As you (hopefully) know, IT Division is a big proponent of the importance of researchers choosing the productivity tools they feel most comfortable with. We've actually fought pretty hard against some folks to try to convince them what we think is true: the benefits of standardization are meager, and are far outweighed by the productivity gains of letting our community make informed choices about the tools they want and how to allocate their resources. So, it's time for our irregular check in on laptop trends.
Why Laptops: Because our data on desktops isn't as easy to parse. Desktops get used for a lot of different things (attached to scientific equipment, lab data collectors, parts of experiments, etc). Laptops, we think, are generally a better proxy to understand what end users are using as their go to computer platform.
Chart 1: Count of Laptops Currently in Use (in property database) in Scientific Divisions by Year of Purchase
|
|
|
|
Apple |
Windows/Linux |
2006 |
120 |
165 |
2007 |
167 |
226 |
2008 |
278 |
265 |
2009 |
302 |
304 |
2010 |
365 |
360 |
2011 |
380 |
305 |
2012 |
104 |
96 |
Chart 2: Count of Laptops Currently in Use (in property database) in All Divisions by Year of Purchase
|
|
|
|
Apple |
Windows/Linux |
2006 |
175 |
282 |
2007 |
200 |
328 |
2008 |
334 |
358 |
2009 |
357 |
446 |
2010 |
397 |
485 |
2011 |
449 |
463 |
2012 |
122 |
110 |
Chart 3: Laptops in Use (in property database) by Division 
Chart 4: Laptops in Use by Division - Just for 2011-2012 
Conclusion: We remain nicely heterogenous. The trend towards OSX in the laptop space is decelerating, but continuing. All but one scientific division remain decidedly mixed in their platform choices.
Most computers at LBL are bought in the last three months of the year, so the numbers for FY12 are not yet representative. We'll recap at the end of the FY.
