I work in Software Design for a company that uses a proprietary build of an off-the-shelf product where the UI is browser-based. All of our documentation is kept either on SharePoint style document sharing sites or are stored on personal network drives to make them accessible from home. Yet, the amount of paper we use in our office is overwhelming.
We are always hearing about the cost of that paper, too. And the cost of the ink for the printers. And the cost for the recycling and destruction of confidential printed docs. And the space needed to store printed documentation for the required 7 years by SOX rules. So why do we do it? We have to. Some times and with some things we just need to have printed documents. Until we began storing test bills on PDF, it was necessary to construct and store huge binders of printed bills for every round of testing. That sucks.
Okay, cool. So now everyone from Apple to Acer are marketing touchscreen web tablets. They desperately want to convince people of their need for these things (partly because people demanded them but...) but can't seem to come up with a good argument besides "you can surf the internets". Okay, so they can do more than that and the marketing is better than that but, come on, e-reader? Emailer? Web surfer? Sounds like a laptop that isn't as useful.
I guess what I'm getting at is that, for most of us, a laptop or desktop at home is too powerful but a tablet is too weak. But in the workplace, our computers don't need to be powerful, our networks do. Picture this, your desktop machine at work is a tablet on a dock. It powers on almost instantly (compared to the 20+ not exaggerating minutes it takes for my bottom-of-the-line Dell desktop to power up), is plenty powerful enough to run browser-based apps, can run an office suite (as has been proven by the iPad coming with iWork but oddly not iHome), and maybe most importantly, is portable. Once your tablet is powered on you could grab it right off the dock and take it to a meeting. In the meeting and need to share a doc? Email it right to their tablets or plug your tablet into the projector or just tell everyone where it is on the SharePoint. Make live updates to the doc based on the meeting discussion. Take your tablet to a colleagues desk for a discussion and use it to take notes. Take it outside and spend time coding in the park on a sunny day.
Could a large corporation, like the one I work for, really implement this kind of system? Probably not. I doubt the idea would make it past IT security and even though it would surely be less expensive than replacing 20,000+ Dell desktops and laptops, I doubt the company would go for that either. But a small start-up could really run with the idea and, if implemented from the beginning, could set a new standard in not only the paperless workplace but in work/life flexibility.
