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The Decline Of The Desktop
Lam1969 writes "Robert Mitchell of Computerworld has written an article about the decline of the desktop in the workplace. He also notes in his blog: 'This theme of 'squeezing' more hours out of workers came up a few times as this story came together. Using technology to increase productivity is a good thing, but in some cases productivity wasn't increasing -- employees were simply expected to work more hours.'" From the article: "After almost a quarter of a century as the personal computing device of choice for business, the desktop PC is sliding off its pedestal. It has withstood assaults by technologies such as the Windows terminal, the Web and the network PC, but the mighty desktop has been humbled by user demand for the one thing it can't deliver -- mobility."
"Yeah yeah, mobility will kill desktop PCs, it's been around the corner fro what? Half a decade?"
1) Price has not been this low in the past.
2) Notebook systems *are* being sold in record numbers. Regardless of your opinion, desktops have lost a significant share in the last half-decade.
If I am expected to be working, then I am not 'sick', I am working from home, and expect to be paid as such. That is called telecommuting.
While the growth of wifi is an important factor, I think the original article missed another contributing factor: changes in peripherals. Once upon a time, apart from printers, most peripherals -- scanners, modems, etc -- required an expansion card of some sort, and the classic, bus mounted, cards for desktops were cheap and universal. Peripherals for laptops often had premium pricing, and in any case, laptops only offered a few card slots or serial/parallel ports. If you cared about expandability, or upgradability, desktops were the way to go.
Nowadays, between USB and Firewire, a laptop is on a level playing field as far as peripherals are concerned, especially because many devices double as hubs, reliving pressure on laptop real estate. Plus, expensive docking stations are less of an issue -- for example, I use a laptop as my primary machine, but that would a pain for writing things of any length on a routine basis, so at work I just plug a regular flatscreen and a USB keyboard and mouse (the mouse actually plugs into the keyboard) and go.
In any case the peripherals most people use most often -- wireless and wired network interfaces -- tend to be built right in these days. And as for upgradability: as the article points out most people have more than enough juice in their laptops to do what they need to do.
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