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."

Comments

Well, not really...

[Brandon K]

In these days, there are public computers just about everywhere you turn. Public libraries, schools, internet cafes, I've even seen some coffee shops which have a few usable desktops. Not to mention that almost all people have their own PC.

I don't think portability should be a huge concern. Personally, I wouldn't even consider buying a laptop until they are guaranteed a much longer battery life. 2 or 3 hours max while playing something like WoW? No thank you!

Re:Well, not really...

[Valiss]

If you're sitting in one place long enough to play a game for 3 hours, plug it in.


Obviously, you don't travel much. There aren't too many outlets on the airlines I've flown.

Nah...

[jigjigga]

People may like having cell phones/blackberries/access to terminals in libraries/etc... but at the end of the day they head back to their desktop.

Is mobility overrated?

[tjstork]

Do you really want to lug a computer with you everywhere? Is it really that important to get your bosses email while you are at a party with 8 drinks in you? Or do you just not drink in case your boss sends you an email. Don't be a surf, throw all those shackles away and buy guns and booze instead.

Re:Is mobility overrated?

[Weaselmancer]

My thoughts exactly. Why be a slave just because your idiot supervisor makes promises you have to keep by constantly working? Laptops. Gah.

Work 8 hours a day then go the fuck home. And go walk in a park, for Christ's sake.

Sun Ray

[AKAImBatman]

As was mentioned in the article, laptops can be difficult to use for a full 8 hour day. The keyboard is all wrong, and the screen is always too low. Docking stations take care of that problem (expensive!), but that still doesn't solve a company-wide problem of laptop support. For example, laptops introduce a problem with keeping all files on a shared server (though folder caching can help somewhat), and laptops are prone to breakage which both increases costs and may result in lost data.

One of the more interesting ideas in recent years has been the Sun Ray Station. Tying into the previous article, the idea is that each employee is given a secure SmartCard that contains both his secret login key as well as information on how to make the Ray Station connect with the server. The advantage this has over traditional thin clients is that the user is allowed to roam to any available computer and simply "plug in". As soon as the card is inserted, your desktop is brought up EXACTLY where you left it!

This technology gets even more exciting when you realize that it can be used from remote locations. i.e. If I have a Ray Station at home (quite fesible given their cost), I can simply insert my card into my home station. The station looks at the info on the card, finds the remote server, and logs me in. Zero configuration, instant satisfaction.

Of course, the idea of Ray Stations doesn't help if you need to work from a coffee shop, hotel, or on the plane. (Many planes are adding wireless data points.) For those situations, Tadpole has developed a laptop-like product known as the Comet. It's a complete portable unit, with a large screen, wifi, and exceedingly long battery life. (Up to 8 hours!) Simply plug your card into the laptop when you're near a Wifi point, and BAM, you've got access to your desktop!

Sadly, the Sun Ray Station concept still leaves you high and dry in many different situations. (e.g. On the bus or train.) But the concept is there, and further research and development by Sun combined with more and more Wifi points popping up may very well lead to the perfect solution that both centralizes your data yet gives employees the mobility they need.

Re:Sun Ray

[Teckla]

One of the more interesting ideas in recent years has been the Sun Ray Station. Tying into the previous article, the idea is that each employee is given a secure SmartCard that contains both his secret login key as well as information on how to make the Ray Station connect with the server. The advantage this has over traditional thin clients is that the user is allowed to roam to any available computer and simply "plug in". As soon as the card is inserted, your desktop is brought up EXACTLY where you left it!

Call me paranoid, but...no thanks. I don't want to plug into "any available computer". Mostly because the previous guy using it may have picked his nose, sneezed on the keyboard, typed with greasy fingers after eating a slice of pizza, or failed to wash his hands after a particularly nasty bout of diarrhea.

No thanks, no thanks, no thanks...

Re:Sun Ray

[AKAImBatman]

I don't want to plug into "any available computer".

Just because you can, doesn't mean you have to. I personally have always envisioned each employee having his "own" thin client, and only replacing it as necessary. (I used to support a Citrix Winframe installation, so the concept is quite familiar to me.) What I loved about the Sun concept though, was that I wouldn't have to drag my boss or cow-orker into my office to show them the "Cool work-related thing of the week." Instead, I can simply take the card with me to my boss's office. When I get there, I temporarily remove his card and plug mine in. That way we can discuss whatever the issue is, then I can put his card back in and he'll be exactly where he was before I left.

I imagine this would work particularly well in (non-software) engineering diciplines, where the ability to quickly move the model on your screen around the work area is worth its weight in gold.

Re:Sun Ray

[lelitsch]

Have you actually used a Sun Ray station? The might have improved tremendously over the last couple of years, but as of 2003, they were pretty much unusable except in very special circumstances (email lab, internet cafe,...). Maybe a call center. But anything that needs fast graphics, or a wide range of applications simply doesn't work.

They finally got rid of the original SunRay with the build in fairly crappy 15" monitor, but it still doesn't give you mobility in a way that a laptop does. You can move from Ray Station to Ray station, but you can't go to a meeting room, move from your table to a chair in the cafeteria, and so on.

The Sun Ray has its place when you need data terminals that people can move between. Nurse stations would be a perfect place for them--just give every nurse and doctor a smart card. But now what if the nurse or a doctor wants a computer to take into the patients' rooms on rounds? Do you put a Sun Ray at the end of every bed? Do you buy additional laptops for this purpose and then upload the data via WiFi to the central server and from there to the individual stations? The latter would work, but then you are back to having a mixed network which is what the Rays were supposed to avoid.

If and when the introduce a Ray laptop or tablet, it might be worth another look, but until then, a SunRay only slightly more mobile than a desktop.

Re:Sun Ray

[LWATCDR]

You could do the same thing with a linux terminal server. I have often thought that this could be a future direction for computers to go.
You could make a nice laptop that runs one on the New Xscale, Alchemy, or G4s chips. Use a small flash drive for booting and run a VNC or an x Terminal. All the apps would run on a remote server and so would your mass storage.
This would take universal high speed wireless and wired connections.
What is scary is it actually is logical. Why worry about backing up and viruses? Just pay your monthly fee and let the experts do it. While the idea of turning over our computing resources to a big company freaks all of out think about it. How many of us grow our own food? We have come to depend on experts to provide us with something far more fundamental than cpu time. That has got to be Microsoft's true fear. I am waiting for Google Office, calendar, and Google TV.

Re:Sun Ray

[HawkingMattress]

Seriously ?
And do you apply the same principle to every object you have to physically interact with when you're in public places ?
Do you promptly wear your gloves when you have to shake someone's hand ? The contact with the hand is even more direct than with a keyboard, after all. Yes, everything everywhere is full of germs, and totally disgusting when you think about it at the microscopic level. You just need not to think about it and relax, because you have to live with it. And anyway, your body is designed to combat those germs, at least for now. But with this type of comportment one day humans will die if they ever talk each other without wearing filters.

Tell me about the death of Computing

[denissmith]

For certain applications ( which he alludes to in TFA ) - Graphics, visualization, scientific computing, etc. the desktop is still essential. But the reason isn't that it sits on a desk, or is tethered to the wall, its because you need faster processing power, faster hard drives and much, much bigger screen real estate. I would love to move to a laptop, but the small screen and slow hard drive make large scale image editing ( a small file is 120MB, a big file is 1.6GB) impossible. Plus heat. These things run hat for constant use. What's changed is that more users are able to find a better fit with the computing power that they actually need ( part time use, web surfing, email and word processing, and number crunching in the accountiing, not scientific data, sense.) This isn't so much the end of the desktop as the rise of something new. In a few years ( Google willing) we'll be reading stories of the demise of the laptop, as web based filesystems and ubiquitous broadband wireless allow cheap cell phone processing to.... Whatever. The fact is that computing is becoming available everywhere and all the time and that means it is becoming invisible. It will be built into the fabric of everything. It won't be separate anymore.

Nice Try, but I'm Not Convinced

[Azarael]

I kind of disagree with the mobility argument in the FA. Once you're done unplugging the power, mouse keyboard, speakers and any other peripherals, you may have just copied your work to a network directory so you can just access it somewhere else (you don't even have to lug the laptop with you). Also, I'd like to know how much 3d and autocad work was done on a laptop. What it comes down to, is that most of the downsides that were mentioned about pc's are not that hard to overcome and there are only a few situations where laptops are really that much of a necessity.

Love my desktop, refused a laptop many times

[snowwrestler]

Why? Because I leave the desktop at work at the end of the day. I have a personal laptop I can use if I absolutely need to check e-mail, but without a company laptop I don't have the software or VPN connection to do any sort of real work. It is one way to enforce a bit of life balance on myself--something that slips away easily if I know I can "just finish that up at home in front of the TV."

Hmmm.....

[mpapet]

I think he's responding more to two very recognizable trends and packaged it as "the death of the workstation":

1. The growing laptop unit sales versus the average slow-growth workstation unit sales.

2. The decline in wealth and political influence of the American middle-class. (using mode not mean or median, see asia times for some IMF reporting http://atimes.com/atimes/Global_Economy/EH16Dj01.h tml)

3. There are more companies where it's perfectly okay to treat employees like the developers at EA widely reported on some months ago. So squeeze all potential productivity out of a worker, because the computers and applications and resources we have been so generous in providing are enough to do the job.

iBook Nano

[dancpsu]

With the decline of the desktop, Apple has decided to release a new system called the iBook Nano. It has 8GB of flash memory 1 GB of SDRAM, wireless connectivity, and no hard-disk, CD or DVD drive at all. It runs a special version of Tiger that mounts iDrive storage over the web with it's included .mac account, where you can access Apple's software library for a small monthly fee. Also supported is the Mac mini as a wireless server for your software and music storage needs.

Have both...

[digitalhermit]

My office (well, cubicle) is set up the same way. The laptop goes onto a docking station attached to a couple largish LCD monitors. The laptop has a browser, Java, text editor and most importantly, an SSH client. In other words, the laptop is just a glorified terminal since the real work goes on in the servers and a fixed desktop machine. I access home email via a web page. Work email is either replicated or accessed via a webpage or local client.

At home I have multiple machines running different applications that are accessed either via X-over-SSH or VNC. At 100Mbit, remote applications appear to be running locally and are even accessed via the same desktop menu using VNC passwd files. Having the laptop is really convenient because I can roam the house and do anything I need, including watch video.

MS remote desktop?

[way2trivial]

My first hand experience...

my pc at work SUCKS, but my connection doesn't (dsl at work, comcast cable at home)

I use windows remote desktop, (mstc.exe) and pull up my desktop from home pc (and due to using the termserv.dll hack) while my wife uses the same pc at the same time for whatever. Including CPU sucking games... when I get home, I log in, and my desktop is '''' exactly the same as I left it at work ''''! cursor blinking in the same spot etc,. if I go out to my shed, I can pull it up on my old windows ME laptop and keep working there (and smoke!) over wifi.. except for video, I can do everything I can do without being there...

I don't have firsthand experience with, but thought 'roving desktops' for XP & with windows server was basically the same thing-- for multiple users....

Laptops do the job for most workers

[r_benchley]

At the place where I work (insurance company), they just replaced my trusty workstation (1.6gHz P4 desktop) with a Toshiba M3 laptop. From time to time I have to head out on the road, so it's nice to have a laptop. Also, I occasionally give PowerPoint presentations, so I can just remove my laptop from the docking station and set it up in the conference room, rather than requisitioning equipment from IS for the meeting. At work I use Access, Excel, Word, Outlook, Visio, Business Objects, Oracle, and a few custom written applications, so I don't need a lot of horsepower in my computer (although the Toshiba is fairly decent). The VAST majority of people who use computers in their jobs do not need the latest and greatest hardware to accomplish their tasks. Most people could probably get by using Pentium IIs or IIIs. On the point of employers issuing laptops in an effort to squeeze out extra work hours from their employees, that is a valid concern. In my own situation, my manager is super cool and doesn't expect me to slave away on my own personal time. There are times when I'll put in overtime or do some work from home, but it's complete optional and well-rewarded. I'm looking forward to the day when I don't need to leave the apartment to do my job. A company issued laptop and a WiMax connection would be very cool. No dress code, no commute, no putting up with the co-workers that I despise.

I'm ready to lose the desktop

[TheSync]

I'm ready to lose the desktop. Basically, security patching is driving me nuts. Yes, even on my Linux systems! Backup sucks too. I'm ready to have a diskless thin client network connected into an efficient virtual blade world with big RAIDed SANs/NASes backed up on tape/DVD/etc with a UPS, one that SOMEONE ELSE RUNS. Why should I have to install blogging and other web content management software on my server? Seriously, root is just no fun any more.

Re:the Wireless tech

[IdleTime]

Yeah and anyone who works more than their agreed upon hours per week without compensation are stupid. Thanks to all the stupid people, bosses think they can do whatever they want with employees and the stupid ones let them.

Why the hell do you think people for ages fought for 40 hour work weeks? Just so they could lay on the beach the rest of the time? You don't think working 70-80 hour weeks have any influence on your health or your family life, children etc?

Every company that asked me to work those hours only got a harsh laugh before they saw my ass walking out the door still laughing. Needless to say, the company I now work for never require people to work outside their 40 hour weeks and if they do, it's copensated and it is very rare. A company that asks you to work 70-80 hour weeks have a horrible managment and should be avoided at all cost!

Drivetop

[Doc Ruby]

Desktops were useful when no one understood computers, and were familiar with info work only in forms like desks, file cabinets, folders, documents. Now everyone understands computers, and are held back by the ill-fitting desktop metaphor. What we need are dashboards, like the ones Americans invented for cars. Essential info for navigating infospace, available at a glance, supporting the main action of getting where we're going. Get the machine out of the way, except to cushion the road.

Re:but desktops can deliver something else...

[mgv]

While I agree with the rest of your post, there is one factor you're forgetting: price. On average, a desktop costs half as much as its mobile counterpart, for similar specs. And in the corporate world, this is what the boss will look for above all else, particularly when you factor in lost, stolen, and damaged mobile devices. Speaking of theft, sensitive data is more likely to be stored in static locations, so there will always be a market for desktops.

I'd certainly agree with the theft issue - its certainly a problem today. It relates to the balance of value versus ease of theft. Having said that, as the cost falls the desire to steal them will probably decrease; but they will always be easier to steal so they are going to have to become alot cheaper than a desktop to become a lower theft risk. (Which I don't think will occur anytime soon)

The way I view price is that as the cost of production falls, alot of other factors (eg shipping, storage, marketing, etc) become a bigger and bigger part of the total cost. I don't think that the day is too far away when a very cheap laptop is about the same price as a very cheap desktop. I won't argue that the desktop will still probably have more power than the same priced laptop (you will need major economies of scale to change that). But if the price of both becomes low enough, the lower specs of the laptop may not be an issue, if it does what you want functionally.

This is where things are heading. A low end laptop is going to become (probably already is) good enough for most things. A low end desktop will do more for less. The price differential between the two will become less an less, even when the performance differential is still there. For alot of people, thats good enough.

Michael

P.S. I practise what I preach - I'm writing this at home on my G4 powerbook. We got rid of all the desktops at home 18 months ago, and haven't looked back. 3 Years ago the laptop was a compromise, now it doesn't feel that way. I am sure that for some it wouldn't be good enough, but for me and the wife, they do what we want.