Today’s professional as well as personal life is all about increased mobility and flexibility. This is where the advantages of mobile computing make a foray to match the fast pace of our daily lives and strike a balance with our mundane computer requirements – on the move!
In general parlance, the term mobile computing pertains to all those computing activities for which mobile options have been made available to eradicate the necessity to stay fixed to a particular location. To be able to understand the concept of portable computing a little in-depth, we first need to know its three basic aspects – portable hardware, mobile software, and mobile communication. Mobile hardware deals with the devices used for portable computing, such as handsets, components, etc. Mobile software addresses the issue of mobile applications and programs, which enable the hardware to function in a non-fixed environment. Mobile communication covers the aspect of network, communication infrastructure (such as Global System for Mobile Communication, Internet, etc.), data format, protocols, etc. Let us take a detailed look at the various advantages of mobile computing to understand how it allows us to perform computing activities while on the go, providing us with the much coveted flexibility that people didn’t have access to a few generations ago!
List of Advantages
The benefits of non-stationary computing are tremendous and manifold. While it allows us to carry our virtual world with us wherever we ourselves choose to be, it does so with the same, sometimes better, ease, and smoothness, given the ever advancing communications and technologies, as done by the fixed counterparts.
- Locational Flexibility: You no longer need to stay plugged in (literally!) to a specific location for working on your computer. Mobile computing allows you unprecedented flexibility to move about and perform your activities at the same time! This is, indeed, the chief among all other benefits. Traveling abroad for work and missing family and friends? This method enables you to connect with near and dear ones while you’re in transit, thanks to evolution of this technology!
- Saves Time: Doesn’t it get boring when you’re on a 12 hour-long flight across the globe? Don’t you feel you could use some of these 12 hours to get some office work done? This technology is just the thing to use such transit time more effectively! It also allows to instantly connect with your family anywhere and anytime. Missing your parents during the college tour? Not any more! You can connect with them over Internet using portable computing devices such as Internet phones and share the fun!
- Enhanced Productivity: Increased work flexibility is directly proportionate to enhanced work productivity – the fact that you can do your work from any place you want, without waiting for, and making efforts to, get access to computing facility translates into people being able to do more work with greater flexibility. This is the reason why most companies these days offer home-computing access to employees. Suppose a national emergency is declared or any natural calamity occurs (or any other reason) due to which offices stay closed, work can still go on as people are no longer dependent upon office systems to get their work done!
- Ease of Research: Motile computing and the flexibility offered by it enable students as well as professionals to conduct in-depth research on just about any topic or subject even when on the go!
- Entertainment: As discussed previously, nowadays, with the advent and advance of mobile communication technology, no time is wasted time anymore! Getting bored is so last-decade now what with zillions of entertainment options available on mobile communication and computing devices these days – games, movies, music, videos, you name it!
These are some of the most prominent advantages of mobile computing. With the arrival of coming-of-age devices such as PDAs, Smartphones, Carputers, etc., mobile computing is here to stay and way to go!
