Notebook Sales Outpace Desktop Sales

mikesd81 writes "Eweek reports that notebook sales have surpassed desktop sales for the first time in history. 'In the third quarter of 2008, notebook PC shipments rose almost 40 percent compared with the same period of 2007 to reach 38.6 million units. Conversely, desktop PC shipments declined by 1.3 percent for the same period to 38.5 million units. "Momentum has been building in the notebook market for some time, so it's not a complete surprise that shipments have surpassed those of desktops," said iSuppli principal analyst for computer platforms Matthew Wilkins. "However, this marks a major event in the PC market because it marks the start of the age of the notebook." ... The FBI's National Crime Information Center reported that the number of reported laptop thefts increased almost 48 percent over the last two years, to nearly 109,000 from 73,700.'"

Comments

That's good, but. . .

[wsidegangstarr]

Now just to get some more standards. . .and user-replaceable parts.

Re:That's good, but. . .

[morgan_greywolf]

Many parts in a laptop are user-replaceable/upradeable. The parts that matter, at least, such as the HDD and memory, for instance. Graphics cards and such often are not, however. PCMCIA was supposed to address this whole problem, but even that has its limitations.

Re:That's good, but. . .

[nevesis]

Intel tried to correct that.

The ODMs (ASUS, Quanta, Compal) who manufacture the notebooks were quite interested. It could significantly reduce manufacturing costs.

Alas, the OEMs (Dell, HP, Gateway) who sell the notebooks wanted none of it. Their replacement parts have a very high profit margin.

Re:That's good, but. . .

[wsidegangstarr]

True, there are *some* standard parts, but have you ever tried to replace a bad motherboard with an off the shelf model or ordered an upgraded 15.4" LCD from Newegg? I think not. This is where a set of standards is needed.

Re:That's good, but. . .

[ShadowBlasko]

Now just to get some more standards. . .and user-replaceable parts.

Yeah. This. I finally retired (read "Drove a sword through it to keep me from trying to repair it again and wasting my time") my 7 year old Omnibook last winter.

I really thought I would not miss it, but I missed having portable computing a lot more than I thought I would.

I picked up a gorgeous (and amazingly affordable)Pavilion 6985SE late this summer, and it is quickly becoming my favorite machine ever.

If laptop tech keeps improving at this rate, its no wonder. The video is great, and the battry life still amazes me (The 6985se has a 12 cell battery that seems to last forever)

Of course, a fresh install and wipe of all the garbage apps that came with it was a hassle, but I expect that with a machine I don't build myself, laptop or otherwise. Even buying it from Best Buy was not too much of a hassle.

I can see why people prefer them. I could not build a comparable machine (performance wise) in a desktop for the same amount of money even using my best hardware connections.

As far as user replaceable parts goes, yeah. That would be nice. The reason I had to kill my omnibook was because the (frame integrated) fan failed, and I could not get an external blower that worked worth a damn. If I could have replaced the fan, I would probably still be using it. 700mhz, 256MB of RAM and all!

Sorry for the rambling. Stuck in the call center today looking at phones that I KNOW will not ring today, and bored off my ass.

Re:That's good, but. . .

[nevesis]

You're overlooking the case and all panels, the keyboard, the touchpad, the LCD, the optical drive, the battery, the AC/DC adapter, the AC/DC powerjack (mounted to motherboards), and so on and so forth.

The sad truth is that the oligopoly of notebook OEMs aren't interested in losing their repair and replacement profit.

Re:That's good, but. . .

[nabsltd]

And, the lack of replaceable parts is one other reason why laptop sales are "higher" than desktop sales.

Although businesses most likely purchase pre-built systems that get counted in these sorts of surveys, there are many desktop sales that wouldn't get counted: any machine that is built from parts. No "whitebox" sales from local computer stores would get counted, and obviously people like me (who have purchased a pre-built desktop in 15 years) would also not be represented at all.

Laptops won't have this counting error, as there really aren't any options that allow someone to build their own.

Re:That's good, but. . .

[Sam36]

Dude that is why they sell so good already. They break and get outdated within a year.....then you have to buy a new one!

Re:That's good, but. . .

[Ironsides]

(read "Drove a sword through it to keep me from trying to repair it again and wasting my time")

There has to be an interesting story behind this. Or, at least, a good youtube video...

Re:That's good, but. . .

[Nicolay77]

Low resolution, and shitty video card.

Not my kind of laptop...

Re:That's good, but. . .

[Tony Hoyle]

Laptop optical drives are pretty standard and can be swapped out easily enough.

Re:That's good, but. . .

[ShadowBlasko]

(read "Drove a sword through it to keep me from trying to repair it again and wasting my time")

There has to be an interesting story behind this. Or, at least, a good youtube video...

The story is basically the fact that I knew that if I kept the thing around, I would keep working on it.

The unit would operate fine for about an hour or so, then random errors would occur, and finally it would become unusable. After I recovered all the data from the drives, I replaced every "decently educated user serviceable" part inside. Several re-image, re-assemblies, and frustrated screams later I discovered the burned out chassis fan.

The fan was embedded in the magnesium chassis of the machine, and is not replaceable without heroic effort and some extensive modifications.

Since there were many more pressing things to fix, I knew that I would have to make sure the machine could NOT be fixed, or I would keep trying to fix it every time I looked at it.

So I took all the hardware out, broke out my stage combat rapier, and put the damned thing out of my misery forever(p)

Sorry for the lack of video.

Re:That's good, but. . .

[ShadowBlasko]

Low resolution, and shitty video card.

Not my kind of laptop...

Well, everyone has their own needs.

Since I don't seem to be gaming much anymore, it suits me just fine.

1280x800 is more than enough for what I use it for, and I picked it up for $500 (It's still selling for around $850)

That performance, for that price.. No way I could beat it.

And, quite frankly, it has a better video card than my primary machine at home does. The only gripe at *all* I have had with it was my own unfamiliarity with 64 bit systems. And, well... Vista of course, but you can get it with XP on it, I am just sticking to Vista because I have to support it, and I figure I should have at least once machine in my corral with it on there for research use.

Re:That's good, but. . .

[cencithomas]

My almost-5-year-old Dell Inspiron 5100 says [citation needed].

Re:That's good, but. . .

[Zerth]

Just about everything except the motherboard, LCD, and case you can buy overseas with a bit of searching. LCDs & cases are best bought off Ebay as "broken laptops".

Can't really do much about the motherboard, cheaply, though. They tend to change everything with that.

Re:That's good, but. . .

[mikael]

You can get replacement parts like that from a company called NextTronics. I've kept an old laptop alive for many years through replacing parts like the LCD backlight inverter, and the dual cooling fan assembly.

Re:That's good, but. . .

[fluxburn]

What about the new 2400 gigabyte pata hard drives coming out! 2400GB Scorpio Pata 5400 Rpm 2.5IN haha

Re:That's good, but. . .

[ShadowBlasko]

Looks cool, and i will definitely keep it bookmarked.

Problem is that that fan on that laptop was literally embedded into the metal framework. Not screwed in, but part of the frame.

Not much I could do about that one.

Re:That's good, but. . .

[mikael]

That sounds like the problem I had. I could only buy an entire heatsink plus two fans. There are companies who specialize in laptop fans, but they didn't have the exact model in stock (size, number of fan blades, voltage//current rating). So I just had to replace the entire unit.

Re:That's good, but. . .

[JohnBailey]

And so does my reconditioned Thinkpad T42. About 4-5 years old I think.

Re:That's good, but. . .

[lysergic.acid]

from those photos it doesn't seem like it's that badly damaged. you know, if you went back with some duct-tape and superglue...

but seriously, a magnesium chassis you say? why don't you take it out to the desert and set it on fire like people used to do with old magnesium Volkswagen engines.

Re:That's good, but. . .

[Anonymous Coward]

Intel tried to correct that.

The ODMs (ASUS, Quanta, Compal) who manufacture the notebooks were quite interested. It could significantly reduce manufacturing costs.

Alas, the OEMs (Dell, HP, Gateway) who sell the notebooks wanted none of it. Their replacement parts have a very high profit margin.

Repairing notebooks can be a terrible problem, due to lack of standards, lack of availability of documentation and parts, and the issues of miniturization etc. And working part time in an electronics retailer it is obvious that notebooks have terrible repair records in general. Too miniaturized, too little ventilation, to easy to put on a soft surface that blocks cooling air intakes on the bottom. I see notebooks coming back endlessly for repairs, while my destops seem to run forever, with perhaps a once in a lifetime minor repair, eg a power supply.

And the keyboards on notebooks are like a problem waiting to happen - flimsy, one good keystrike, and off comes the key, and you will probably be told you need a new keyboard for a couple hundred $$, to replace a piece of snap on plastic that costs 2 cents to mfr. And of course there are hundreds of different batteries, resulting in high retail prices, eg $150. Same re notebook power supplys - they often run burning hot, the only saving grace is that there are some universals available - $100 in a store, but prob about $35 on the web.

So hopefully, Intel's standard will come to pass. One of Intel's goals seems to be to drive commoditization of notebooks etc. Turn the mfrs effectively into low margin distributors of standard notebook designs, which I bet Intel offers for sale. The better of course to provide more profits to intel in the battle between the chip mfrs and pc mfrs as to who gets the biggest financial reward from the marketplace. But it should be good for the consumer, and that is what counts.

I'll stick with my desktops that I beat to death every day, as does my partner. And they run and run, and most of them were home assembled in an hour or so, from parts bought on the web.

Steve

Re:That's good, but. . .

[Ihmhi]

There's a joke about blade servers in there somewhere, but so many come to mind and I can't quite decide.

Re:That's good, but. . .

[kwerle]

Most home users don't open their PCs. To them, a laptop is the same as a tower - except you can carry it with you.

Re:That's good, but. . .

[Sam36]

You have to be kidding me! Just open your eyes! A girlfriend that I had once went through 3 laptops within 2 years. Each time the reason for upgrading was "it is getting slow" or "I think it is fixing to crash". I mean most all of the times it is typical windows problems that cause people to think that they need a new computer. Oh and if it is your desktop that is messing up, then that means it is time to buy a laptop so you can go to starbucks and show it off.

Not me though, I replaced my 6 year old Latitude C610 with an acer aspire one just because it was smaller. Both run linux either way. I don't think this article is talking about "geeks" that know better buying up all the laptops

Re:That's good, but. . .

[indi0144]

Also does my Thinkpad A21m

Re:That's good, but. . .

[dragonturtle69]

Heh, more like laptops are all that is to be found in the big box shops like Best Buy. Heck, you can even finance it with them, and in effect perpetually lease your laptop, having paid it off just about when the battery is junk and the hardware just a little dated.

With a desktop, you would upgrade your drive space by adding an HDD, add an optical drive, upgrade the video card, so on. With a lappy, the options other than purchasing a new one are more limited.

But, the consumer does get convenience, which is all that they want anyway.

Merry Christmas!

[Frinet]

Merry Christmas!

Re:Merry Christmas!

[vigour]

Happy Christmas to you too, I hope all you slashdotters are having a good one.

Re:Merry Christmas!

[Anonymous Coward]

Wow, bah humbug from the moderators apparently.

And Uranus is in line with Venus

[Anonymous Coward]

Notebook sales have been increasing relative to desktop sales for a number of years now, and the former are now greater than the latter.

So what.

Wrong Decision

[nevesis]

The sad part is that many of these people would be better off with desktops. Desktops have a much lower total cost of ownership. (Even for home users.)

Re:Wrong Decision

[rogermcdodger]

Notebooks enable a different computing experience that people are willing to pay the extra for. Not being tied to a single location is a big selling point even if the computer will never leave the home.

Re:Wrong Decision

[Anonymous Coward]

The sad part is that many of these people would be better off with desktops.

Desktops have a much lower total cost of ownership. (Even for home users.)

Agrred about the cost. Here's the thing, the foot print is so much smaller, you don't have to worry about the cables, wires, plugs, power strips, UPS, etc... With a laptop, you just have one plug, maybe two if your not using a wireless network connection, and a built in UPS. AND, you can pick the thing up and sit where ever you want and do your thing. Would I use one for development, heavy spreadsheet work, or image processing - nope, but for typical light to medium work, laptops are fine.

Re:Wrong Decision

[arth1]

Sitting here in my recliner typing this, I can certainly agree.

I think the main reason for laptops having taken off now is that they are now small and light enough to actually be used on laps, and with display resolutions high enough to do real work.

What I predict as one consequence of laptop sales skyrocketing is a refocus in the gaming industry. Most laptops won't be able to play the latest 3D-intensive games, and those that can are big and heavy, which aren't the models where sales now skyrockets. If 50% of the potential user base can't play your game, you may have a problem.
Another consequence might be leaner and faster applications. Bloat has become so standard that it's going to take some time to turn around, but the average laptop user will have a much slower HD and less responsive CPU (even fast mobile CPUs are usually throttled, and may take a long time to jump up to full speed when needed).
A third consequence will hopefully be less dependence on a mouse. Touchpads and clits work differently, and you can't, for instance, go instantaneously from one corner of the screen to the other. GUI apps will change to reduce mouse movements, both by placing clicky functions closer together (slashdot designers, do you read this?), and providing more keyboard shortcuts, like in the old days.
A fourth consequence, which I don't wish to happen, is lower sound quality. The average laptop can't produce bass sounds, so sounds might be redone to sound good with tinny speakers.

But anyhow, portability has improved immensely, and increased sales is the reward. 1600x900 in a <4 lb laptop is a huge step forward from my old 8 lb luggable with 1024x768. That the new laptop is much faster is just a bonus -- it's the portability and decent display that sold me.

Re:Wrong Decision

[cyber-vandal]

Touchpads and clits work differently

What can I say to that. Hehe hehe too much Christmas spirit :-)

Re:Wrong Decision

[Nutria]

Sitting here in my recliner typing this,

The heat from under the machine is cooking your testicles, making you sterile.

my old 8 lb luggable

That's not luggable. This is luggable!

Re:Wrong Decision

[Amazing Quantum Man]

I had a vasectomy years ago, You Insensitive Clod!!!

Re:Wrong Decision

[thatskinnyguy]

I agree up to a certain point. I see it all the time: a laptop on a desktop with a mouse and docking station hard-wired to a printer. But the thing is that some of the users who do this also work "impromptu" nights and weekends sometimes from home. So it would be really convenient for them to have the necessities and the tools from work available to them.

Now the users who have the same set-up and yet the laptop sees almost no battery use, they are the ones who would be better off with just a desktop.

Re:Wrong Decision

[ceoyoyo]

Money isn't everything.

Desktops work really well for office workers. The form factor is inferior for pretty much every other kind of user.

Yes, I'm typing this from a recliner beside the Christmas tree.

Re:Wrong Decision

[TheRaven64]

Desktops have a much lower total cost of ownership

Really? Most laptops use a good $50-100/year less electricity than desktops, more if he desktop has a big screen. Spread that over three years, and you've got the cost of a cheap laptop, so unless your desktop costs nothing it's pretty hard to beat in terms of TCO. Now laptops are outselling desktops worldwide (they were in the US earlier in the year, and for Apple machines for about 3 years) the economies of scale that supported desktop parts are going to shift to laptops too.

So, what are you factoring in to your TCO calculations other than the machine and electricity?

Re:Wrong Decision

[arth1]

The heat from under the machine is cooking your testicles, making you sterile.

No, newer laptops are small enough that they don't cover the entire lap, and cool enough not to do any cooking. It will at most warm the outermost inches of the penis.

Re:Wrong Decision

[masdog]

I've seen, or directly used, laptops used for all three with no noticeable performance decrease from the standard desktop.

I think we're reaching the point where laptops are achieving performance parity with the standard (business) desktop. They aren't quite there when it comes to workstations or gaming rigs, though.

Re:Wrong Decision

[Anonymous Coward]

Replacement costs. (In my experience) a generic laptop will last between 1 and 3 years, depending on the model, usage, environment, etc. A desktop will last between 3 and 7 years (obviously most people replace it well before then, they get bogged down with crapware and malware and think the machine needs upgrading). Hell, this laptop (sony vaio, so supposedly not bottom-of-the-barrel quality) has needed a new CPU, new hard disk, new optical, TWO new batteries, and two OS swaps (almost completely unusable on vista, or XP - thank god for ubuntu) in the two years I've owned it. I've never spent so much fixing a desktop, and if I were Joe User, that would be somewhere between 2 and 4 new machines I'd have bought in the space of 4 years, possibly more, taking into account the fact that the slower speed of a laptop will cause it to get bogged down with crapware faster. Even being ludicrously generous and saying a laptop lasts 2/3 as long as a desktop, ~$800-1500 > (~$400 - $1000)*2/3 + 300.

Of course, this is all anecdotal evidence, but I'd be willing to bet my back teeth that the majority of people here have had similar experiences with either them or their friends. Or have I had too much christmas cheer?

Re:Wrong Decision

[ThrowAwaySociety]

A third consequence will hopefully be less dependence on a mouse. Touchpads and clits work differently, and you can't, for instance, go instantaneously from one corner of the screen to the other. GUI apps will change to reduce mouse movements, both by placing clicky functions closer together (slashdot designers, do you read this?), and providing more keyboard shortcuts, like in the old days.

I would guess that you either have a lousy trackpad, or not enough practice using one. I have a full-sized mouse plugged into my laptop, but I still find myself using the trackpad instead. I can throw the pointer diagonally across the screen in one stroke, and, click, drag, hit targets, and scroll just as effectively with the pad as I can with the mouse. Of course, I've been using notebooks from this same manufacturer as my primary systems for nine years now, so I've got the practice.

Re:Wrong Decision

[toddestan]

You'd probably only hit that $50-100 mark if you leave the computer on all the time, or if the desktop is very powerful. In both cases, you wouldn't want the laptop, as most laptops aren't designed to run 24/7, and a powerful laptop is going to be expensive. And if you want decent ergonomics and/or a big screen so you buy an external monitor, then you've got to power that too.

Overall, the desktop is going to be cheaper. It's going to be more reliable, and it's going be cheaper to fix when it breaks. It's more upgradable so you'll probably get more use out of it. And you don't have to replace the batteries every few years.

Re:Wrong Decision

[Quantumstate]

But with your electricity factor are you considering the heating effect of the desktop? Where we live the heating is probably on for about 2/3 of the year. Thus if waste heat from my PC heats the room the energy is not being wasted, instead it is saving me money on my heating bills. So this would cut the extra cost by 2/3 making it $16-$33 assuming your calculation is correct.

Re:Wrong Decision

[nevesis]

Energy is a *very* small part of TCO.

See Gartner's 2008 TCO study.

For the home user, the TCO comes mostly in repair costs should the laptop ever break. If they're buying $399 laptops and using them as disposables, this is less of an issue. Most people are still spending $900 on a laptop, and then get sticker shock when the motherboard dies and Dell wants a $550 replacement board three weeks after the three year warranty expires.

Re:Wrong Decision

[nevesis]

Oh, I didn't question the benefits of the laptop, I only suggested the benefits of the desktop are rarely explored by purchasers.

Ultimately my post was aimed more at small businesses and the middle market than anything else, where the TCO is significantly higher and should be a major (if not THE major) deciding factor.

Re:Wrong Decision

[AK Marc]

The heat from under the machine is cooking your testicles, making you sterile.

Everything I've read on this indicates a temporary sterility. Go a week without a laptop and you'll be back at full strength. So it isn't a down side. If you are actively trying, then stay away from them. Otherwise, they can only help prevent pregnancies.

Re:Wrong Decision

[badkarmadayaccount]

Cheers mate! FSC AMILO user here and lovin' it!

Steve Jobs Quote.

[Anonymous Coward]

There are some customers which we chose not to serve. We don't know how to make a $500 computer that's not a piece of junk, and our DNA will not let us ship that.

Re:Steve Jobs Quote.

[Anonymous Coward]

What does Douglas N. Adams or Deoxyribo Nucleic Acid have to do with this?

Re:Steve Jobs Quote.

[RedK]

They're almost there though : http://store.apple.com/us/browse/home/shop_mac/family/mac_mini?mco=MTE3MDI

Re:Steve Jobs Quote.

[Anonymous Coward]

Stevie & co. know very damn well how to do it, they just don't like the profit margin that goes with it. Apple is a business, and if they don't want to compete below the $500 line, that's their prerogative.

That's where Asus and Acer -- with their netbooks -- and Toshiba -- with that $400 notebook they introduced this past summer and re-introduced this holiday shopping season -- come in. All proof that a sub-$500 computer doesn't have to be junk and that there's a profit to be made.

Re:Steve Jobs Quote.

[ColdWetDog]

Steve Jobs: "We don't serve their kind here."
PC: "What?"
Steve Jobs: "Your Netbooks. They'll have to wait outside. We don't want them here.

Re:Steve Jobs Quote.

[LordVader717]

Exactly. Apple charge a minimum of $600 for their pieces of junk.
Seriously, is there anyone here who really believes Macs are something more than generic PC hardware which is allowed to play use their DRM'd OS? It may come in a shiny white case, but that really is just about it.

Re:Steve Jobs Quote.

[Anonymous Coward]

I am using a $500 HP pavilion dv6000 laptop. It was an awful, horrible machine I even hated to turn on.
Out of frustration eventually I removed the original hard drive with Vista (to keep it for warranty purposes) and on a new drive I installed ideneb hackintosh.
Now I have a $500 laptop, with the latest OS X - and I just love it.
Having used Vista and OS X on the same hardware - there is just no comparison. All Mac apps seem to be much smaller, everything is snappy, smooth. I installed Vmware, created an XP virtual machine, but I never actually used it - I just did not need it. I run other vms in Sun's VirtualBox (my favourite is OpenFiler, which turned the laptop into a "micro SAN", using globalSAN iSCSI). It was a surprise, but I have found all the apps I needed for Mac - mind you I don't play games and I still would like to have UltraVnc ported.
From my own experience I know that Steven Jobs and Apple actually created something that makes a $500 computer totally awesome. I will admit: I am now an Apple convert as the result of this experience.

Re:Steve Jobs Quote.

[TheRaven64]

Douglas N. Adams was a Mac user, maybe he called up Jobs and told him not to ship machines for the riffraff?

Re:Steve Jobs Quote.

[SoupIsGoodFood_42]

Even if Apple products were just as crappy as the cheaper competition, I'd still pay extra to get their "DRM'd" OS, because it's still a better over-all system for me. The moment some makes an open desktop OS that is as good as OS X, I may consider switching.

Re:Steve Jobs Quote.

[zippthorne]

Shiny white? That's so last year. It's dull aluminum now. And, for some reason, keys with big ugly gaps in between them.

I'm still trying to figure out what "industrial design" is, and why they think it's

A) a selling point.

and

B) something that a mass-produced generic PC replicated hundreds of times across a vast field of cubicles doesn't have.

Re:Steve Jobs Quote.

[clarkn0va]

is there anyone here who really believes Macs are something more than generic PC hardware which is allowed to play use their DRM'd OS?

I believe they're something more. The excellent and DRM'd OS aside, I happen to really like the minimalist design of the Mac mini and the imac. They're beautiful and practically silent.

I build my own desktops, and with a carefully chosen case, psu, cpu, hsf, and graphics card and a free OS I can get a system almost as quiet as the mac mini for a little less money, but not nearly as tiny or beautiful.

Re:Steve Jobs Quote.

[LeafOnTheWind]

My Macbook Pro is one of the most sturdy computers I have ever owned. White? No. However, it survived not one, not two, but 3 10 foot falls onto concrete. The case was beaten to hell. Looked as though id have to buy a new one - not so. After prying the twisted metal apart, I saw that every component in the thing was protected like a tank. There were individual aluminum housings and crumple zones all over. In fact, every part seemed fine.

So I took out a pair of pliers, a screwdriver, and putty knife and bent the thing back into what looks like its original form. Screwed it back together - still works perfectly after 3 years. I no longer question Macbook Pro build quality.

Re:Steve Jobs Quote.

[MemoryDragon]

Not really, the macs are built like tanks, I opened my mini once, and I have yet to see a better overall housing design that in that thing, thermal tunnles were along the correct semiconductors and externalized the entire internal design was pure genious and probably would survive a drop of a few meters. Also my macbook air is similar. Compare that to the average acer and you basically can see, you get what you pay for!

Re:Steve Jobs Quote.

[je ne sais quoi]

Nice troll there. Here's some non-generic hardware for you: The mag-safe power connector. You won't find that on any other notebook. For another, there's the new single piece combination aluminum frame & chassis. Then there's the lighted keyboard that comes on automatically at low light and dims the screen a the same time. Or maybe the trackpad gestures? Until you've tried it, you won't be able to appreciate being able to scroll without having drag the cursor over to scrollbar, it's an immense timesaver. (And no that autoscroll that is on Vista is not equivalent!)

Granted, the hard drives, memory and cpu are standard parts, but those extra features that you are conveniently forgetting are value-added products. We can argue about whether those value-added products are worth the extra cost of the Apple products, but Apple products are not "generic PC hardware" and it's obvious that Apple actually puts time and money into R&D. But you're probably one of those people who just looks at the CPU speed and memory and forgets all about everything else. Nevermind that for day-to-day operations my three year old 1.8 GHz os x macbook pro outperforms a brand new 2.2 GHz core 2 Duo thinkpad with Vista for everything except raw floating point calculations or fps on rendered objects, but games are why I have Vista on a desktop at home, I use linux or OS X when I need to get real work done.

Re:Steve Jobs Quote.

[LordVader717]

Maybe I was a little hasty by broadly referring to "Macs".
The design is usually superior to other offerings on the market. There are a number of unique features which some of their products have, such as the MagSafe.
While these are all nice features, none of them are real deal-makers.
The Ambieent light sensor can be found on competitor's machines and the eeePC has a multi-touch pad.

And saying that netbooks are pieces of junk is just being ignorant. Every time I have seen a new one, I have been amazed by the build quality.

All in all, It's Apple being itself again and they're refusing to acknowledge price shifting in the market. Their bad I guess, but sooner or later they are going to have to respond, or people are going to be buying a hell of a lot less Macbooks.

Re:Steve Jobs Quote.

[Anonymous Coward]

My Macbook Pro is one of the most sturdy computers I have ever owned. White? No. However, it survived not one, not two, but 3 10 foot falls onto concrete.

Yet it can't survive a drink spilled onto its keyboard (which is NOT covered under warranty). Thinkpads have been spill-proof for years.

Look in shops

[jrumney]

I don't suppose it has anything to do with the fact that at least 80% of the PCs on sale in shops are laptops these days.

Re:Look in shops

[arth1]

I don't suppose it has anything to do with the fact that at least 80% of the PCs on sale in shops are laptops these days.

I am pretty sure that you confuse the cause with the effect. I.e. 80% of the PCs on sale in shops are laptops these days because laptops sell better these days.

To run a successful business, you slash prices on two kinds of items: The items that don't sell at all, and the items that are "hot". The former out of necessity, and the latter because it will attract lots of customers. In certain cases, you may even want to sell the most popular items at no profit, if they bring in other sales. If every buyer of a $50 printer also buys an overpriced printer cable and reams of paper, and perhaps photoshop and expensive photo paper too, and will come back to you for resupplies as well as other sales, you're doing well. Similar with laptops, which often lead to sales of cases, software, docking stations, mice, wireless routers and more.[*] And the best kind of customers -- the returning ones.
Contrary to what many non-business people believe, you don't want to drop prices on is something that sells slow. As long as it sells well enough that the inventory empties out, you're doing OK, and there's no benefit to reducing the price much. You'll get less profits per sale without getting a great amount of new customers.

[*]: CompUSA did well on this model while a family-run company, but then new greedy owners decided that losing profit was a bad thing, and demanded a refocus on high profit margin items like plasma TVs. And no more selling laptops cheap -- cut the price on cheap items instead, where you lose less money per item. Fools, they were, and down they went.

Re:Look in shops

[LordVader717]

I don't suppose it has anything to do with the fact that at least 50% of the PCs sold in shops are laptops these days.

There, fixed it for you.

Re:Look in shops

[jrumney]

I am pretty sure that you confuse the cause with the effect. I.e. 80% of the PCs on sale in shops are laptops these days because laptops sell better these days.

When sales of laptops have only just overtaken desktops, yet the shelves are already 80% full with laptops, it's pretty clear who is driving the market - and it isn't the customers.

Re:Look in shops

[arth1]

When sales of laptops have only just overtaken desktops, yet the shelves are already 80% full with laptops, it's pretty clear who is driving the market - and it isn't the customers.

Actually it is. And the market is proactive due to something called "market research". Both the factories and stores were given predictions that the sale of laptops would overtake the sale of desktops.

While market research isn't 100% accurate, it's accurate enough that the customers come back to the researchers for more predictions next season.

Last Week...

[Anna Merikin]

I decided to build a more up-to-date computer, for about the eighth time since 1989, when I got my first 8086 PC AT (used.) I priced the parts (mobo, case & psu, cpu, memory, hdd, optical drive) and added the cost of a new wide-screen LCD monitor -- and found I had about $500 worth of parts -- about the same price as a new notebook with similar specs (well, the hdd would be smaller, but I don't really need another terabyte of storage.)

The prices on desktops at Fry's the night before Christmas eve were higher than desktops when a monitor was added. Why would I buy (or build) a bigger, heavier, noisier machine with similar performance and price?

Re:Last Week...

[wsidegangstarr]

That's a matter of what piece of hardware a retailer is trying to push. There's no legitimate reason why out of two equally as modern machines, the smaller one would be faster or cheaper. Now why would a retailer (especially an electronics vendor like Frye's) push something that has a very limited upgrade cycle? Profit, my friend.

Re:Last Week...

[Anonymous Coward]

If you have no interest in building computers, then you're right, there is nothing to gain by building your own computer. That's been true for a long time.

When I price out new hardware for a new system, I know before I even begin that I could have an OEM laptop (or desktop) for less. But that's not the point. The point is that I enjoy building my own computer, knowing exactly what went into it and how it was configured, using hardware that I selected personally, being able to work on it like the guy next door and his car -- and that can only be achieved one way.

In fact, I plan to purchase a netbook in the near future which of course I won't be building myself. But my main computer will always be a desktop large enough to comfortably work in. I realize that someday, as computers (and the stuff that goes inside them) get smaller and smaller, building a computer form scratch probably won't even be possible anymore. You can't exactly work on an ipod-sized device. But until then, I'm going to keep on building, because it's fun.

Re:Last Week...

[Amazing Quantum Man]

8086 PC AT

Thank you for playing. The AT was a '286 class machine. There were a few XT class 8086 machines, but most of them were 8088s.

Re:Last Week...

[GreatBunzinni]

Your experience has been the complete opposite of mine. After my laptop died I looked into the market and did the math, which lead me to the conclusion that a 15'' laptop being sold for 900 euros would ended up with the same specs of a 190 euro desktop. I could add to that the 160 euros for a brand new 19'' monitor and voilÃ: the desktop would end up costing nearly half as the equivalent laptop. The choice was obvious.

But that's not all. My previous laptop, which costed me 1200 euros, died due to a burned out graphics card, a recurring problem that occurred twice and was repaired while the warranty lasted. After that the laptop was as good as garbage (thanks, acer). If that happened to my desktop then, even if I needed to purchase it all over, I would end up with a loss of less than 200 euros. Well, 200 euros is a heck of a lot less than 1200 euros.

And let's not talk about upgrades. Desktops nail that advantage firmly, both in cost and in flexibility. You simply can't pop in a ATI HD4870 on a 450 euro laptop but you can easily add a couple of those to a desktop.

Re:Last Week...

[Anonymous Coward]

Why would I buy (or build) a bigger, heavier, noisier machine with similar performance and price?

Because you don't want to buy something made of shit parts that are going to fail in a year or so?

Re:Last Week...

[Anna Merikin]

I believe you're right about IBM's nomenclature, but as I was *building* machines or upgrading, the case size was "AT". The original box I bought was, indeed, an IBM PC II (8086) 8Mhz. IIRC. I upgraded it to a 386sx then a 486 from Cyrix/IBM before ditching the case as its form factor was enormous (you may remember them from museums...) and wouldn't mount a 3 1/2" drive without an adapter.

Re:Last Week...

[Anna Merikin]

I might have agreed with you a couple of years ago, but I bought on Craigslist an old Dell laptop from 2003 (C610) which has been 100% trouble free with respect to hardware (it has XP installed though I run Puppy Linux on it from the optical drive most of the time).

So has my latest desktop, from 2004, a box with an ABit mobo and Sempron processor. It, too, has been without glitches; it runs Mepis Linux and is on 24/7/365 serving files to the Dell.

Perhaps my experience with a well-used Dell (the letter markings are wearing off the keyboard) are not representative, but still.

I did not buy anything on my trip to Fry's; I was attracted though, by the new 18.4" "laptops" selling for around $1000 US....

Re:Last Week...

[Hal The Computer]

My previous laptop, which costed me 1200 euros...

Just FYI, cost is one of those fun monosyllabic english words which is irregular. It should be "which cost me 1200 euros..."

Re:Last Week...

[Just Some Guy]

Why would I buy (or build) a bigger, heavier, noisier machine with similar performance and price?

Because I've never seen any indication that you can get the same quality per dollar from a laptop. There very well might be a laptop with the same specs as the $750 desktop I just built (although you don't see two many with 6GB of RAM or a PCI-E graphics card or dual SATA-300 hard drives), but I guarantee it'd cost a couple thousand dollars.

It's trite, but true. Size, price, quality: pick two.

Re:Last Week...

[Omestes]

Why would I buy (or build) a bigger, heavier, noisier machine with similar performance and price?

Ease of repairs and upgrades? My GFs laptop had its mobo die, repairs would have cost the same as a new laptop, whereas if it was a PC, this could be fixed for around 100$ or less.

If this laptops keyboard died, then I'm out around 50% the price of a new laptop, instead of $9.

The LCD? Your pretty much screwed.

Also, if you want to upgrade the crappy video card in most laptops, to actually play games made after 1999, then your pretty much screwed as well.

My next computer is a desktop, I did the laptop thing for 6 years now, and I'm beginning to miss monkeying around inside of PCs. My old desktop was almost 10 years old, but I could continuously upgrade it, my laptop might only last 2 years before its too slow to run anything.

Laptops kind of suck, though the portability is nice. Sadly my lap top sits on a desk, and hardly ever moves.

Re:Last Week...

[Amazing Quantum Man]

Can't be. IBM never made an 8086 box. The 8MHz IBM box was the PC-AT 339. It had a 8MHz 286 and the famous Model M keyboard.

Re:Last Week...

[Anna Merikin]

I bought the d*mn thing USED, and it had no model number on the faceplate. It was represented to me as a "IBM PC second series." Norton Utilities said it was a 8086 at 8 Mhz. I replaced the chip with a 286 module IIRC first, then as the memory bandwidth wasn't suitable for a that chip, I replaced the whole mobo to get a 386sx. That's when I became aware it was an AT-sized case, as it had the required eight card slots instead of the older model's five, which, I believe, made it a PC II. I might be wrong about the model numbers, or it might not have carried the original mobo when I bought it (it was almost seven years old at that time) but that was what my own research said, not some museum's certificate of provenance.

When I buy a whole new box (which will be never unless it is a laptop -- I build my own custom boxes) then you can hold me responsible for knowing model numbers.

Thank you for not trolling.

Re:Last Week...

[toddestan]

Why would I buy (or build) a bigger, heavier, noisier machine with similar performance and price?

Upgradeability might be one factor. A faster CPU, more memory*, a better GPU, a better screen may be things you might want down the road a bit. With a whitebox PC, these would be simple upgrades. With a laptop, you've got to buy a new computer. Of course, you've got your old desktop you can still use too. My laptop is considerably more powerful than my desktop, but I like using the desktop more because it has better screens and is a more comfortable set up, and has plenty of power for things like browsing the net.

*Yeah, I know you can upgrade the memory on a laptop, but it'll "max out" before most desktop PCs, and in the future you may want to put in more than 2-4GB that most current laptops will take.

Re:Last Week...

[Amazing Quantum Man]

There was no such thing as an "IBM PC II". There was the IBM PC, the IBM PC-XT, and the IBM PC-AT.

The XT had 8 slots, but an 8088. The 8088 and 8086 were functional equivalents, with the only difference being that the 8088 had an 8-bit external bus. I suspect you had an XT with an 8088. You could not put an 8086 into an 8088 socket.

Re:Last Week...

[Quantumstate]

When looking at the specs for a laptop and a desktop you cannot compare them without looking at some form of benchmark. As an example we have a PC which is now 7.5 years old and a laptop which is 2.5 years old. I ran benchmark software on it and found that overall the laptop was about 10% faster. The desktop cost £1000 and the laptop cost £800. Given the 5 years difference and 20% price drop I would think that the laptop should run a lot faster. Laptop components may look nice on paper but they don't run as fast as similar looking desktop ones.

Re:Last Week...

[Ihmhi]

Add to that you can avoid defective parts with some research.

Power supplies from company X catch fire? Buy from company Y. Laptops, you usually only find out about the lap melters a few months after release, if not longer.

Re:Last Week...

[Anna Merikin]

You win!

Way to make it sound grander...

[Anonymous Coward]

notebook sales have surpassed desktop sales for the first time in history

Of course, "the first time in history" could also be known as "the last 15 years". Doesn't sound so amazing then does it?

Vista

[javilon]

If we define notebooks as small laptops with processors in the Atom class, then Microsoft has a very big problem with there with Vista and even with XP I would say. It is not only the fact that Vista is too slow in that hardware. It is also that it gets slower with use. The registry gets full of garbage, and all kinds of crapware stick to windows systems. Given time this would bring to its knees any computer in that hardware class.

And for those that say that next year Moore's law will fix it, I don't think this would be fixed in a year or two. Maybe three, maybe more. This is a very long time in this industry.

I am curious about what this will mean for Linux on the desktop as there is also the cost issue. We have a clearly inferior (in that hardware) operating system that costs money against a free and Free operating system.

Re:Vista

[tepples]

I am curious about what this will mean for Linux on the desktop as there is also the cost issue. We have a clearly inferior (in that hardware) operating system that costs money against a free and Free operating system.

Linux is free only if you already knew about it before you bought your computer. Otherwise, you run into unsupported or poorly supported hardware.

Re:Vista

[javilon]

If you bought it preinstalled (the case for netbooks) you get fully supported hardware.

Re:Vista

[Timothy Brownawell]

If we define notebooks as small laptops with processors in the Atom class

...then we're confusing "notebooks" and "netbooks". The former are what used to be called "laptops" before the litigious folks realized they could fry your balls, and the latter are overgrown PDAs that still don't have enough pixels to do anything useful with.

Re:Vista

[Roland Piquepaille]

Microsoft has one very big problem: they totally missed the low-power PC revolution. They have sunk insane amounts of money into their new OS that, as tradition has it, is slower and demands better hardware than the previous one, and released it when (1) XP had just started to mature enough for people to consider it good enough and (2) when the best selling PCs can't run it.

What they should do now is split OS lines, i.e. support XP for small PCs, and Vista for big machines, instead of trying to kill off XP. But they'll never do that, they're much too stubborn.

As for growing XP registry and general mess on the system, that's easy:

- Disable automatic Windows update. Yes, get a decent AV, a decent non-Microsoft browser, a decent non-Microsoft firewall, behave rationally when you browse the web and you'll be just fine. Each new update of Windows seem to be worse than the previous one anyway; one could almost believe they're trying to make XP worse than Vista for some reason I can't fathom. [/sarcasm]

- Disable prefetching for anything but boot programs. You'll recover many MANY megabytes of disk space, and you'll boot a ton faster.

- Run things like ccleaner regularly

- If you're really short of disk space, consider nLite

(This post made on a EeePC 901 w/ XP)

Re:Vista

[Roland Piquepaille]

overgrown PDAs that still don't have enough pixels to do anything useful with.

It's painfully obvious that you're talking out of your arse and you don't have a netbook.

For what it's worth, I use SolidWorks 2008 on my EeePC 901 professionally. Sure the screen isn't as nice as a big desktop thing, but it's perfectly usable.

Re:Vista

[javilon]

Well, I agree with all you say, but I think you have forgotten that netbooks are bought by non technical people that just wants them to work out of the box and tend not to have time to maintain them.

Re:Vista

[arth1]

If you bought it preinstalled (the case for netbooks) you get fully supported hardware.

Not necessarily. There are Linux laptops sold out there where certain hardware functionality isn't supported. Fingerprint readers, for example. Or WAN cards. Or certain special keys.

This is because so far, there are almost no laptops that were designed for Linux. They are really Windows machines that run Linux instead.

Sun had a nice Sparc-driven laptop with Solaris on it, but unfortunately so few people knew about it that sales were very low, and Sun had to stop producing it despite a desire to continue. (Shareholders are greedy bastards who won't let companies willingly lose money in a minor segment out of idealism and a hope that this will reap goodwill and marketing benefits ten years down the road.)

Re:Vista

[metlin]

Thank you. I wish more people would see this.

Linux is only free if your time isn't money.

Honestly, I would rather spend a couple of hundred bucks and use Windows on an OEM machine with standard hardware than jump through hoops to get Linux running.

When I was younger (and poorer, with more time), I enjoyed playing around with Linux. But as I've grown older, my time is money and I have much better things to do with my time than trying to spend inordinate amounts of time getting my computer to run.

Inferior and superior is such a whole boat load of crap to me, the end user. IMHO, my stuff works out of the box with Windows - and I will buy products that work well with it. Now, hardware manufacturers support Windows, and that is an advantage. And most of the software that I need and use are made by Microsoft anyway (Excel, Word, Powerpoint).

To me, my OS is irrelevant. Whatever facilitates my task and makes my life easier is my choice hands down.

Re:Vista

[Anonymous Coward]

People have different standards of usability

Re:Vista

[Anonymous Coward]

Amen, brother. +1

Re:Vista

[RedK]

So 20 minutes of your time is worth a couple of hundred bucks ? Nice. Try Ubuntu if you haven't.

Re:Vista

[WormholeFiend]

I'm a relatively technical person, and I got an AAO with XP, and replaced that with Ubuntu, so I'm getting a kick out of your reply.

I bought my netbook because my workplace supplies me with a huge screen desktop on which I spend most of my time, so for when I'm not at work or especially away from home, I needed something bigger than a blackberry, but still very portable.

It's also awesome when I go out in the field for astronomy/astrophotography purposes, since Stellarium runs very well on it.

And since my tripod/mount/telescope is easily 50lbs, I didn't want to lug a fullsize laptop as well.

And as I'm typing this at my wirelessly networked parents' place, that only features one hardwired desktop, my father is on that one doing genealogy research, my sister is sitting across the room reading her online mangas, my brother is checking his fav team's statistics, and my wife is browsing home improvements websites.

Re:Vista

[Anonymous Coward]

A "NETBOOK" has an atom class processor der der der!!!!!! a notebook could have a quad core if it was socketed for it, and I have seen them retard. With 8gb of ram, a quad core, and a Mobility Radeon HD 3870 X2, and a 7200rpm 500gb hard drive, and you would have no problem with vista 64bit. Battery life is for the queers.

Re:Vista

[ceoyoyo]

I hope you meant "netbook."

Otherwise, if we define notebooks as Powerbooks, Microsoft has a very big problem with all their operating systems.

Re:Vista

[LordVader717]

People have been saying that Moore's law will fix Window's slowness for years, but I'll believe it when it stops being a problem.

And Microsoft seems to be winning on the Netbook sector as well. I don't think there are any Netbooks out there which aren't at least sold with Windows as an option. Although Linux usually works much better, most people are stupid and only use Windows.
Not only that, their presence is actively harming the market. They have maximum specs to qualify for their Ultra-Low-Cost-PC version of Windows, so any manufacturer who wants to sell anything has to limit things like the screen resolution, RAM etc. or pay the full price of a Windows license.
And God knows what other unholy deeds are hidden away in NDA's not meant for our eyes.

The result: All Netbooks are designed for Windows, and manufacturers have even less incentive to use Linux than in the higher cost segment.

Re:Vista

[metlin]

I have.

And Microsoft doesn't have an Excel 2007 version on Ubuntu, unfortunately. Until such day, not worth it in my book.

Re:Vista

[westlake]

most people are stupid and only use Windows.

This pretty much sums up the reasons why the geek and Linux fare poorly in the mass consumer market - with the exception of the video game console or set-top box which keeps its inner geek safely out of sight.

Re:Vista

[metlin]

And please. Getting anything up and running on Linux has never been possible in 20 minutes. Ubuntu included.

Re:Vista

[Anonymous Coward]

Oi! I do not even see how the parent's comment is a Flamebait. It's a reasonable and truthful statement on the state of linux.

Linux: Which young whippersnapper fanboy have you pissed off today?

Re:Vista

[Anonymous Coward]

And please. Getting anything up and running on Linux has never been possible in 20 minutes. Ubuntu included.

You're right, it took me 22 minutes to install Ubuntu on my old Inspiron 1501; and another 7 to get the wireless adapter working.

On the other hand, the last time I installed XP and Office, I waited 35 minutes from booting from the CD to the first successful boot from HDD. It also took another 17 minutes and four restarts to get the drivers for the wireless, sound and USB to work. Not to mention the several hours and restarts patching it.

You're right though, Ubuntu took more than 20 minutes to set up... except on the Eee PC sitting beside the Dell that booted from the interal flash 12 minutes after I put the Heron-loaded thumbdrive in the USB socket.

Re:Vista

[metlin]

Different priorities.

To me, all I need to do is use office, surf the web and listen to music. On occasion, transfer stuff from my iPod or digital camera.

I buy a notebook from the store with Windows pre-installed (where the wireless adapter, and everything else, works out of the box); I buy and install Office, download a couple of applications and all my needs are met.

Ideally, I'd like to spend as little time as possible setting things up.

Now, personally, Linux (and Office on Linux) is nowhere ready enough for that. The convenience is what I pay for. You may disagree, and that is your prerogative.

Re:Vista

[RedK]

Do you live in 1998 ? Linux has been doing everything you listed here since KDE 1.0 and StarOffice 5.0. You said that the couple of hundreds of dollars for Windows wasn't worth the time you'd spend installing Linux. Ubuntu literally takes 20-30 minutes to install. So that means that you make more than a few hundred dollars an hour while sitting at home in your free time.

Re:Vista

[Blakey Rat]

If we define notebooks as small laptops with processors in the Atom class,

And if we define Fords as Elephants, the level of elephant crap in this country must be incredible!

Microsoft has a very big problem with there with Vista and even with XP I would say.

Nothing new here; MS has acknowledged this, and promised to address it in Windows 7. The Netbook market took them (and many, many other people) completely by surprise.

It is not only the fact that Vista is too slow in that hardware. It is also that it gets slower with use.

Vista doesn't get slower with use; you're thinking of XP. That's actually fixed in Vista, or at least vastly improved. (The computer I'm using has had the same OS install since Vista came out, and it performs just like it did new.)

I am curious about what this will mean for Linux on the desktop as there is also the cost issue. We have a clearly inferior (in that hardware) operating system that costs money against a free and Free operating system.

And yet Netbooks with Windows still outsell those with Linux. Gasp.

Re:Vista

[metlin]

Office, baby. Office.

It's not the platform, but the applications on the platform.

For instance, for those of us who have to use spreadsheets, Excel is ages ahead of any competition. The shortcuts, documentation, existing scripts, backwards compatibility etc. also play a big role.

And on that same scale, Office 2007 in general is way superior. It is not just the features - it is also *good* technical support and supporting documentation for the end user.

By that same note, I see OS X coming up as an alternative. But Linux? Not for a long time.

Re:Vista

[Anonymous Coward]

What else would you expect from a Slashdoter with the username LordVader717.

Re:Vista

[tepples]

I buy and install Office

Do you live in 1998 ? Linux has been doing everything you listed here since KDE 1.0 and StarOffice 5.0.

Does StarOffice or OpenOffice.org run applications delivered as an Access+VBA database, such as Stone Edge Order Manager? If not, what alternative to Stone Edge Order Manager do you recommend?

Re:Vista

[RedK]

It could : http://why.openoffice.org/images/base-big.png

The point is, there are tons of other softwares that do the same thing as you just pointed out. I doubt Stone Edge has cornered the market of e-commerce or electronic retail management. Same thing as metlin is saying by bringing up Excel all the time. 90% of people don't need the VBA integration for their spreadsheets/graphs. Calc can do pretty much the entire base feature set Excel can, and some of the advance stuff too.

Frankly, this is getting old. The arguments weren't valid back in 2000, they are even less now.

Re:Vista

[Anonymous Coward]

I can top that. I'm typing this on a Nokia 5800. Obviously, posting on Slashdot is pretty useless, but I'm sure I can think of other uses for it.

Re:Vista

[Quantumstate]

Does a live CD count? Mine boots in about 60 seconds. Looks like Linux to me.

Forced obsolescence

[jrumney]

I have a number of PCMCIA devices I've collected over the years - a SCSI adapter, two or three modems, a couple of WiFi cards, an ethernet card and a PHS data card. But they don't fit into the last two laptops I've owned, apparently the manufacturers decided to switch wholesale to a new PCI Express based standard for which it is still next to impossible to find any cards for. The only cards I've seen have been ethernet cards, which most laptops have built in these days.

Re:Forced obsolescence

[FishWithAHammer]

It's not that hard to find ExpressCards for most purposes. I just bought an ExpressCard expansion sound card for my music rig (I perform with software synthesizers).

Re:Forced obsolescence

[threephaseboy]

still next to impossible to find any cards for

Huh? You can get serial ports, firewire,eSATA,parallel ,or a converter to PCMCIA

Re:Forced obsolescence

[Anonymous Coward]

Some people just like to complain without checking google. Now all you damn kids get off my lawn *shakes rake*

Re:Forced obsolescence

[jrumney]

Yes, you can get them online, but major computer stores don't stock any of them, despite selling more laptops than desktops these days.

Re:Forced obsolescence

[FishWithAHammer]

If you are shopping at "major computer stores", you are likely doing something wrong.

Re:Forced obsolescence

[jrumney]

Sometimes equipment is needed urgently, I can't always wait until a warehouse decides to process my order and ship it out. I usually visit my small local shop first, as he tends to have more variety in stock, but sometimes the major chains are a necessary evil, and for the vast majority of the population, it is what they are comfortable with.

Re:Forced obsolescence

[FishWithAHammer]

Yes, but you can get ExpressCard stuff, you're just looking in the wrong place. No, you can't get it as fast right now because not all manufacturers support it, but the technology is appreciably better (the maximum speed of an ExpressCard peripheral is 480MB/s in USB 2.0 mode and 2.0 GB/s in PCI Express mode--the maximum speed of a PC Card is something like 128MB/s). The peripherals will catch up to the technology.

In the meantime, do what all early adopters (because that is essentially what you are, whether you like it or not) do and buy online. Problem solved.

Re:Forced obsolescence

[jrumney]

I wouldn't call myself an early adopter - I didn't buy because of the new feature, I had it forced on me by the major manufacturers, who instead of including one PCMCIA slot and one ExpressCard slot, or designing a slot that could take both so the customers could have a smooth transition, just switched wholesale overnight about 2 years ago while still labelling the slots as PC-Card slots in marketing material and keeping their external appearance the same.

Re:Forced obsolescence

[FishWithAHammer]

You can still buy machines with CardBus and you can buy CardBus adapters on the cheap. I don't see what the huge issue is...

Re:Forced obsolescence

[arth1]

What I would want to use the ExpressCard slot for is what my computer doesn't have, and which would be useful to me. I'm glad you found a use for it -- I sure don't.

I'd like a GPS receiver. Can you find an ExpressCard GPS receiver? Nope. There was one, but it quickly went off market. The closest you can get are cell phone triangulation cards (sold as GPS cards, which IMHO should be slapped by a class action lawsuit), which require an expensive phone plan to operate in a small subset of the world.

I can think of only one reason for there not being any GPS cards available for ExpressCard, and that reason is not pretty.

Analog?

[Anonymous Coward]

My god, everyone's going back to Analog? It's a fad! They only sell for like a dollar its true. And some have pretty covers true... but do they run Linux? Negative. I will not be buying these.

Docking Station

[Foobar of Borg]

One reason might be because of docking stations. I have one and never need a desktop anymore. I just plug my laptop into it and it is just as good as a desktop as far as I'm concerned. I don't really care about gaming, though, so a lot of slashdotters might not find this an acceptable solution. But, for most people, it is and is cheaper than buying both a desktop and a laptop.

Schönes Weihnachten

Re:Docking Station

[tedric]

Exactly what my company did with all the old workstation. We are a software development department and a few years back the main issues with laptops have been the slow hard drives. Now they are fast enough (of course we still have our build servers) and all the desktops have been replaced with laptops and docking stations connected to large TFT displays.

Great for working, because you can set up dual-view, do the coding on the large TFT and have your documentation, specification, whatever (/. ;)) on the laptop screen.

And I think the gambling argument doesn't hold for most of the games, either. But I only play occassionally and have maybe different requirements and don't play games like Crysis.

Deja Vu?

[Hitman_Frost]

Are you sure - I thought this was the case back in 2003? Or is that just in the UK?

Re:Deja Vu?

[TheRaven64]

In 2003, it was Apple. Earlier this year, it was the USA, now it is worldwide. I don't know when it happened for the UK specifically.

If stores carry only the Windows version

[tepples]

If you bought it preinstalled (the case for netbooks) you get fully supported hardware.

True, I've seen Eee PCs with Xandros in Toys R Us and Target stores in Fort Wayne, Indiana, in the past month. But a lot of Slashdot users have posted comments complaining that stores in other areas that sell netbooks carry only the Windows XP version, not the Linux version. And besides, sometimes I want to buy something a bit bigger than an Eee PC or Aspire One if I'm going to use it as a desktop replacement; those universally come with Windows unless I buy either a Mac or, say, an Inspiron notebook from dell.com. Buying laptops through mail-order carries a significantly bigger risk than with desktop PCs because I can't easily replace a keyboard, trackpad, or screen that I find uncomfortable.

I'll probably never buy another desktop

[h4x354x0r]

Wireless access is getting good, portables are useful. Keep in touch, will ya?

Not Notebooks, but Netbooks!

[xippie]

I don't like notebooks, they have a weight of +- 2.5 to 3 KG.
I bought a Netbook, just over 1 KG, so I can easy surf and mail without taking 2 KG to much with me!

Its for me, and many others, a perfect compromise. Small screen, but fast enough to mail and surf.

And thats what you need on the road?

GreetZz
Xip Pie

Laptops have outsold desktops since 2005

[Anonymous Coward]

Wasn't this story on slashdot 3 years ago?

http://mobile.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=05/06/06/0320254

I wonder how they count them

[btharris]

I don't buy "a desktop", but I buy parts, often from different merchants. I doubt a user-assembled desktop counts for these numbers since it's not assembled by a big name OEM. For laptops, notebooks, etc., you have to buy the package deal and buy a machine with a name on it, so buying one would surely be counted as a notebook purchase. Since my desktop wasn't purchased as a whole machine, I wonder if it was counted.

Re:I wonder how they count them

[TheRaven64]

Do you really think self-built desktops account for more than 1% of the market? i.e. enough to be of statistical significance? The big corporate buyers all get them from OEMs, and most home buyers do as well.

Re:I wonder how they count them

[Anonymous Coward]

I believe at where I live (Indonesia) the majority of Desktops sold to end users are the self build desktops. They are far more cheaper here, and as reliable as the branded counterparts. Computer shops flourish here mostly in major cities. We even have some 5 stories malls packed with literally hundreds of small computer shops selling this kind of thing.

Notebooks fail Ergonomics

[Dystopian Rebel]

Notebooks have wretched ergonomics. People are asking for pain if they are going to spend all their computing time typing on a small, straight keyboard, clumsily pointing and clicking with a TouchPad or a TrackPoint, and looking downward at a small screen.

To make a notebook ergonomically humane, the user must also purchase a docking station and connect a GoldTouch keyboard (for example), a monitor, and a humane pointing device. And a multi-port USB hub. He or she has to spend more than what would have been spent to build an mATX-based system (or buy new for $300 at current prices)... that would have been expandable, performed much better, and encouraged healthy posture and habits.

But yes, I know that we don't really care about people's health.

Re:Notebooks fail Ergonomics

[Orange Crush]

I imagine the ergonomics of carrying around even a mATX system, monitor, keyboard, mouse, power cords and cables are considerably worse than carrying a laptop. If a computer is going to be stationary on a desk, then a desktop makes sense. But the whole point of a laptop is portability and convenience, even if it sacrifices some ergonomics.

Re:Notebooks fail Ergonomics

[deraj123]

It's not caring about peoples' health - it's people caring about their own health. Laptops make much more sense for people who have a computer to occasionally browse the internet and check email. I sit at a desk with good ergonomics when I'm working. However, when I'm just enjoying myself, I prefer to be on the couch, or at the kitchen table while my wife is cooking, or in bed, or...etc...lots of bad ergonomics, but that's not what it's really about. I'm not doing my hardcore computing on a laptop, and I suspect that most people who caused these numbers to go up are doing very little hardcore computing at all.

Re:Notebooks fail Ergonomics

[Anonymous Coward]

The ergos vary a lot. The IBM ThinkPad I'm using at work has a nice keyboard, compared to most desktop PC keyboards I've had the misfortune to type on. Other laptops I used were pretty lousy though.

I'll admit that I don't use the mouse very much, since I'm more of a CLI guy. It's basically just there to cut & paste text occasionally (but even then I prefer to use the keyboard-accessible buffers built-into vi/vim and screen).

At home I have a Kinesis Classic keyboard hooked up to my laptop (sadly not a ThinkPad).

FWIW, I think mice are one of the worst ergonomic devices ever invented... That's one of the (many) reasons I'm sticking with the CLI.

Re:Notebooks fail Ergonomics

[couchslug]

Although I prefer desktops for work, if needed I just raise the notebook to the correct viewing height and use a USB keyboard with a Logitech Marble Mouse. I believe in bringing my own keyboard and mouse to work in any event, and keep spares handy.

For recliner surfing I use a strip of Velcro to secure my Thinkpad to a laptop cooler (avoids roasted yarbles, put it on the bottom of the notebook under the spacebar area, do NOT do both sides or it will suck to separate the notebook and cooler!) and loom the power brick and mouse cables together with Velcro straps. Power brick is Velcroed to the small table next to me. No external keyboard when in recliner mode of course, and the combination works well when I'm in a recumbent position.

Re:Notebooks fail Ergonomics

[ucblockhead]

It is a lot easier to connect my laptop to my 23" monitor than it is to take a desktop into a meeting to take notes or put a desktop in my backpack to take home to use while watching TV.

Re:Notebooks fail Ergonomics

[aurispector]

If you want a desktop sized machine, get a desktop? Radical idea?

I had a laptop with a 15.4" & with use I had no real problem with the layout. The trouble with it was that actually transporting it required infrastructure - a dedicated bag which naturally accrued a load of other crap. It was heavy & ate up a carry-on slot when I flew. As far as actually using it - it was fine & I had no real complaints.

Now I have a netbook with and 8.9" screen that slips into my briefcase. This DOES in fact have atrocious ergonomics, but the portability trade off is well worth it. The keyboard is still big enough to fit my fingers on the home keys for typing and is very usable if not comfortable. Well worth the trade off for semi-casual use.

Death of PC Gaming

[manekineko2]

I think this has a lot to do with the purported death of PC gaming stories that keep coming up, like this one from yesterday:
http://games.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/12/24/032242

Sure, notebooks can play PC games, but it's a reduced experience, both in terms of comfort and performance.

I'm one of the people that switched over from desktop to notebook only about 6 years ago now. Once I switched over I gradually just stopped playing PC games; they ran like shit and it was cramped. A while after that, I decided to try out the Xbox for my gaming fix. Debatably it's not quite as good as the PC, but it gets the job done, and it avoids me having to pick up a second (and expensive) desktop just to game on.

More recently, once all laptops started coming with 3D graphics cards, I've started playing a few PC games again, but only little stuff like the Penny Arcade game rather than things like Crysis. At this point, I just don't see the purpose of spending quite a bit more to upgrade the GPU on my laptop so that I get worse battery life and more heat, just so I can play games when I already have a console.

Girls and Gays

[TheTyrannyOfForcedRe]

I can hardly believe it when (supposed) geeks claim that laptops are on par with desktops. Where's my quad core laptop with 9TB of disk and dual 1920x1200 displays? How can anyone piddle around on some little laptop with a 15 or 17" screen and 500GB of disk and feel satisfied? I guess laptops are fine if you're computational demands end with twittering and myspacing and all of web 2.0 gayness. They sure don't cut it for me.

Re:Girls and Gays

[Anonymous Coward]

Dude your penis must be massive!!!

Re:Girls and Gays

[Anonymous Coward]

I run my laptop (HP8530w) with dual 1920x1200 external displays through the docking station, and when it's docked I've also got access to 4TB NAS disk. Admittedly not INSIDE the actual laptop, but at least I have the option of either having it non movable with 4.5TB disk (somewhat like your solution), or carrying it with me with 500GB (which your solution can't do) Sadly it's only got a dual core chip, that might as you say be insufficient for you, but it's never proven to be a problem for me.

Re:Girls and Gays

[TheRaven64]

Over here in the part of the world where we don't use computers as a measure of our masculinity, we are happy being able to sit in the park during the summer and work there, rather than inside, when the weather is nice. We like having our palmtops that let us write finish off an article in the pub while we wait for friends to arrive, or in a coffee shop looking out over the sea. And we like our computers being a small fraction of our electricity bills again.

But, if you feel your sexuality threatened by laptops, then by all means continue to use a desktop. Don't come over here near the MacBooks though, in case you catch gay.

Re:Girls and Gays

[TheTyrannyOfForcedRe]

Outside in the park? Out at the pub! With friends??? Lounging at a coffee shop!!! These people you speak of are NOT geeks.

Re:Girls and Gays

[TheTyrannyOfForcedRe]

When the size of another man's dick is the first thing that pops into you mind after reading his post to Slashdot...

Lemme guess, you're a laptop guy! I'm thinking Macbook Pro with a red iPod in tow. Hey, if the shoe fits. : )

P.S. It's not scary huge but it is very nicely above average thank you.

Re:Girls and Gays

[Anonymous Coward]

I can hardly believe it when (supposed) geeks claim that laptops are on par with desktops. Where's my quad core laptop with 9TB of disk and dual 1920x1200 displays? How can anyone piddle around on some little laptop with a 15 or 17" screen and 500GB of disk and feel satisfied? I guess laptops are fine if you're computational demands end with twittering and myspacing and all of web 2.0 gayness. They sure don't cut it for me.

9TB of porn is indeed a lot, but most people will be satisfied with less, say.. 500 GB or so.

Re:Girls and Gays

[TheTyrannyOfForcedRe]

Consumer NAS boxes makes me cringe. They hang blazing fast disks off a glorified microcontroller. The anemic processor is never able to handle anywhere near the disks' sustained transfer rates. Then the whole shebang is hung off the end of a low bandwidth high latency link. Spring for a full tower case and put your disks where they belong. Every decent motherboard on the planet sports six SATA ports these days.

Re:Girls and Gays

[trytoguess]

You're actually trying to equate hertosexuality and masculinty with geekdom? ROFL

Re:Girls and Gays

[TheTyrannyOfForcedRe]

Everyone and everything is fair game for a harmless laugh. When you label certain things (aka homosexuality) as being off limits to some light humor you piss people off and make life a little less worth living. Seriously, what harm comes from poking some fun at the fact that gay guys like Macs? SERIOUSLY!

Are redneck trailerpark jokes off limits too? Is REDNECKPHOBIA something that must be stamped out with nazi-like zeal as well? Somehow I think you wouldn't take the same stand for other groups.

Get over yourself. Next thing you'll be telling me that holocaust jokes are a no-no.

Oh, shit...

Re:Girls and Gays

[yanos]

Dude! I think you are greatly exaggerating the geek stereotype here. Specs like that are for some very intensive stuff, like a rendering machine or something. The fact that you conveniently forgot to tell us what you are doing with this machine makes me believe that *you* are the supposed geek that just like to brag about their computer penis size^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^Hspecs.

I'm a long time gentoo user and even I don't see the need to upgrade to a quad core, despite having to compile stuff all the time. It could go faster, but right now I think it's fast enough and so not worth the money to upgrade the mobo+RAM+CPU. I even do a bit of video compression and run some virtual machines. You know what? I'm still on a *single* core cpu! OMG I'm so un-l33t or whatever...

And 9TB of drive space? What are you storing anyway? I have quite few video and music and I'm still below 2TB, backups included.

I think you just made those up just to prove a point, dude. Laptops are just fine, save for the small screen and even then you can always hook your laptop to another one when at home.

And please stop using the term gay in a derogative way, it's just so very immature.

Re:Girls and Gays

[TheTyrannyOfForcedRe]

Sorry, I simply can not take seriously any post that contains fake backspace characters. Write another reply without the ^H^H^H^H^H chars and we can talk.

Re:Girls and Gays

[Anonymous Coward]

I can hardly believe it when (supposed) geeks claim that laptops are on par with desktops. Where's my quad core laptop with 9TB of disk and dual 1920x1200 displays?

I can't speak for everyone here, but personally I consider installing cut down linux, or similar, on a tiny embedded device with minute amounts of RAM/disk space far 'geekier' than going down to your local computer store and spending thousands on a ludicriously overpowered machine. Each unto his own I suppose.

Re:Girls and Gays

[Anonymous Coward]

My Eee PC has a 7 inch screen, you insensitive clod.

Re:Girls and Gays

[Anonymous Coward]

I can hardly believe it when (supposed) geeks claim that laptops are on par with desktops. Where's my quad core laptop with 9TB of disk and dual 1920x1200 displays? How can anyone piddle around on some little laptop with a 15 or 17" screen and 500GB of disk and feel satisfied? I guess laptops are fine if you're computational demands end with twittering and myspacing and all of web 2.0 gayness. They sure don't cut it for me.

I am a atomic/nuclear physicist and do all my work on 17" MBP with 1920x1200 hires screen. Now let's see where you fit in between that and 'twittering and myspacing'.

Re:Girls and Gays

[Anonymous Coward]

A lot of the OpenBSD devs uses laptops, and it's not to browse myspace or web2.0 sites. You should attend one of the hackathons someday. Unless of course you don't know how to code your way out of a paper bad. ;-)

Re:Girls and Gays

[TheTyrannyOfForcedRe]

I can't speak for everyone here, but personally I consider installing cut down linux, or similar, on a tiny embedded device with minute amounts of RAM/disk space far 'geekier' than going down to your local computer store and spending thousands on a ludicriously overpowered machine. Each unto his own I suppose.

Buying the machine isn't the geeky part. Pluging the parts together isn't the geeky part either. The geeky part comes in the full use and appreciation of the resulting machine and the yearning for a few more cores, another gig or ram, another couple TB of disk, etc.

Minimal stuff is cool too but buying a netbook and futzing with a Linux install isn't very hardcore. The real geek designs and builds his own minimalist boards based on sweet little ARM processors like the AT91SAM7 or OMAP3530 and then proceeds to write his own realtime kernel and micro TCP stack.

I'm just tired of all these SUPPOSED geeks who are happy with lame laptops and have zero appreciation and even less knowledge of the hardware. If you're not into hardware you're not a computer geek, period. Maybe you're a CS kind of guy? No, what you really are is a MATH NERD.

Hardcore CS dude who doesn't give a flip about the hardware* != Computer Geek

Hardcore CS dude who doesn't give a flip about the hardware* == Math Nerd

* This includes anyone who used to care about the hardware but doesn't anymore because "It's fast enough for everything I want to do these days."

WHOOSH! That's the sound of you're geek card being revoked. REAL GEEKS cared about the hardware before personal computers could anything practical. They cared when they had to twiddle machine code into front panel switches for and hour and their only payback was a few blinking LEDs.

Re:Girls and Gays

[RedK]

1920x1200 displays ? Real geeks use 80x24 terminals. You're talking about the neo-geeks, the ones that first used a computer with a graphical user interface.

Re:Girls and Gays

[TheTyrannyOfForcedRe]

I am a atomic/nuclear physicist and do all my work on 17" MBP with 1920x1200 hires screen. Now let's see where you fit in between that and 'twittering and myspacing'.

Sorry, nuclear physicist != computer geek. Plenty of smart people in NERDY disciplines do their work on laptops. That doesn't makes them geeks.

Re:Girls and Gays

[Anonymous Coward]

Wow, talk about a lame argument! Everyone knows the BSD guys are mostly all gay.

Re:Girls and Gays

[Cheesy Fool]

Exactly! I bought a netbook so I browse the web/check email without getting out of bed. None of this going outside nonsense.

Re:Girls and Gays

[RedK]

Buying the machine isn't the geeky part. Pluging the parts together isn't the geeky part either. The geeky part comes in the full use and appreciation of the resulting machine and the yearning for a few more cores, another gig or ram, another couple TB of disk, etc.

Actually, the most geeky people I've ever known never yearned for more cores, more ram or more TB. They were way too busy using the machine they had to do real geeky stuff.

Re:Girls and Gays

[yanos]

Way to bail out of an argument...

Re:Girls and Gays

[ucblockhead]

Real geeks use 1920x1200 displays to make 20 xterm screens visible simultaneously.

Re:Girls and Gays

[$criptah]

Nice rant dude. Who the fuck rated it "insightful?" Seriously, you're so full of it you may need a new shovel for Christmas. I read some of your posts and it seems like you're lacking something. Some people just want to get shit done on their computers and it does not matter what they use. Must you piss on people just because they choose laptops over desktops?

The Walmart Reality Check

[westlake]

If we define notebooks as small laptops with processors in the Atom class, then Microsoft has a very big problem with there with Vista and even with XP I would say. It is not only the fact that Vista is too slow in that hardware. It is also that it gets slower with use.

Ten of the fifteen mini-laptops sold through Walmart.com run XP on the Atom.

The XP ATOM netbook at $350 includes a 9" screen, a 120 GB HDD and 1 GB RAM.

The Ubuntu Dell with 512 MB RAM and 4 GB RAM at $350 is at least interesting. But I am beginning to suspect that 512 MB RAM and 4 GB of Flash isn't going to cut it in the netbook sector - no matter what your OS.

9" screen. Clock speeds approaching 2 GHz. That is a credible platform for media and games.

The five netbooks available in store all run XP.Mini-Laptops

This is the Walmart Vista Premium laptop at $500: 15" screen. 2 GHz AMD Sempron. 3 GB RAM. DVD-Burner. Etc. The Acer Vista Basic laptop at $550 ships with a multifunction HP printer. The Walmart could be forgiven for not knowing that there is such a thing as a Linux printer.

Desktops....The real sign of a true Geek.

[acedotcom]

nothing will ever replace my desktop....ever. I think thats a good thing though. it will make a good desktop set up more of a status symbol for the true geek.

not to say that they haven't always been, but the REAL customizers will move more towards the hardcore and away from the Casual. I love my 17" laptop, it supports two hard drives, its nice, i love it. but i will never surrender my desktop. not until my laptop can support 4 hard drives.

Re:Desktops....The real sign of a true Geek.

[sethstorm]

It's one place where quality can still be had. You can't force someone to a TN display, nor do they have to look like some cut-rate ODM.

Re:Desktops....The real sign of a true Geek.

[Anonymous Coward]

if you need some kind of badge of geekness than you're not really a geek at all.

Re:Desktops....The real sign of a true Geek.

[acedotcom]

desktops = real independence

Re:Desktops....The real sign of a true Geek.

[TheRaven64]

The badge of a true geek is what you do with your computer, not what kind of computer it is. Adam Dunkels, who wrote a multitasking operating system for the C64 is more of a geek than any of us who write code for multicore processors.

The idea of taking your storage with you is remarkably quaint though, I like it. I'm tempted to bookmark this post and refer you to it in ten years.

Re:Desktops....The real sign of a true Geek.

[TheTyrannyOfForcedRe]

The idea of taking your storage with you is remarkably quaint though, I like it. I'm tempted to bookmark this post and refer you to it in ten years.

Wow, you're living ten years in the future! How are gas prices? Is Britney fat again?

Way back here in 2008 there are no wireless services that can shuttle data to and fro at anywhere near SATA speeds. Besides, the providers we do have like to cancel accounts after too many gigs of traffic in one day. I bet things are different in the future! Do you have a flying car? Oh, probably not. I doubt you need it. You're a whole TEN YEARS from my version of "now." Every square inch of the good ole USA is served by quick, efficient, mass transit by then. I bet the skybus is free...or maybe...no, they pay you! And they serve free drinks too. And all the skybus flight attendants are really hot. Well, of course they are! There are no ugly people in the future. What was I thinking???

Damn, It must be nice to live in the future!

Re:Desktops....The real sign of a true Geek.

[Anonymous Coward]

Do you have any bookmarks that have led to a valid page ten years later?

I've scripted something to delete my bookmarks after a year.

Yet the panels are worse than ever

[sethstorm]

The only choice for a display type is TN or TN with something that tries to mask it.

No thanks to netbooks and such, bring back the AFFS/S-IPS displays tyvm. Give us back our fully reflective, non-distorting panels tyvm!

Re:Yet the panels are worse than ever

[Anonymous Coward]

well well well. if it isn't the faggot douche who has to keep every slashdot user in little categories so he knows what opinion to have of them instead of what they're saying. how you doing little bitch? why don't you just keep your stupid ideas to yourself?

Notebooks, not Netbooks

[sethstorm]

A good sized chunk of us are looking at your kind for forcing TN and otherwise making laptops cut-rate in quality.

No thank you, but my T60p does quite well with its thin build and its Flexview(AFFS) display. I proudly carry its weight wherever it goes, having quality on the road. That's one thing you'll never get with your junk-quality netbook.

Maybe that's because portable devices wear faster

[Animats]

Maybe that's because portable devices are used up faster. They get lost, damaged, stolen, and the batteries die. Desktops have none of those problems.

Re:Maybe that's because portable devices wear fast

[J Isaksson]

Admittedly not getting lost/damaged/stolen as much, but I've had two desktops stolen and one damaged in a fire while my laptop never had problems like that, mostly because I carry it with me so I can keep it safe. Not saying you're wrong in general, just that your mileage may vary.

I guess it's the "Netbook" phenomenon..

[Paracelcus]

I bought one, a Eee PC 904HD and it's "desktop" counterpart the B202.

The small size and quiet/low power/cost operation sold me.

I don't want to suggest that one "netbook" is better than another, that's somebody Else's job.

Here's your dual screen, 960GB laptop.

[sethstorm]

It's not dual screen 1920x1200, but it is dual screen. The Lenovo W700ds

To whom and for what purpose?

[Jack9]

Is this "study" excluding corporate buys? What about servers which are sold as desktop configurations? I did buy a notebook this year (for the first time) but I can balance that against 5 others who bought desktops and the ungodly number of desktops my company buys per month from DELL.

For many there is no reason to have a desktop

[$criptah]

I have stopped using desktops a while ago for one simple reason: I do enough stuff on a computer that it is worth brining it with me everywhere I go. E-mail, digital photography, deveopment, web browsing -- a modern laptop is capable of doing all of this. You can buy a pre-build Linux laptop from Dell for less than a grand. What is the reason for having a desktop again? Of course, if you're a fucking haxor who wants RAID 1+0, 15K RPM SAS drives and the rest of the stuff, be my guest. For the rest of us a laptop will do fine. But what about security?

Well, what about it? A desktop can be stolen just as easy as a laptop provided that somebody really wants to steal it. I bet in many cases laptops are "stolen" because their owners forget them in coffee shops or cabs. In the digital age there is no excuse not to have whole disk encryption combined with permissions and things like File Vault (if you're on Mac OS X). Have a look at list of the wonderful software that can help you. In fact if most laptop vendors install and force users to use encryption laptop theft is not going to be a problem provided that these machines can be backed up in a secure manner. Also, an organization may require all laptop users to use software as service, e.g. Google Apps., in order to avoid loss of data due to theft. If these steps are taken then lost laptops simply become a matter of personal responsibility.

Finally, the only thing that still makes me want to use a desktop at work is the fact that my 15" bulky laptop is a bitch to carry back and forth (we are required to bring all our laptops home). Make it smaller, lighter and more rugged and I will forget that desktop existed.

Re:For many there is no reason to have a desktop

[TheTyrannyOfForcedRe]

Raid 1 isn't for haxors it's for people who don't want to lose data to disk failures. Full disk encryption works great on desktops by the way. Oh, and it sure is nice to have a few extra cores to handle all of that crypto work.

Re:For many there is no reason to have a desktop

[Quantumstate]

It depends on why they want to steal your PC as to how much easier it is for a laptop. If they just want a computer then disk encryption is worthless because they don't want your data so they can just wipe it clean as they probably would do anyway. It is a lot easier to carry a laptop (this is a major feature) so thus is is a lot easier for a thief to carry away. And of course there is the point that you virtually never take a desktop out of your house.

Since U still can't build notebooks from scratch

[heroine]

obviously sales are up. But more importantly, you're buying more of the more expensive alternative & if you're still buying the cheap alternative, you clearly need to get your act together.

Argh!

[rbochan]

I still have an Omnibook 6000. I'd have snagged yours for parts!

Wine is not an emulator

[tepples]

And Microsoft doesn't have an Excel 2007 version on Ubuntu, unfortunately.

Quit whining and start WINEing. Excel 2007 Viewer is one of the fully supported apps, and Excel 2007 works too.

Laptops on desktops

[Cinnaman]

I wonder what percentage of those are simply placing their laptop on a computer desk and using it like a regular computer.

Mod Down

[Anonymous Coward]

-1 Childish
The meaningful bits of your expressions are held together with words whose meanings you do not understand. By making yourself appear a juvenile bigot you have stripped any semblance of unique thought from your rant. Next time you could try something along these lines, likely to better reception:

Desktops are better suited than laptops to many tasks; the rift between the demands of differing users has raised awareness of netbooks but left more demanding users unsatisfied.

Data caps make all this a no deal

[Anonymous Coward]

Portability in the USA is in the stone age because of data caps. Stick with the past until they update the networks or get real with their customers about the lies of network troubles.

what you want

[xenolion]

Ok folks, you buy what you want or what fits your needs. I dont find this story out there. Just look at how many colleges require students to have computers, then look at how big the dorm rooms are. What would work better for those people? I myself have both a desktop and laptop. I have started to travel more and more these days, so the lappy gets used more and Im now looking at upgrading. I have yet to put one dime into my HP dv5 laptop due to the fact that I paid for more than the average out-of-the box setup. This fits my needs. The old saying comes to mind " You get what you pay for" With some companies giving you more option in Laptops then more people will buy, but there is a place for everything. If you dont travel or need to take your pc with you then why buy a laptop? Build a desktop.. Everyone out there has a need for something different, one size does not fit all.

So when will we have...

[Anonymous Coward]

...a wide screen laptop with a full size keyboard??? The convigence of desktop and laptop, per excellence!