRO 5000 Series Mobile Processor performance.

Choosing your devices
If you know which devices and PCs are right for your team, then that’s great! If not, our experts are here to help. We can help you evaluate the software your users need, against the latest AMD Ryzen™ PRO powered HP devices.  Different applications are optimised for different hardware.  With The Laptop Company, fleet buyers can test and procure with confidence.
 
Migrating from existing technology
Are your staff already set up with the programs, security management and settings they need? We make migrating from existing hardware platforms, software versions and cloud services simple. To minimise downtime and avoid lost data, we use cloud and on-premises services to help each user migrate seamlessly to their new AMD Ryzen™ PRO powered HP device. We can also take care of decommissioning old devices securely and safely to protect your organisation, as well as the environment. With The Laptop Company's deployment and migration services, you can migrate users without anyone noticing they're not using an Intel-powered device.
 
Re-homing your old devices
Not sure what to do with the devices you’ve replaced? We’ve got that covered too. We can either get them ready for another user in your organisation or if they’re suitable for reuse, securely wipe, and re-condition them for use in New Zealand-based groups and charitable organisations in need. And at the end of their second life, each device is recycled by a New Zealand recycling partner.
 
Are you thinking about equipping your power users with high performance devices, without the expense of workstation class devices? Make the transition easy, pain-free and cost effective with migration and deployment services from The Laptop Company. Get in touch with our experts to learn more about HP EliteBook and EliteDesk devices powered by AMD Ryzen™ PRO and how they could benefit your team.

Whether your team is crunching numbers, creating media or coding software, having the right device can make or break a workday. Over the past decade, we’ve seen an explosion of data due to the rapid increase of devices such as smartphones, sensors and tablet computers. We’re living in the age of “Big Data” and with this era comes big opportunities for industries such as healthcare, finance, building, surveillance and more. In fact, if you were to take a closer look at some of your teams, you might be surprised to see how many Big Data projects are happening right now.
 
For power users such as analysts, developers, architects and creators, there’s no room for performance and efficiency woes. That’s where AMD’s Ryzen™ PRO 5000 Series Mobile Processors come in. In the areas of performance, and efficiency, they’re hard to beat when it comes to cost. Here’s why.

Made by a leading innovator
When AMD introduced their AMD’s Ryzen™ PRO 5000 Series Mobile Processors, it sent shockwaves through the tech industry. They not only delivered incredible performance and speed—they did it at an extremely competitive price. With feats like this, it’s not surprising AMD was listed as a top-ten innovator by Fast Company this year.

High performance like never before
So, what makes the AMD’s Ryzen™ PRO 5000 Series Mobile Processors so impressive? Well, for starters, they’re built with Zen 3 core architecture to deliver big improvements in performance and efficiency.  This is great news for power users who need to process large amounts of data quickly to get their job done.
 
They also feature more physical cores than competing devices. More cores mean more brain power as more calculations can made at the same time. To gain an appreciable performance boost, you need to be using apps and doing tasks that are designed for multi-core processing. These can include media encoding, 3D rendering, complex Excel calculations and image transformations. If you have a team working on video or content creation, then their encoding time can be considerably faster, likewise for teams waiting for reports to be generated from your business tools. The AMD versions of the current HP Elite range are typically a bit less expensive than their equivalents. With The Laptop Company's deployment and migration services, you can migrate users without anyone noticing they're not using an Intel-powered device.

Speed and productivity 
AMD Ryzen™ PRO processors provide instant responsiveness by reducing communication time between core-to-core and core-to-cache. This makes it particularly ideal for power users who are generating data-heavy reports, compressing and rendering videos, 3D modelling, developing and compiling software, and more.
 
Energy efficiency
With a commitment to reducing energy consumption, AMD have made their AMD Ryzen™ PRO 5000 Series Mobile Processors 24%¹ more energy efficient than previous generations and have gained a 2.8X² energy efficiency lead over competition. This means you can get longer battery life out of mobile devices, enjoy significant energy savings, and rest easy with a smaller environmental footprint. Most importantly this means longer battery life, more efficient cooling and greater overall device life and stability.
 
Lightweight and mobile 
With work from home and the office now the norm, it’s important for businesses to equip their staff with technology that can move. Thanks to the compact technology used in AMD Ryzen™ PRO processors, that can now extend to staff who are working with large amounts of data. Your analysts, creators, and developers are no longer confined to the office. They can have the same freedom as other staff.
 
In our digital age, you can’t afford not to equip your staff with the right tools. If you’d like to know more about our range of HP laptops and PCs with 5th gen AMD Ryzen™ PRO processors, our team is here to answer your questions and help you find the right devices. Get in touch today or visit our AMD processors page for more info.

1 & 2 - ​AMD "Zen 3" Core Architecture | AMD

Did you know that you can achieve performance and cost-efficiency goals with your device fleet while also doing good for the world? Our HP Device as a Service and fleet solutions are designed to provide product stewardship including diverting useful devices from landfills by repairing instead of replacing, re-homing the devices you no longer need and recycling as much as possible. Below, we give you a behind-the-scenes look at how we help businesses achieve broader outcomes with their device fleet. 

Repair devices 
The warranty on your devices might not last as long as their design-life. Outside of warranty, repairs can be prohibitively expensive, with parts often costing more than new devices. This applies to user-damage caused to devices that isn’t covered by the warranty too. That doesn’t mean it’s time to throw them away.  
As part of our Renew solution for fleet owners, we use high-quality repair facilities to help prevent devices from entering landfills before their time is up. To put that into perspective, we’re helping save around 150kg of carbon (plus manufacturing waste) for each device we repair instead of replacing them with a new device. On top of saving the environment, this can also help your organisation save big on unnecessary costs. 

Reuse parts 
As part of our Renew program, we can take broken and mothballed devices from your fleet--with parts that still have plenty of life left--and break them down to create your own spare parts pool. These can then be used to fix other devices in your fleet, instead of paying for replacement parts at market rates. That means less cost for you and less waste going to landfill. We’d say that’s a pretty good win-win scenario, wouldn’t you? We can also create a pool of spare HotSwap devices from these parts, ready to dispatch directly to users who have broken or faulty devices without any delay. 

Re-homing your old devices 
When you upgrade your fleet, chances are you’ll end up with devices that are still in good working condition but are no longer useful to you. We’ve got an answer for that too. We can securely wipe, repair and re-condition corporate devices then give them a second life through New Zealand-based groups and charitable organisations in need. That means better quality devices, with better environmental standards going to users in need, instead of more disposable devices. By doing this, we can help close the digital divide while diverting good quality technology from the landfill. At the end of their second life, each device is recycled by our New Zealand-based recycling partner. 

Responsible disposal 
When the time does come for your devices to be disposed of, we can make sure they’re recovered and recycled by a New Zealand-based ISO14001 accredited provider. Why? Making sure your devices are properly disposed of reduces the amount of hazardous material going into landfill and will also make sure certain materials are recycled where possible. 

Recyclable packaging 
Guess where all that polystyrene packaging from electronics and consumer goods is going? Straight into landfill. Often taking up more space than the products themselves, polystyrene generally isn’t recyclable in New Zealand. At The Laptop Company, we’re advocating for a reduction in packaging that isn’t recyclable in New Zealand and we’re working hard to give you better packaging options.  
​
For example, the latest HP EliteDisplay monitors and EliteBook laptops powered by Intel® Core™ processors are now using more eco-friendly materials in the packaging. They’re delivered in uncoated recyclable cardboard that incorporates recycled natural fibres and zero polystyrene. On top of this, we’re also offering optional packaging collection for delivery to recycling facilities for teams who are ordering devices in volume quantities. 

Bulk –packaged devices minimise packaging 
Another tip worth mentioning is that fleet owners can reduce packaging volume by ordering bulk-packaged devices. Instead of using individual shipping cartons for each device, we can source bulk packed cartons that use less material and take up less space. That means it reduces packaging waste while also reducing the amount of space taken up by each device in transit from the factory which reduces transport emissions. For more information about our bulk-packaged devices, get in touch with your account manager and they’ll be happy to talk you through it. 

Establish sustainable IT practices 
Last but not least, we also help businesses incorporate sustainable practices across their IT landscape with measures that are designed to save energy, waste and emissions. For example, power usage can be a major contributor to an organisation’s emissions during high demand periods. By optimising your device fleet and tracking usage, you can save on power and help reduce these emissions. As part of our DaaS solution we can monitor usage to address unnecessary power consumption by your user devices. We’ve also been helping teams switching from high energy-consuming devices, including desktop computers and workstations, to more efficient laptops and mobile workstation devices such as HP Elitebook enterprise-class laptops and HP ZBook Firefly workstations powered by Intel® Core™ processors. These consume a fraction of the electricity while providing substantial performance and portability for use anywhere. 


Achieve better outcomes for your business and the world with a responsible device fleet setup. With our DaaS and fleet solutions, you can help reduce emissions and hazardous waste, give useful devices to those who couldn’t afford it otherwise and reduce ewaste dumping in developing nations. The best part is that you can do all of this while getting the most life out of your fleet and saving costs. Want to know more? Get in touch with our team today to find out more. 

At the end of the day, most business decision-makers aren’t concerned with the finer details of how you manage and maintain your company’s IT fleet. They simply want to know how much they’re spending, the ROI they’re receiving and how they can reduce costs. To that end, IT teams face the challenge of selecting devices that are modern and powerful enough to enable optimal efficiency, while continually focusing on the bottom line.  
​
So what can you do to reduce IT fleet management and ownership costs? ​

Conduct an inventory of your IT assets 
Hidden or overlooked IT costs are common across many businesses – particularly those with multiple, disparate functions or legacy systems. In these instances, non-integrated IT systems not greatly raise costs but can also result in inefficient processes, duplicated workloads, errors and bottlenecks. In most cases, it’s possible to cut costs immediately by taking an inventory of all IT assets. Doing so will enable you to pinpoint areas of over-provisioning or obsolescence, and identify opportunities to phase out outdated or redundant devices, and unsupported or non-compliant solutions.  

At The Laptop Company, this is a service we offer through our Account Management team.  We can help you identify opportunities to rationalise your procurement, redeploy devices within your team, source best-fit devices for intended applications and develop a long-term deployment strategy to balance fleet capability with budget. ​

To learn more about how we can help reduce the cost of your IT fleet, get in touch with the team at The Laptop Company. ​

With work from home looking to be a mainstay of modern workplaces (and ongoing restrictions on travel), we've been noticing how sickly we look on standard laptop webcams.  There is a decent solution for better quality meetings and chat in the Poly Studio P5 external webcam. 
At 1080p Full HD resolution, the P5 has a better quality image sensor than most laptops, and with its large lens, better optics for a clearer, brighter and higher contrast image.  Users of devices like the Microsoft Surface Pro, which has a high quality camera, are less likely to find the P5 useful.  For anyone who has a desktop monitor setup, the P5 provides the flexibility to use a monitor-mounted camera in place of their laptop webcam.

A corporate-class laptop's web cam from 2020 versus the Poly Studio P5.
Note the deeper colour in the harbour (out the window) and the reflected sky on the table, the greater contrast between the yellow and black stripes, the contrast between the two gloves, greater sharpness of the circuit pattern on the table and overall colour saturation and sharpness. The laptop webcam we've compared the P5 to is 720p, which is comparable in resolution to most corporate-class laptops laptops as of 2021.

The difference between the murkiness of the laptop's webcam versus the P5 is clear.
If you're looking to improve the professionalism of client and corporate presentations on platforms like Teams and Zoom, the Poly Studio P5 is easy to recommend.  It may also be of use for special situations including management presentations and for media engagement.  When viewed on large displays and devices, including the Surface Hub 2s, the improvement in image quality is even more apparent.

The Poly Studio P5 connects via USB Type A and includes a USB pass-through port for connecting things like USB headsets (without requiring a second port from your laptop or docking station).  Users of USB-C-only laptops (like the MacBook range) will need a USB-C to USB-A adapter.
It's small enough to be bundled in a laptop bag and requires no external power supply. ​Look and feel is retro PC-medical with a dappled cream/grey finish.
An adjustable monitor mount is included to balance the P5 on your monitor. This can be removed and substituted with a tripod (a tripod mount screw is included). Users of frameless monitors may find the standard mount can partially cover the very top of the monitor image.
The camera includes a microphone, however you may find a decent quality laptop can provide equally good, if not better audio quality and noise cancellation through its internal microphones (some experimentation is advised). 
​The camera also features a physical lens cover for privacy.

The Poly Studio P15 is the bigger brother with speakers included for video conferencing without a headset.

With a 4K camera, the P15 provides even greater clarity for professional presenters where audiences will be viewing on the big screen. It also provides zoom and crop functionality to focus on the presenter.  This doesn't work as smoothly as some we've seen. The P15 doesn't tend to follow people who walk and talk, and can hunt a bit when there are groups of people within a meeting room.  Zooming in reduces the image resolution, which is apparent if the presenter is far from the camera. 
We tried the P15 with our Surface Hub 2s, which also has a 4K camera.  Both have excellent image quality and clarity, and a similar 90 degree field of view to capture a typical meeting room well.  The P15 comes in handy with its zoom function when a single participant is in front of the Hub, or if you want to point a camera back at the Hub and the presenter without a full Teams Rooms setup, as long as you have a sufficiently long USB cable.

While the P5 is an easy solution for improving the quality of Teams chats and presentations, the size of the P15 makes it more likely to be more useful for permanent installation for trainers, media presentations and small, shared meeting spaces. 

​The P5 is likely a better solution for the rest of us.

Both the Studio P5 and P15 use attractive uncoated carboard boxes with egg-crate style protective padding inside, instead of foam or polystyrene. With distinctive Poly branding on the outside, both prove that good packaging can be recyclable and protective without non-recyclable foams.  For anyone looking to eliminate polystyrene from their waste streams and opt for 100% recyclable packaging, the Poly cameras tick the box.  All of the packaging components are marked for easier separation and recycling.