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Flight of the Desktops
theodp writes "Slate's Farhad Manjoo has seen the future of computing, and it's looking mighty bleak for desktop computers. In the last decade, portable computers have erased many of the advantages that desktops once claimed while desktops have been unable to shake their one glaring deficiency — they're chained to your desk. Last year, sales of laptops eclipsed sales of desktops for the first time, and it's been projected that by 2015 desktops will constitute just 18% of the consumer PC market."
If so, I'll buy the premise. If not, it's stupid.
Oh, I'd like a mouse as well.
-B
Ash and Hickory, straight-grained and true, make excellent bludgeons, dandy for the cudgeling of vegetarians.
My desktop has a far bigger screen than any mobile device would be comfortable with carrying. Two screens some of the time. A full sized keyboard and mouse, which is infinitely more useful than anything other than perhaps touchscreen, and even then beats it in some applications. It's far more powerful per dollar spent than any mobile device from the same year could be, a trend that is still true. It runs cooler, as it can have a near unlimited amount of fans.
So, even though they can now theoretically match it, a mobile device would have a smaller screen, smaller keyboard, cost more or be less powerful. If it did have an equal sized screen, it'd be unwieldy.
The only chance of beating my desktop a mobile device would have is when it's equally priced, transportable, but can be quickly and easily "docked" in so I can use my real screens, keyboard, mouse and speakers. I'm talking about a single override cable into a dock station here, not manually plugging and unplugging each one every time.
Could cpu and ram be added to a docking station as a payoff for bringing the laptop into the office? That is, cpu and ram that could share the laptop's operating system.
Their they're doing there hair.
Desktops are magnitudes more powerful than what most people require from their computer these days. Probably more likely, the 'desktop' will morph into a server to manage all our files and wireless devices. I'm not about to surrender to 'cloud' just yet.
The only chance of beating my desktop a mobile device would have is when it's equally priced, transportable, but can be quickly and easily "docked" in so I can use my real screens, keyboard, mouse and speakers.
But that is most laptops today. If you really need a larger screen, you can use an external monitor. When you go to a fixed working location, you can have mice and keyboards and whatever all set up... the one thing you don't really need, is a great big CPU box.
I personally don't even need any of that. I work entirely on a laptop, when I need more space well that's what virtual desktops are for. I find working without a mouse not hampering in the least.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
When laptops and laptop RAM are capable of ECC operation, then I'll eagerly replace the awkward, comparatively noisy desktop with one. I have a friend who insists it's a necessity with the memory capacities we have today and another who declares ECC to be a waste of money and accordingly, time, trying to find a damned motherboard which has BIOS options for it. Thus far, I've been siding with caution.
I just worship those people who make years and decades of conclusions based on hype factor of gadget X.
On the second look, I am 21.321% sure that, by 2015, traditional newspapers will suscessfully move to *Pad computing devices and to A4 sized mobile phones so we'll at least free ourselves from those quasi-journalistic outlets from Internet's Stone Age, when it was still tied to desktops. You know, Slate and likes. :D
http://opencm3.net, http://www.nongnu.org/gm2/
I haven't read TFA, but I disagree, laptops are only catching up with desktops, because more people want and have to be mobile.
On the other side, desktops have a full-size keyboard, a big and nice display, sitting at the desktop doesn't make you bend down and breaks your bearing (I mean doesn't cause malposture), you can play all the latest games, you can quite easily interchange desktop components and upgrade your PC up to three years after you've bought it, you can enjoy crystal sound (by using a decent audio system/speakers), you don't have to burn your balls and lose your precious sperm cells.
FTA, the article's only novel point is that "the cloud" will do the heavy lifting for gamers and professionals. Yeah right.
Everything else is just the standard mainframe -> mini-computer -> desktop -> laptop -> iPad -> neural link and retinal implants meme that's been done to death more times than I care to count.
Dual 24" screens, one oriented as portrait. 8GB RAM (max 16GB). Upgradeable CPU. Two internal HDs, with space for two more. Upgradeable video card. Full-size keyboard with numeric keypad + trackball. Decent computer speakers. No notebook can offer that.
A laptop can easily replace most common "office desktop" tasks. Where a laptop doesn't yet really compete, is for the traditional "workstation" jobs, since you rarely see laptops with GPUs that routinely handle a teraflop of computing power (and gulping 300watts of power. There's a reason you don't see those in a laptop).
It will still be many years before laptops are as durable and easy to repair as desktop computers are. Laptops are built with everything crammed close together on the inside. Even a small kinetic shock can damage a part, as can minor overheating from a ventilation problem. Repairing them yourself is quite risky unless you're a hardcore hardware geek, and expensive if you have a pro do it.
Desktops, conversely, have lots of empty space on the inside; they are easy to open up and reach into if you want to swap parts around or clean dust. (At least, the ones I've had are. I can't speak for Macs.) I've had the same desktop computer for six years. It's suffered a dead graphics card, a dead sound card, and a dust-choked fan that caused a CPU overheat. I repaired each of those problems in no more than a few hours each, and gave it a RAM upgrade too. I love my laptops too, but there's no replacement for having a machine you can safely upgrade yourself and won't break by dropping six inches. Laptops may outsell desktops but they won't drive them out of the market completely—at least, they'd better damn well not.
"This algorithm runs in constant time. Come on, 2,147,483,648 is a constant..."
Projections indicate that by 2015, just 18% of white collar workers will have cubicles while the others will lurch aimlessly about the building, filling TPS forms while sitting on the floor of the lobby using each others' backs for support.
I also prefer desktops, but where I am from, (India), we do have power cuts quite often. Since there is no battery, it means that a UPS is a necessity. Also, here, most desktops do not sell with wireless adaptor - which means I have to buy the wireless adaptor separately.
Now, considering all those, the price difference does not match up - and most UPS can carry 20 minutes worth of power, so compared to my laptop (4-5 hours battery on average), it does not even come close.
I would guess that in India, one of the major reasons people shy away from desktops is because of these factors - many friends who moved from desktop to laptop - is because of this. Most have a desktop setup though - with multiple monitors and keyboard, and they dock their laptop to it.
rajmohan_h@yahoo.com
Atom core processor, 1GB of RAM, 30GB of Disk pace used,mused primarily for web and email. (Actually this is a laptop). I'm probably a more typical user.
I agree that many of us prefer to re-use as many components as possible, I don't think it is as realistic as you might believe. The problem with this is that technology develops at such a rate as to obsolete everything in a desktop enough to make replacing everything in it practical.
How many of us still have motherboards with ISA connections? Sure, that's a little old. IDE? AGP? Those are both only a couple of years old. I don't think re-using an AGP or IDE card is realistic. How much digital stuff do you have that you want or need to keep? Can your old 80GB drive store it all? Do you still use SD-RAM? Moore's law?
just remember this ;)
The longer desktops last (and they're lasting longer than ever these days) the fewer sales the PC industry can make. And the lower the overall price tag on a system, the less wiggle room there is for taking on a margin.
But I think the posted article has the wrong focus... Desktop vs. laptop is a non-issue because they both cater to the same "personal computing" way of doing things.
The real drama is now between PCs and managed handhelds like iPhone, iPad, Android, etc. If all these smartphones end up with bigger-brother tablets that sell well, then PC culture will shrink and the new normal will be systems like iPad that operate within walled gardens that have an anti-Web bias.
But most people need neither portable use it anywhere, or heavy power. Laptops will sit on a desk quite happily, and can take an external mouse.
Common tasks are email, word processing, spreadsheets, web browsing. Any games are likely to be budget games aimed at low end systems or systems from a few years back.
Reading that, made me stupider.
Automation - The Car Company Tycoon Game
After owning laptops exclusively for the last 5 years I'm planning on selling my laptop and buying a desktop. Ever sense I bought an iPad my laptop has been confined to my desk. There's no need to take it on trips, to the coffee shop, or use it in my living room anymore. I still need a computer for programming and graphics work, but I'm going to get a nice dual 24" monitor system with an extended keyboard and tons of RAM.
What makes the Desktop model work is:
- ordering the parts
- interchangeability of the parts
- price of parts
- choice of parts
- longevity of parts
- upgrades are easier
- a learning tool
- pride
- fun
It used to be that when you bought a "boxy machine that sat on or under your desk" you (and usually a friend that knew way more than you) would sit down for months figuring out what parts you were going to put in. When the parts finally came, it was like a second christmas. You (and usually a friend that knew way more than you) would sit down and put all the bits into the proper places and pray you would got only one beep when it would post. Then you would set about installing all the software from floppies most of which was pulled off a BBS somewhere. When it came time to upgrade, your friend or someone your friend knew, would know someone that was in the market for a new computer or an upgrade. A deal was made, you'd get some cash or do a swap, and the whole process would start over again (Incidentally, most people that made it to this point eventually started learning something about software programming).
The *whole* process of researching/learning/building/selling a desktop is where the legacy of the Desktop comes from. You can't do all these things with a proprietary piece of locked up iCrap that needs center-pin metric torx bits to open and violates some warranty for even thinking about it. The parts in portables have very little interchangeability. Geeks love investigating where the magic smoke comes from, but portables just aren't that accessible. The knowledge factor has devolved as well; used to be everyone knew what kind of cpu, ram and video card was in their "boxy machine that sat on or under your desk", but these days the only knowledge anyone really cares to retain is what colors are available.
The Geek is what has taken flight, not the Desktop.
boycott slashdot February 10th - 17th check out: altSlashdot.org
Finally somebody with a little clarity! I haven't read every comment in this thread but a pretty big sample and what almost every person (with very few exceptions) seems to be forgetting is that we don't represent the majority type of user. If you're machine is spending a significant amount of its time compiling or you ponder what RAID setup to use then you're not the common user!
A laptop will be more than sufficient for the average user these days. I'm not saying the article isn't total rubbish but my seriously, some of the people here have to get a grip. We're tech geeks and our requirements from a computer aren't the same as Joe public.
The desktop will die one year before the year of linux on the desktop.
(1.21 gigawatts) / (88 miles per hour) = 30 757 874 newtons
Yo grandma, 2002 called and wanted to let you know you can do this sweet thing called "DPI scaling"
2002 also had something else to say: A lot of applications never got tested by their developers under DPI scaling, so they break in interesting ways.
I use desktop machines purely for CPU now-a-days; my time (except for data-wrangling) is spent on my laptop.
By the way, was I the only person who thought that "Flight of the Desktops" was going to involve, you know, actual desktops actually traveling through the air ? Suckered me in.
i've been using laptops more and more up until this past year.
now i'm finding myself moving back to a desktop.
i can upgrade the hardware on the desktop. the laptops, you get what you get.
***They can't even consistently power the computers they're using to fuck up our software.***
You clearly do not get your power from Central Vermont Public Service or many companies like them. Unreliable power is not limited to third world countries.
I'm a bit more sympathetic on the software point. Indians inevitably are going to create interfaces tailored to Indians. I don't want user interface code from the subcontinent. Americans and Western Europeans do those more than badly enough already. Going out of our way to make things even worse seems sort of unenlightened.
You can't see ANYTHING from a car, You've got to get out of the goddamned contraption and walk...Edward Abbey
Actually, I think that it will die a year after. We'll get our hopes up, because we'll finally have the year of Linux on the desktop, and then the rug of reality will be pulled out from us.
testing out my trending skills
2TB of mobile storage? get a USB3 external drive! For many of us that's overkill, even for a 'desktop'.
Why would you want wireless in a desktop anyway? Slower, more susceptible to interference, and really, there's enough HF flowing through the ether as it is.
I don't see any reason to connect a stationary system to a wireless network...
Truth arises more readily from error than from confusion. -Francis Bacon
I think the issue isn't some sort of inherent problem with Indian programmers, but rather the fact that it's hard to hold them accountable and it's much harder for them to see how their bad code affects them personally. E.g. they don't have to sit in the office with the rest of the team every day and be friends with the people whose lives they are making more difficult by taking shortcuts.
Also, a lot of the very good Indian programmers are working in the U.S. or Europe, so there's probably a bit of brain-drain when you go to India to find some.
Le français vous intéresse?
Portable devices barely even come close to the performance of a desktop computer. Ram is very limited in portable computers, so is hard disk, and processing speed... and battery life, and screen size.
What does "very limited" mean? You can put 4GB into even a netbook with a single module since the composite SODIMMs came out. SSDs, the new hotness, are typically 2.5" so will go into a desktop or notebook with equal aplomb. Desktops don't even have batteries. Small screen size? You can hook up an external display. The disadvantage of notebooks is cost, not capability, for the average user who doesn't need a dual-multicore. At one time I needed a powerful and portable system, I had a Core Duo with Quadro in a HP, it was a lemon, they (very eventually) gave me a replacement with a Core 2 Duo and a faster Quadro. It was more than fast enough for gaming and database reporting.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
That's some commute! Do you use the chunnel or do you fly?
Great minds think alike; fools seldom differ.
Or we just grew up.
Seriously, I used to do that crap. Spend 2 months trying to find parts that all played nicely with one another and were reasonably priced. Ordering from 3 different vendors online. Spending half a day putting it together, and hoping you didn't accidentally ESD damage something on the way. Spending another day setting up Windows or Linux the way you wanted it.
Then, 6 months later, spending half a day figuring out which part just went bad, where the reciepts were, and which parts to RMA first. Being out of commission (or using the older box in the corner) for a week or two until the parts came back. Upgrading little bits at at time, till you hit the upgrade cycle where everything had to go at once anyway: new processor needs new MB. New MB needs new RAM and power supply. May as well upgrade to SATA while I'm at it.
Then, we grew up, got real jobs, and had better things to do with our time than babysit hardware on an upgrade treadmill. So I started buying Macs. If something breaks, it's 20 minutes to drop it off at the local Apple store and let them deal with it. No chasing down half a dozen dodgy Taiwanese companies, half of which are out of business now. The hardware and the software works, and I get reasonable lifetimes out of it. The MBP I'm typing this on is pushing four years, and other than a couple replacement batteries (which Apple replaced for free, the second one out of warranty) and adding another stick of RAM last week, still holds up as my daily workstation in the office and at home.
Sure, I'll replace it eventually, but I don't need to tinker with something that just works every six months just to be on the bleeding edge anymore, and I don't need to replace every part in a computer three times because I can. I can pick something off the shelf, use it for 3-4 years, and then trade up to something where every part has been improved substantially in the meantime.
This
And when I want to upgrade my processor...
Sorry man, but almost no-one does that anymore, not even with desktops. Yes there are still some but you have to admit that practice is declining. At this point you get a few more cores - maybe - and possibly an incremental boost in clock. For what? A 10% gain?
I used to be on that ferris wheel but I got off long ago when consoles started being a decent gaming alternative. I still play some things on the computer, but I'm way more into the practicality of a system and not tweaking to the nth degree.
Laptops these days are powerful enough to serve even as halfway decent gaming systems. I generally keep them about three to four years before upgrading, and that strategy has worked out very well.
In some ways laptops are better than they used to be too, because laptops used to be a bitch to get into but now a lot of laptops offer somewhat easy paths to change out RAM and your HD, and those are the things people upgrade anymore if anything.
Laptops are too expensive to use as a regular computer
I found desktop systems to be hellishly time consuming to maintain, laptops simply do not need as much fiddling with. The time savings alone is a huge boost.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
You should get this power setup for your desktop:
http://www.mopo.ca/uploaded_images/Indian_Tech_Support-740333.jpg
Renewable energy sources FTW!
Because I can't drill holes in floors and walls that I don't own in order to run cables. I know others who only have Internet access via wireless connections. Neither one of these scenarios are that obscure.
I want this account deleted.
Although they don't really exist any more, i've never forgiven Compaq (the worst computer manufacturer in the world) for buying up and killing off DEC (Digital Equipment Corp - at that time, the best computer manufacturer in the world).
I'll never forgive them for killing off the Alpha chip. Place I worked had a 550 mhz Alpha DB server when the best Intel CPU you could buy was 175 mhz. They were manufacturing 64-bit CPUs years before the AMD or Intel even had test units. One of the first things Compaq did was shut the office in Redmond that was working with Microsoft to port Win2k to the 64-bit Alpha, for absolutely no reason that I have ever been able to understand. And they killed the Tandem line of mainframes and its Non-Stop Kernel, in spite of strong sales.
Frelling morons deserved to be bought by Carly Fiorina and HP.
"Think about how stupid the average person is. Now, realise that half of them are dumber than that." - George Carlin