3. The Disaster

In the right situation an 11 pound package might work; like if the social workers used the notebooks on their desks and took them home to fill in an occasional form after work. But that's not what their totally IT and workflow unconscious bosses wanted them to do. They wanted their minions to fill in forms on the notebooks in real time as they did their work. To that end, the bosses had almost every paper form used by the social workers transformed into an Acrobat or Word form and decreed that paper forms could no longer be used.

If the bosses had gone into the field even once with one social worker they would have realized the absurdity of this design. First, the social workers do a lot of their work in very tight quarters where they don't even have a chair let alone a table to put their gigantic notebooks on. My friend tried it once sitting in a chair and failed as either a circus juggler or balancing artist, almost dropping the notebook on the floor several times. Second, much of what these social workers do is done in group facilities where confidentiality requirements prevent them from revealing to anyone in the facility that they are even contacting someone. Standing or sitting there, typing into a computer the size of Texas kind of blows their cover.

At just under 3 pounds, Lenovo's new X60 laptop is a great choice for highly mobile workers.

If they can adjust to the size and stylus, field workers might also appreciate Fujitsu's very small 2+ pound P1510D laptop/Tablet PC combo.

So right now my friend is back where she started, doing her real job during work hours, taking notes and filling in the forms on the notebook when she gets home.