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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.'"
Now just to get some more standards. . .and user-replaceable parts.
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.)
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.
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 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?
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.
When his defense asked, "Which computer has Jon Johansen trespassed upon?" the answer was: "His own."
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.
Schönes Weihnachten
Similar to the upcoming US election results
Are you sure - I thought this was the case back in 2003? Or is that just in the UK?
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.
Wireless access is getting good, portables are useful. Keep in touch, will ya?
They were right - the revolution did not get televised. It was posted on YouTube instead. All in 120 characters. SLOOSH!
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
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.
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.
Rich And Stupid is not so bad as Working For Rich And Stupid.
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.
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.
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!
Twitter supports and protects racists - by smearing their critics with the "Hate Speech" label.
Dude your penis must be massive!!!
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.
Twitter supports and protects racists - by smearing their critics with the "Hate Speech" label.
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.
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.
Twitter supports and protects racists - by smearing their critics with the "Hate Speech" label.
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 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.
I killed da wabbit -Elmer Fudd
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.
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
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.
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
Outside in the park? Out at the pub! With friends??? Lounging at a coffee shop!!! These people you speak of are NOT geeks.
"Liechtenstein is the world's largest producer of sausage casings, potassium storage units, and false teeth."
It's not dual screen 1920x1200, but it is dual screen. The Lenovo W700ds
Twitter supports and protects racists - by smearing their critics with the "Hate Speech" label.
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.
Often wrong but never in doubt.
I am Jack9.
Everyone knows me.
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.
"Liechtenstein is the world's largest producer of sausage casings, potassium storage units, and false teeth."
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.
You're actually trying to equate hertosexuality and masculinty with geekdom? ROFL
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...
"Liechtenstein is the world's largest producer of sausage casings, potassium storage units, and false teeth."
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.
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.
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'.
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. ;-)
I still have an Omnibook 6000. I'd have snagged yours for parts!
...Rob
The American Dream isn't an SUV and a house in the suburbs; it's Don't Tread On Me.
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.
"Not to mention all the idiots who use words like boxen."
Anonymous Coward on Monday August 04, @06:49PM
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.
"Liechtenstein is the world's largest producer of sausage casings, potassium storage units, and false teeth."
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.
Exactly! I bought a netbook so I browse the web/check email without getting out of bed. None of this going outside nonsense.
Hail to the king, baby!
I wonder what percentage of those are simply placing their laptop on a computer desk and using it like a regular computer.
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.
"Not to mention all the idiots who use words like boxen."
Anonymous Coward on Monday August 04, @06:49PM
Real geeks use 1920x1200 displays to make 20 xterm screens visible simultaneously.
The cake is a pie
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?