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Notebook Sales Outpace Desktop Sales

Posted by Soulskill on from the year-of-laptop-on-the-desktop dept.

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.'"

17 of 207 comments (clear)

  1. That's good, but. . . by wsidegangstarr · · Score: 5, Insightful

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

    1. Re:That's good, but. . . by morgan_greywolf · · Score: 4, Informative

      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.

      --
      My blog
    2. Re:That's good, but. . . by nevesis · · Score: 4, Interesting

      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.

    3. Re:That's good, but. . . by wsidegangstarr · · Score: 3, Interesting

      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.

    4. Re:That's good, but. . . by nevesis · · Score: 5, Insightful

      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.

    5. Re:That's good, but. . . by nabsltd · · Score: 5, Interesting

      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.

    6. Re:That's good, but. . . by ShadowBlasko · · Score: 4, Interesting

      (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.

      --
      There are 4 boxes to use in the defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, ammo. Use in that order- Ed Howdershelt Via Tass
  2. Wrong Decision by nevesis · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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.)

    1. Re:Wrong Decision by rogermcdodger · · Score: 5, Insightful

      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.

    2. Re:Wrong Decision by TheRaven64 · · Score: 3, Interesting

      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?

      --
      I am TheRaven on Soylent News
  3. Last Week... by Anna+Merikin · · Score: 4, Interesting

    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?

  4. Re:Vista by Roland+Piquepaille · · Score: 3, Informative

    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)

  5. Re:Vista by Roland+Piquepaille · · Score: 3, Informative

    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.

  6. Re:Girls and Gays by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Funny

    Dude your penis must be massive!!!

  7. Re:Steve Jobs Quote. by LordVader717 · · Score: 4, Insightful

    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.

  8. Re:Desktops....The real sign of a true Geek. by TheRaven64 · · Score: 5, Interesting

    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
  9. Re:Girls and Gays by yanos · · Score: 4, Insightful

    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.