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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.
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!
The mighty desktop has been humbled by user demand for the one thing it can't deliver -- mobility.
Persoanlly I don't move around my 5 square foot cube enough to necessitate a laptop, maybe when I'm OUT of the workplace...
Wah Sig!
Try out fish, the friendly interactive shell.
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.
Javascript + Nintendo DSi = DSiCade
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.
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.
I have nothing to hide. So, why are you spying on me?
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.
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.
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.
And JUST when Linux was going to be ready for the desktop!
"Every decent man is ashamed of the government he lives under." - H.L. Mencken
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).
If you "get" pointers add me as a friend (116)!
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!
If you mod me down, I *will* introduce you to my sister!
You obviously haven't seen my awesome 6.8GHz laptop with 1 Terabyte of RAM. Eats those dual Xeons for lunch!
The 56" widescreen is a bit difficult to fold, or use outside on a windy day, though... still, it's worth it to be mobile!
You see? You see? Your stupid minds! Stupid! Stupid!