Laptops Outsell Desktops in Retail Stores 347
TechnoPope writes "According to this article on MSNBC.Com, laptop computers accounted for 54 percent of of 500 Million in retail computer sales last year. Also mentioned was that LCD's outsold CRT's in retail as well. "
Outsold in dollars not units. (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Outsold in dollars not units. (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Outsold in dollars not units. (Score:3, Informative)
Now, I'll be impressed when there are more LCDs in use than CRTs.
Pipe dreams... (Score:3, Funny)
No it's not. (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Outsold in dollars not units. (Score:2)
LCDs outselling CRTs? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:LCDs outselling CRTs? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:LCDs outselling CRTs? (Score:3, Interesting)
Personally, I wish more PC manufacturers would get a clue and adopt some of the space saving features of laptops and produce smaller desktop model
Re:LCDs outselling CRTs? (Score:3, Informative)
Smaller Form Factor : did you saw SFF pc from dell/compaq (for the OEM) ? ever heard about shutlle barebones (for the DIY) ?
this may just be a phase. (Score:5, Insightful)
corporations don't have the money to upgrade anymore, that's a big bulk of a downcline in desktop sales...
and, universities would rather use laptops rather than desktops becuase of space and power requirements.
It's a misleading title...sales $ vs. units (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:It's a misleading title...sales $ vs. units (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:It's a misleading title...sales $ vs. units (Score:2)
Yeah, but's it's much easier to sell and old and crappy laptop than it is an old and crappy desktop. When I had this old 486 laptop to sell, I posted a little low profile one line ad in the university newspaper and I got maybe 15 enquiries about it in 1 week.
Re:It's a misleading title...sales $ vs. units (Score:3, Insightful)
Perhaps. However, laptops have overcome many of the hurdles that used to hold them back. LCDs are good enough that they update quickly with good color. They come with 3D cards now, allowing for game play plus 3D art generation. They have large hard drives and can come with generous amounts of RAM. Plus, they all come together in one neat little package
Re:It's a misleading title...sales $ vs. units (Score:3, Insightful)
I don't know how it is other places, but where I work laptops are really taking over, for convenience and quiet. Sometimes you need to go work with somebody in a lab. Or during a meeting you want to take notes (or look like you're taking notes while actually getting work done). And then obviously there's travel. And work from home. The price
Re:It's a misleading title...sales $ vs. units (Score:3, Interesting)
Ergonomics: Laptop keyboards *suck*. Also, bring your own mouse to plugin, because laptop 'touch mice' are a joke too.
Sound: Laptop speakers just ain't gonna reproduce sound as well as seperate speakers. You could plugin headphones, of course, or speakers, but then you might as well just use a desktop PC as they're not easily portable.
Upgrades: What upgrades? You can't upgrade a laptop like you can a PC.
Re:It's a misleading title...sales $ vs. units (Score:2)
Not surprising (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Not surprising (Score:2, Insightful)
A true LAPtop (Score:2, Insightful)
just a theory... (Score:5, Insightful)
-t
Re:just a theory... (Score:2)
This is such an ignorant generalization. Firstly if you are a gamer then you still need to upgrade every 6 months to keep up with the jones's (I get away with upgrading evey two years tho).
Secondly, if this a thinly veiled attack at M$ bloat then it doesn't make sense, when was windows xp released ?, when will the next windows be relea
Same article, different format (Score:5, Informative)
-Vic
In dollars, not units.. (Score:5, Insightful)
Homebuilts - (Score:5, Interesting)
In our little geek world, I'm sure the percentage of homebuilts is very high. But in the "real world," I wonder where that percentage falls to. I wonder if homebuilts account for enough to push laptop sales back under 50%, thus negating this
Re:Homebuilts - (Score:4, Informative)
With system prices now, unless you have components to reuse, it actually costs you money to build it yourself (i.e. buying a prebuilt Dell is cheaper than the prices of the components bought individually in low quantities.) Of course there are other (better) reasons to build your own system than just the money involved.
portability + power=profit (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:portability + power=profit (Score:3, Insightful)
A hidden reason (Score:5, Funny)
So it should be no surprise that laptops are outselling personal computers, because they are much more suited for the Viewing Of and Whacking Off To porn. Personal computers are large, unwieldy, and it's easy to get caught "doing the nasty" in front of them. Not so with laptops, in my personal opinion. They're portable, and can be transferred to anywhere in the house (along with thier pornographic contents) for ease of masturbation.
What sort of innovations does the future hold? I can't say for sure. But I can say for certain that they will bring pornography to us in more detail than ever before.
Re:A hidden reason (Score:2, Informative)
Re:A hidden reason (Score:4, Funny)
Rather, I suspect Galileo was more interested in checking out the beautiful Amazonian women on neighboring planets.
Steve Jobs = Nostradamus? (Score:5, Funny)
But Still... (Score:3, Interesting)
And this is a suprise? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:And this is a suprise? (Score:3, Interesting)
Microsoft must be so happy.... (Score:3, Insightful)
My theory (Score:4, Funny)
The fatter and older we nerds get, the slimmer and younger our computer get.
Re:My theory (Score:3, Funny)
> The fatter and older we nerds get, the slimmer and younger our computer get.
Which proves my theory, that Germans love David Hasselhoff.
Cash amount, not number of units... (Score:4, Insightful)
I read this as "Higher number of laptops than desktops".
As laptops generally cost a lot more, it's not that surprising. I also think that laptops are most popular among business / professional users (who can afford the higher price for increased convenience), while the vast majority of home users have desktops as their primary
Could something similar be the case with the LCD's?
Pardon my English...
Who here is in love with their laptop? (Score:4, Interesting)
It is also nice to be able to sit the thing in my lap and sit in the same room as my wife and hold down a conversation instead of being relegating to one room while I aimlessly surf.
Any others? Who loves having a laptop?
Actually... (Score:2)
It is also nice to be able to sit the thing in my lap and sit in the same room as my wife and hold down a conversation instead of being relegating to one room while I aimlessly surf.
I think the key here is to not "aimlessly surf". Unless your wife is a hor
Re:Actually... (Score:3, Funny)
IMO aimless surfing can be a mind-expansive activity if done to do more than simply waste time.
Re:Who here is in love with their laptop? (Score:2)
And where do all those laptops go? (Score:5, Insightful)
And... (Score:2, Funny)
Re:And... (Score:4, Funny)
Price Gap is finally Closing (Score:2, Insightful)
As a recent p-4 2.4ghz with 15" screen laptop only runs about $1100, a comparable desktop (retail) runs close to $1000, why not get it in a portable package?
( OK, a hardcore gamer who wants to swap in a $400 graphics card would not want this... But somtimes you just need to use a machine to accomplish work, learn, communicate, etc. honest...)
Kremvax
Bummer (Score:2)
Easy and cheap to replace one part only when it breaks.
Cant run for days (currently at 48d 7h here) under high load without overheating.
Means you have to buy _two_
i think i have an idea why (Score:2)
LCD's are cheap (Score:5, Informative)
I got an email from TigerDirect today.
LCD specials [tigerdirect.com]
14" for $159
15" for $219
17" for $319
Do we see 17" LCD's for $249 this Holiday season?
LCD's are great for multiple monitor set ups, your desk doesn't collapse like with CRTs. Then again, your colors don't quite match up either...
Re:LCD's are cheap (Score:3, Informative)
One of our demo screens died, and we pretty much wound up replacing all three, because the replacement (same make and model) didnt match color-wise.
LCDs are nice desktop displays for most work. But the fixed resolutions, ghosting, and color problems will keep CRTs around for a while to come. They're a slowly expanding niche market, IMO.
Re:LCD's are cheap (Score:2)
Still, for those who have to reclaim desktop space, reduce electric bills and ambient temperatures (say in a corporate environment where the aggregrate of dozens of LCDs can save mucho in utilities bills over the long run)
Unsatisfied customers! (Score:3, Insightful)
Every day where I work, users are saying they want an LCD monitor for their workstation. Of course, we have no money in the budget for that, so I have to tell them 'no', but they don't know that the LCDs have downfalls. They just think that they are 'Cool'.
Re:Unsatisfied customers! (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Unsatisfied customers! (Score:3, Informative)
20 watt power consumption, reduced heat radiation, and smaller footprint on my desktop all while having sharper text than before? Sign me up
Re:Unsatisfied customers! (Score:3, Insightful)
For most professionals, there are no downsides for LCDs. Most jobs don't require super-accurate colors or ultra-small pixels (although Apple seems satisifed with LCDs), nor have I noticed problems viewing good LCDs from angles.
LCDs are appropriate for every non-gaming non-animation task I can think of, right now.
totally obvious (Score:2, Interesting)
ooh! ooh! I know why! (Score:2, Funny)
Maybe because more people are realizing it is a better idea to build their own desktop PCs from retail parts rather than buying an Expensive, Non-Upgrade-Friendly, Pre-Windows-Loaded Piece of Junk.
And They can't build their own Laptops.
wrong (Score:2, Insightful)
desktops still rul
Re:wrong (Score:4, Insightful)
One reason for this (Score:3, Informative)
laptops outsell desktops, except that they don't (Score:4, Insightful)
But if you look at the statement, they only say that laptops accounted for 54% of $ of retail sales. Given that laptops are generally more expensive, desktops still outsold laptops in numbers. Add to that the average guy can build his own desktop, which is not counted in these numbers, but cannot build his own laptop or notebook, and the actual number of desktops as well as dollars spent on desktops far exceeded laptops.
So they can twist sales numbers to say what they want, even if it isn't accurate. What else is new? And who really cares?
Portability is the new killer app (Score:5, Insightful)
Now that you don't have to sacrifice power and performance for portability in any significant way, why would you bother buying a desktop other than cost? So I think a lot of people are thinking that getting a desktop that they can only use in one location is a major drawback.
Personally, I've been drooling over the new Apple G5s, but I really think my next computer will be another Powerbook. I take my TiBook everywhere with me, and with WIFI at home and work, I can use it all day. If I buy a desktop for home, I won't get to use it for most of my day.
Laptops and LCDs are economically justified... (Score:5, Insightful)
Real estate is more expensive than
computers. And getting more expensive.
Computers get less expensive, at least
expressed as computing power and features
for a given amount of dollars.
Businesses want cubicles to stay small
(or get smaller) and people with home offices
want to make maximum use of that space.
It makes perfect sense on that basis.
However, I think there a lot of downsides
to laptops that overzealous desktop replacers don't see, including proprietary components,
vulnerability to physical damage and theft,
and relative difficulty of backing up whole
hard drives.
Laptops are convenient. (Score:3, Insightful)
Possible reasons (Score:5, Interesting)
I don't see anyone noting how laptops are inherently hard to upgrade. If your laptop is sluggish, you basically have two options: 1) add more RAM, and if that fails, 2) buy a new laptop. Whereas, with desktop PCs, you have several more options, like upgrading the CPU or buying a new graphics card. This means that the average desktop will have a longer upgradeable life than the average laptop.
A related factor is that the average desktop for under $1000 is way more powerful than the average $2000 laptop. So a desktop bought today is much less likely to be made obsolete by horsepower requirements within a given time frame than a laptop also bought today, if only because it has more horsepower right out of the box, even if that desktop costs a lot less.
And because of the inherent cost differential, people who can afford to buy laptops can afford to upgrade them faster.
Also, many people who buy laptops buy it for the chic factor, so they're going to upgrade (i.e. buy a new laptop) sooner than those people who buy the decidedly unchic desktop.
Laptops are undeniably at least partly about image, and people consume them every bit as conspicuously (and in the very same places !) as people consumed Filofaxes, cell phones, and PDAs before. And I've noticed many smirks or at least raised eyebrows when someone trundles in a 3-year old, heavy-as-hell-with-passive-matrix-screen laptop into a meeting. And many if not most of the laptop-advocates here are familiar with the satisfaction of hauling in the newest, coolest laptop, hearing the oohs-and-ahhs and having the neatest toy in the board room for the next month or so.
I LOVE STATISTICS... I make them up all the time (Score:2, Interesting)
Slight Increase in Price? (Score:5, Informative)
I'm not sure what planet you're from, but where I'm from a 17", 1600x1200 CRT retails for ~$279CDN, and a 17", 1600x1200 LCD retails for ~$890CDN.
To me, 3x is not a slight difference in price.
Re:CRTs still being made (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:CRTs still being made (Score:3, Insightful)
Well, not too amazing. We've run into some issues with the people at my company. One of our receptionists for example: She acquired a LCD monitor to fit on the new receptionist desk that was purchased for her. The reasononing behind the LCD purchase was due to space reasons. ie. there wasn't enough room on the desk for a CRT. In any case, we put the display in, and within minutes she was complaining because she
Common Complaint (Score:5, Interesting)
(Assuming you're using Windows)
Turn on Large Fonts.
I hear this all the time with my laptop users at work.
You can't get any work done in 800x600 anyway. Hell, for much other than Word, 1024x768 stinks too!
Re:CRTs still being made (Score:2)
Re:CRTs still being made (Score:2)
Re:CRTs still being made (Score:2)
Re:CRTs still being made (Score:3, Interesting)
>> and increase the default font sizes!!!!!!!
> How does this help when doing word processing?
> Do you really want 1/2" tall text out of your
> printer?
Ahem. When he said "increase the default font sizes", he meant increase the default SCREEN FONT SIZES in your operating system. In Windows:
1) Right-click on the desktop
2) Click on "Properties"
3) Click on the "Settings" tab
4) Click "Advanced"
5) Under the General tab, there is a "Font Si
Re:CRTs still being made (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:CRTs still being made (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:CRTs still being made (Score:3, Insightful)
I do 'serious' photo and texture work on my laptop. It reproduces color quite well.
An LCD can do it. However, it would only be fair to remind you that I paid extra to get a really good display. If you buy a crap LCD (or a crap CRT) the color's going to suck.
I'm not attacking the details so much as I'm attacking the gene
Re:CRTs still being made (Score:2)
Re:CRTs still being made (Score:2)
what drugs are you on because I wans something that phycelidelic...
I have a 21 inch Viewsonic monitor on my desk... It cost me $299.00 2 years ago... now they are cheaper.
a 21 inch LCD costs $1139.99 for an El-cheapo.. RIGHT NOW... I just checked..
yeah.. I see how that is a slight difference in price...
could you do us a favor... pull your bottom lip over your head and swallow.
thank
Yeah, except that a 19" LCD will give you the same (Score:4)
Re:CRTs still being made (Score:2)
LCD's don't beat CRTs at every aspect. I use my laptop for webbrowsing and my CRT for gaming. The CRT udpates faster, can be viewed at any angle, and it natively supports a variety of resolutions. (running a 640 by 480 game on a 1600 by 1200 LCD sucks.)
The LCD on my laptop has better color, much clearer image, and I can get closer to it. I've chosen it to do my web surfing and for creating artwork.
There are plenty of reasons to swing either
Re:CRTs still being made (Score:2)
Nope, sorry, must disagree.
Despite incredible improvements over the last decade, LCDs still smear. (Yes, they do. It's a much briefer smear, but it's there.) This makes them unacceptable for high-framerate games.
Even the best LCD panels still have a more limited viewing angle than CRTs.
You can't "dial-a-resolution" on an LCD panel. Basically, your display is crisp at only one resolution. Anything else, and the filtering makes the entire display fuzzy (or worse, blocky). CRTs, on the other hand,
Re:CRTs still being made (Score:2)
Yeah, but that LCD screen which is designed to run at 1280x1024 will do 1024x768 badly. And if your computer is not powerful enough to run the latest 3D game at 1280x1024, you'll have to choose between a badly scale
Re:CRTs still being made (Score:2)
Re:CRTs still being made (Score:2)
Me.
"Find me an LCD for under $150."
Us artists don't shop the bargain bins for our equipment. We may be 'starving' but we happily go into debt to avoid using inferior tools, especially when they affect the output.
Re:CRTs still being made (Score:2)
i use this one [wacom.com] its like drawing on paper. resolution sucks, but there is no other option.
Re:CRTs still being made (Score:2, Interesting)
Me.
I work on this 20" cinema display [apple.com] mainly to do page layout, gives a nice and crisp result at 1680 x 1050 resolution and a I also use19" Lacie Electron blue [lacie.com] for colour correction and Photoshop work.
And if I may add: nothing comes close, in terms of picture quality, to the Lacie.
Re:CRTs still being made (Score:2)
Radiologists. And they almost all use LCDs. Even in hospitals, when money is no object (or they have budgets that would make you and I quiver in fear).
Re:CRTs still being made (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:BAAAAAA (Score:3, Interesting)
Not discussed in the article, CRTs and desktops use much more energy. Laptops can be used when the power is out - what a concept, not just a UPS where you can gracefully shut down when the power goes out.
The desktop is king only where unit cost is important. Oh, and gaming.
Re:BAAAAAA (Score:3, Interesting)
Eh? Your laptop is good for what, an hour? Hour-and-a-half max if you are actually doing anything? Big deal. You can do without a puter for at least that long during a power failure and not die. Also...next year NEC is planning to produce a DESKTOP system running on their power cell (same one as they will use in their laptops late this year) that will provide laptop-like time for a desktop. The only thing a laptop will have is portability. It can't hold a candle to a desktop for CPU and video power i
Re:BAAAAAA (Score:3, Informative)
When this laptop was new, I regularly got 3-4 hours of constant use out of it. I wasn't doing multimedia, etc., just coding, but it *was* constant use. The battery has gotten a bit more wear on it, and I'm lucky to break 2 1/2 hours these days. Still, that's a lot better than an hour.
And its portability means I can work on the patio at my favorite coffee shop or where ever I prefer.
Re:BAAAAAA (Score:4, Funny)
This is about laptops, not social reform in wyoming.
Re:Laptops Rule! (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Laptops Rule! (Score:2, Funny)
Haven't had it long, have you? (Score:5, Insightful)
I'll still be using the desktop machines I've got - doing incremental upgrades, of course - but it'll basically be the same boxen.
By then your laptop will be gone. Even if you don't step on it, drop it, run over it with a car, or get it stolen, it'll die from overheat or one of the internal components will break and be irreparable because everything's integrated (with the possible exception of the harddrive).
And then you'll have to buy another one.
Laptops may eventually replace desktops in per-unit usage simply because the laptop owners have to keep buying new ones, while the desktop owners don't. Kind of like how industrial laser printer sales are far fewer than inkjet printer sales.
Re:Haven't had it long, have you? (Score:2, Informative)
Then I'll buy another one, with the same money I could have used for desktop upgrades, without having to suffer the intervening years with lack of portability.
Re:Haven't had it long, have you? (Score:2, Funny)
And as far as failure rate I still have 2 working thinkpad 701c's (486 100mhz). I only keep them around because they look so cool with their but