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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."
But desktops can deliver a few things that mobiles can't....like not burning your laptop...and the best bang for the buck performance as well as upgradability...though mini-agp and soon to be mini-pcie (?) will help notebooks with some of that.
Try out fish, the friendly interactive shell.
The desktop is dead...
You can have mine and my dual 20.1" LCDs when you pry them from my cold dead fingers. That and when I can mix and match parts (i.e. upgrade) a notebook to meet my needs.
Offices aren't just trying to get more people working more hours at the office. The push for the Centrino platform by Intel has probably started to convince employees and employers that the life of a worker exists solely to the company.
Give them a laptop and they shal work at home in the off hours, or even on vacation.
If you're sitting in one place long enough to play a game for 3 hours, plug it in.
I've heard it all before. I'm sure I'll continue hearing it for quite some time.
:)
Do we really need to hear about it from every semi-random schmuck with a blog, though? Consoles are killing the gaming pc and laptops are killing the home pc. And we'll hear about it again next year. And the year after that. And the year after that.
I guess I just can't see a family giving up a non-mobile, non-delicate system the entire family can use (from 4 years old and onward) to something that will invariably find itself cartwheeling down a flight of steps because little susie and little billy weren't careful enough. Or letting their teenage son take the home laptop into his bedroom to "do homework" late at night *cough*.
I could see it being something the adults would be interested in - but as a replacement of the home PC? That's incredibly hard to believe - no matter how many times I hear it.
You are free, of course, to test the strength of that statement by duping this article tomorrow. I'm sure it'd give everyone something to bitch about
Really, though. Call me whenever there are more laptops in homes than PCs. Call me when owning a PC becomes a niche market. Then you can tell me all about it. Until then, let's simmer the conjecture down a bit, shall we? The first time, not so bad, the second time, meh, the third time...starting to get annoying, and now, the 82nd time... well... yeah.
This reminds me of the time some years ago when "the death of the PC" was imminent. Well, there was a lot of hand-wringing over it, but it doesn't look like that came true.
On what grounds to they predict this one besides the mantra that the network is the computer and you will be doing all of your surfing through a tiny phone, when a lot of people tell me they just want a phone to be a phone, not a magic wand with worse sound quality than a turn of the previous-century aliminum drum?
My wife uses a small 12" powerbook attached to a large 22" cinema display for a good combo of mobile usability and desktop usability. The DVI port on that laptop means she's not cramped by the 12" screen most of the time. And the 12" size/ 4.5 lb weight makes for better portability.
Two wrongs don't make a right, but three lefts do.
This topic has been coming up since the advent of the mobile computer. There are definitive reasons, both business and technological, for using either a desktop or a laptop.
Things to consider:
Is the user mobile often enough to warrant the cost and risks?
Is the user likely to damage, lose, or steal it?
Is the user likely to lose, damage, or sell company information?
People who work in call centers are not likely to warrant the cost and risk of a laptop. At least not yet. 'Green' PCs and monitors mean that laptops don't save that much energy, and risk of theft or damage is higher when using laptops for non-mobile users. Additionally, upgrades and change out programs are much more expensive.
Using laptops and mobile devices increases the risks: financial, corporate IP theft or sale, information loss, productivity loss, risk of loss of functionality when the IT department isn't there to support it, and many other things.
What I basically feel is that this article, while posing some good points, is just a troll dressed in sheep's clothing. Hardware choices make sense in view of, and in combination with the domain of their use. If that domain is airplanes and hotel rooms, definitely a laptop. If that domain is strictly a cubicle - no laptop. If the domain is mixed, business reasoning comes into play. For personal use, style has its say in that choice too.
A poor analogy is that a 4wheel drive is good to have when you are fjording rivers. But if you are just commuting to work then a Hummer is a bad idea... no matter what size bear you are.
Wow, so the article points out that now computers can be mobile... not a lot to see here, move along.
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2 or 3 hours max while playing something like WoW?
Well... for WoW there're A/C power adapters. I suppose that would be annoying if you wanted to play WoW at a picnic down by the lake. For me, however, when I was moving and had no phone line (let alone an Internet connection), I was mooching off of Panera and friends for a couple weeks. I was very pleased to find that Panera does provide access to the power grid.
I know that the percentage of Americans who own computers crossed the half-way mark in 2000 -- I don't know what the number is now. But I sure as heckfire know that nowhere near 50% of Americans play WoW (only 1.5M worldwide). It's almost as if there are other things to do with a computer...
Ant Slayer
The reason many people want laptops is not to be tied to work at any time, but to be freed from the need to be in the office. Many computer workers can work just as effectively from the location of their choice with a laptop. From another state, another country, to the park down the street. Think of a laptop as a massive upgrade in the quality of your workspace, better than the corner office on the top floor.
"Who is the Journal of Quantum Physics going to believe?" --Stephen Hawking
A laptop maxes out at 15 pounds for last generation's biggest and fattest. Ever been a parent with an infant over 2 months old? They're far heavier and they squirm. And they like to be held. A LOT. :D
That off-topic point aside, I would suggest you never be wired into your job when you're out with your laptop off hours. Also, I use my laptop to jot down ideas when I'm writing, and it also carries my music and quite a few anime movies. I could of course use a really expensive and high-end PDA to do this too, but I can more readily install RedHat on my laptop than my PDA. Being that my laptop is not a gaming machine it provides me with a fairly distraction-free environment to write my stories, do homework, etc.
That being said, I'd be mad pissed if desktops went away. I use a workstation styled desktop machine at home to play games, especially real time simulators (warcraft, starcraft, etc) that no console can possibly work well with (try moving a dozen individual units around different places with any level of agility with a PS2 / Xbox controller... please, do!). My desktop machine also serves as a highly agile archive system with 2 DVD burners and several terabytes of firewire HD space online. I can back up stuff off my laptop to my desktop machine and so on.
To me, the relationship between the laptop and the desktop is my laptop is my starship and my desktop is my starbase. I would not desire a computer market in which the former or the latter has been deprecated.
--- Grow a pair, liberals... stop letting the Republicans bully you!
Took me about half an hour to drive to the store and back, and about five minutes to install the harddrive (of which I spent about three minutes with plugging and unplugging my world's favorite fire hazard, aka all the wires behind my desk).
That's it. Easy-peasy-Japanesy. Sure you can upgrade the your laptop's problem (usually without opening the case) and switch out your old harddrive but you can't just add a new one, and chances are you'll end up paying a pretty penny for your 2.5" laptop HDD.
My point? There's a place for laptops and there's a place for desktops. There is a growing number of people who can do without a desktop computer, yeah, but the vast majority have both, a laptop and a desktop machine.
A laptop is never going to replace my desktop computer.
Laptops are killing desktops for knowledge workers for one reason; keeping your data with you wherever you are. Ten or more years ago you'd find people went to work, worked, then went home again. However, it's not the laptop per se that's killed off the desktop, it's peripheral advances like wireless technology, increased mobile bandwidth and minaturisation that have done this. Wireless is without a doubt the number one reason why laptops boomed massively in the last 3 or so years.
Mobile technology also means a mobile workforce. I currently deal with around 250+ users across three locations. A lot of the supplemental departments (finance, HR, operations) move between sites and visit clients, and it's easier for them to take their whole work environment with them than mess about with software licenses, having redundant desktops lying dormant for 50% of the time etc. etc.
Granted, it's great from their point of view, but laptops are a much bigger concern for IT departments like ours, especially when they get lugged home, used on broadband conections or used on a VPN connection. They're also a pain to keep updated as users tend to move around more - maybe even connect to client networks that don't have the same level of security. In the long run though, we'd rather supply them with a manageable device like a laptop rather than have them mess around with assorted PDAs and smartphones. laptops also have a more tangible value associated with them, so in 99% of cases you don't get silly accidents.
That said, the laptop may be killing off the humble desktop, but it will never kill off the workstation. For other departments - CGI, storyboard, development, edit etc. - a laptop simply would never cut it. Lots of nearline storage (TB+), colour-matched dual monitors, renderfarms and gigs of RAM are things I'd never want to lug around in a laptop. I know some people will say it can be done, but I would hate to ever consider cutting broadcast quality video and audio on a laptop. It's also important to note that these people don't need to take their data with them. They aren't 'knowledge workers' like the others, but employed to utilise their skills on the material in situ.
That said, laptops still have a long way to go before they approach the reliability of a desktop - I think we get a fourfold increase in failures on laptops generally.
1.) Leave work at work.
2.) The last thing you should do when you get home is hop onto your personal computer, but that's what many of us do. We want to do email/IM/blog but it's the last thing we should be doing.
3.) Find hobbies that have nothing to do with technology. Ride bikes, run, lift weights, camp, geocache, buy a gun, get a significant other if you don't have one, or if you do spend more time with them.
4.) Most of all just stay well-rounded. In all aspects of your life. Keep a balance (no I'm not religious but yes this is similar to some Ancient Eastern philosophies/religions).
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Have them work while they're sick at home? Amazing. I notice you weren't suggesting you could work while you were sick at home.
It also ties in to the point from the author's blog, that laptops were sometimes used to get people to work more hours.
I'd like to see a manager look at productivity. Amount and quality of work being completed, vs amount of hours one's direct reports are at their desks. Old ideas are hard to let go of.
"Give a woman two glasses of wine and some pad thai, and they'll agree to just about anything." the Sports Guy
But then, I prefer to pound out code at my local coffeeshop instead of at home. Surprisingly, there seems to be less distraction at the coffeeshop than at home
The desktop machine has been relegated to long-term file storage since it has a crappy Intel graphics chipset and is no good for games.
What could possibly hurt the security of the American people more than giving our own government the ability to hide its
Not to mention that laptops are chock-full-O-proprietary-technology. I recommend not buying a laptop unless you absolutely need mobility. Don't just go and buy a laptop as a desktop replacement if you don't need to be mobile. Channel suppliers (all of the "distributors") are trying to be the Dell's of the white box channel at this point in time taking the major component integration role away from VARs (note that THEY are providing the warrantees rather than the VAR, that should clue you in on their motives: to make VARS nothing more than salespersons for THEIR notebook PC business). Until notebook/laptop technology evolves to a standardized platform like the desktop is (interchangeable motherboards, optical drives etc.), I suggest staying away from them. If you must have one, get a good warranty cuz fixing that bugger is going to be expensive if it breaks. DIY's stay away from laptop/notebook PCs.
I run dual 20's as well.
The desktop has its place. The notebook has its place.
The people I work with all want the superchief notebooks with 17" screens. I want the lightest, smallest one I can get. If I have to use a notebook in a meeting, fine. But when I get back, I want usable desktop space. No missing emails because it was under the document I'm writing. Video conferencing on one screen while working on the other.
No other way.
My mom says I'm cool.
Strain your brains a little and imagine being being not sick enough to be unable to work but courteous enough not to infect your office.
Not much fast, low latency internet access either, so playing MMORPGs on aircraft is out.
If you're on an airplane, you're probably not playing a MMORPG like the aforementioned World of Warcraft.