According to news articles in the past year or two, the desktop computer is beginning to cry "I don't want to go on the cart." According to this article, the arrival of real tablet PCs is going to take a slice of the computer market, and it won't be coming from netbook or laptop sales.
I won't deny that laptops are everywhere these days, and getting more powerful all the time. Currently, I use a laptop as my main computer, and have a 10-year-old desktop kicking around used to play YouTube videos and such on my TV. I, for one, plan to buy a desktop computer as my next major computer purchase, for several reasons.
Firstly, my laptop hardware went obsolete REALLY fast. I bought it in July 2007, and by the fall there were far more powerful models out for the same price. I bought a model with a decent-enough video card in hopes of playing a few games, but even games of several years earlier than 2007 had to be run with minimal video settings. As far as 2010 games go, the situation is hopeless.
Secondly, I dislike very much that for my laptop's processor to run at full advertised speeds, the bottom of the computer gets hot enough to cook pizza pops on. If I hadn't bought the 12-cell battery that lifts the bottom of the computer off the desk, providing extra ventilation, the computer would be hot enough to cook two pizza pops on. It's possible that newer laptops are better now and don't run as hot, but I've always found myself running in power saver mode at 600 MHz just so I didn't scald my lap.
Thirdly, one of the main arguments against desktop computers is that they are chained to your desk. While it's nice that laptops have batteries and can go anywhere, they still need to spend some amount of time chained to a wall outlet every so often. Until wireless power is brought to the consumer market, laptops will still partially have the same chained problem as desktops. After a few years, your laptop battery goes and you have to stay chained to the wall all the time anyway.
Desktop computers have much more longevity than laptops for several reasons, meaning that they're more worth the money you spend on them in the long term. First and foremost, desktops are super upgradeable if you buy a system with future upgrades in mind. You can always pop in more RAM, another hard drive, another video card, etc. Laptops are almost always not so. Also, the hard drive in a desktop will last much, much longer than that of a laptop, because it remains stationary all the time. Laptops bounce around all over the place, and usually the hard drive will give out in a few years' time at most. My current 10-year-old desktop still has its original hard drive running fine. When your laptop eventually does need repair, one needs to either send it away to a manufacturer for weeks, or attempt to dismantle the entire computer, just to tinker with whatever is broken. When a desktop computer is opened up, everything is easily accessible and within reach.
It used to be that you could make a valid argument against desktops and their space requirements. You need room for that giant CRT monitor, and someplace to put your tower. These days, you can buy compact desktops that are about the size of a laptop standing on its side, or even smaller if you look at the Home Theater PC market. LCD monitors are the standard these days, so they don't require much space either.
I can't speak for the rest of the computer user world, but when I need to sit down and focus on work on the computer, I work more productively if I'm sitting at a desk. If I'm sitting at a desk, I enjoy having a big screen to spread out all my windows on, and a mouse and keyboard. I could use all these accessories with a laptop, but it seems more practical to me to have a dedicated desktop hooked up, rather than plugging and unplugging from my comparatively underpowered laptop all the time. I can especially see this situation if I ever found a job doing computer work from home, as I imagine is the case for a significant portion of the working population in the computer industry.
In the past year or two I've seen home servers come out on the market for the average computer user. Regular users are beginning to realize the importance of file backup and the convenience of central media servers. Combine this market with the home theater market, and you have one desktop-dominated market area. Laptops just don't make sense to be run as always-on servers.
Desktops can clearly offer more performance power than laptops if you are willing to pay for it, and it's not just hardcore gamers that need the power anymore. Users of CAD software, graphical design software, video editing and encoding software, and virtualization software all need a large amount of RAM, processing power, and storage space. Even software developers would enjoy faster compile times for development projects, even if it means less time to use as a valid slacking-off excuse.
In short, if desktops are losing share of the PC market, it will stop losing and eventually stabilize. The desktop computer is not going away any time soon.
I won't deny that laptops are everywhere these days, and getting more powerful all the time. Currently, I use a laptop as my main computer, and have a 10-year-old desktop kicking around used to play YouTube videos and such on my TV. I, for one, plan to buy a desktop computer as my next major computer purchase, for several reasons.
Firstly, my laptop hardware went obsolete REALLY fast. I bought it in July 2007, and by the fall there were far more powerful models out for the same price. I bought a model with a decent-enough video card in hopes of playing a few games, but even games of several years earlier than 2007 had to be run with minimal video settings. As far as 2010 games go, the situation is hopeless.
Secondly, I dislike very much that for my laptop's processor to run at full advertised speeds, the bottom of the computer gets hot enough to cook pizza pops on. If I hadn't bought the 12-cell battery that lifts the bottom of the computer off the desk, providing extra ventilation, the computer would be hot enough to cook two pizza pops on. It's possible that newer laptops are better now and don't run as hot, but I've always found myself running in power saver mode at 600 MHz just so I didn't scald my lap.
Thirdly, one of the main arguments against desktop computers is that they are chained to your desk. While it's nice that laptops have batteries and can go anywhere, they still need to spend some amount of time chained to a wall outlet every so often. Until wireless power is brought to the consumer market, laptops will still partially have the same chained problem as desktops. After a few years, your laptop battery goes and you have to stay chained to the wall all the time anyway.
Desktop computers have much more longevity than laptops for several reasons, meaning that they're more worth the money you spend on them in the long term. First and foremost, desktops are super upgradeable if you buy a system with future upgrades in mind. You can always pop in more RAM, another hard drive, another video card, etc. Laptops are almost always not so. Also, the hard drive in a desktop will last much, much longer than that of a laptop, because it remains stationary all the time. Laptops bounce around all over the place, and usually the hard drive will give out in a few years' time at most. My current 10-year-old desktop still has its original hard drive running fine. When your laptop eventually does need repair, one needs to either send it away to a manufacturer for weeks, or attempt to dismantle the entire computer, just to tinker with whatever is broken. When a desktop computer is opened up, everything is easily accessible and within reach.
It used to be that you could make a valid argument against desktops and their space requirements. You need room for that giant CRT monitor, and someplace to put your tower. These days, you can buy compact desktops that are about the size of a laptop standing on its side, or even smaller if you look at the Home Theater PC market. LCD monitors are the standard these days, so they don't require much space either.
I can't speak for the rest of the computer user world, but when I need to sit down and focus on work on the computer, I work more productively if I'm sitting at a desk. If I'm sitting at a desk, I enjoy having a big screen to spread out all my windows on, and a mouse and keyboard. I could use all these accessories with a laptop, but it seems more practical to me to have a dedicated desktop hooked up, rather than plugging and unplugging from my comparatively underpowered laptop all the time. I can especially see this situation if I ever found a job doing computer work from home, as I imagine is the case for a significant portion of the working population in the computer industry.
In the past year or two I've seen home servers come out on the market for the average computer user. Regular users are beginning to realize the importance of file backup and the convenience of central media servers. Combine this market with the home theater market, and you have one desktop-dominated market area. Laptops just don't make sense to be run as always-on servers.
Desktops can clearly offer more performance power than laptops if you are willing to pay for it, and it's not just hardcore gamers that need the power anymore. Users of CAD software, graphical design software, video editing and encoding software, and virtualization software all need a large amount of RAM, processing power, and storage space. Even software developers would enjoy faster compile times for development projects, even if it means less time to use as a valid slacking-off excuse.
In short, if desktops are losing share of the PC market, it will stop losing and eventually stabilize. The desktop computer is not going away any time soon.
1 comments:
Yes! I love my desktop machine. Yes, the upgrade ability. But mainly I like it for a different reason: When I go to my desk I'm making a serious commitment with myself. Desk is For Work. Desk is Not For Play. I love that the machine under the desk is so per formant (at least compared to my crappy laptop) that it makes me want to work. For a One Man Band this focus that it helps bring is pretty important.
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