Flight of the Desktops 430
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."
bleak? (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
Docking stations (Score:2, Interesting)
I would guess (Score:5, Interesting)
ECC RAM (Score:2, Interesting)
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.
News at 11 (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
No notebook in my near future. (Score:5, Interesting)
What are these people smoking? I want some. (Score:2, Interesting)
Articles like TFA are written by people who don't really know what they're talking about. Desktop and laptop computers serve different purposes - they don't really interchange well. If you need lots of power for gaming / rendering / compliling then you can't really get it from a laptop. Even when they're equipped with high powered processors, the design compromises made in shrinking a machine to laptop size take a heavy toll on performance. If you need portable "use it anywhere" computing then a laptop is your answer.
For heavy work - the desktop machine does the job and doesn't roast your tender bits. That desktop is hard to take along on a trip, though.
What's probably going on is that the "writers" have noticed that Ipads are selling like hotcakes and everybody and his dog has a tablet computer waiting in the wings - they're lumping these in with the laptops and calling desktops dead. That's a pretty poor analysis of what's really going on in the market but we don't expect much from that crowd, do we?
I'm sitting in the living room typing on a laptop right now. I'm noticing that my lap is getting uncomfortably warm so I'll put this thing aside and go in the other room and sit in my comfy chair at my desktop if I'm going to be writing a lot tonight. My Ipad is sitting on the table; it's fine for what I use it for but not for lots of typing - not because the on-screen keyboard is useless - it's actually very usable. You can't use it while you're holding the tablet, though - it needs to be on a table to type on it. Fooey; give me the full-sized keyboard with real key travel and a real mouse.
Desktops, yes. Not workstations. (Score:2, Interesting)
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).
Re:bleak? (Score:5, Interesting)
But these things have existed for years and years. The corporate world is full of 'em - docking stations abound to do precisely the job you're talking about.
I'm currently sitting here with my last-gen (ie. non-unibody) MacBook Pro plugged into an external monitor, external keyboard, external speakers and an external mouse. It's one of the more clumsy of the laptops for doing this with, as no (sanely priced) docking station exists. Even so, it took me all of five seconds to do that - one USB cable, one monitor cable, one speaker cable. The PC world is better at this - shove it in your docking station and forget it exists.
The only desktops I have in my house are specialised things - a Mac Mini for a media centre, an ancient PC sat inside an arcade machine to act as a MAME box. For straight-forward computing, I don't actually use desktops at all at home. Work is a different matter, but again I'm unusual in my computing needs at work and many many people could do fine, better even, with a laptop and a dock.
Cheers,
Ian
Re:But that is now (Score:4, Interesting)
I think people who are comfortable with one or the other won't necessarily understand the other sides' attachment to their equipment of choice.
I can't stand working on a laptop unless I happen to be "on the move", and then only for short periods. A docking station would help to some degree, so I do understand your point there.
I can replace parts in my desktops, I prefer the full size keyboard and a useful mouse. The GPUs are superior to anything available in a laptop.
In the end, it's just a preference.
Re:No notebook in my near future. (Score:3, Interesting)
Why would you have to sit it? Just keep it in your pocket and do the same thing! Everything will be wireless in the future!
Re:I still prefer desktops. (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
Re:No notebook in my near future. (Score:1, Interesting)
Your right, I dont have dual 24" screens on my dual HDMI ports on my laptop, I dont have 8GB ram on my laptop, I dont have 2 internal HD's. I dont have a full size keyboard. I dont have Good speakers.
Oh wait I do, Asus Republic of gamers designed.
Not possible here. (Score:1, Interesting)
I have a 1080p 24 inch monitor. I have yet to see a laptop that does this native resolution. I also have 5 drives in this machine, no room for those in a laptop. I am leaving out the 20 inch monitor that sets besides the main one for watching wants going on on the computer is part of what it is connected via KVM to the Big one.
A laptop will never do here at all.
I'm planning on switching back to desktops (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Desktops' future is bright not bleak (Score:3, Interesting)
I have to agree with you on the upgrading bit.
As an example, when I built my current system 2 years ago, I planned on a 10 yr. operational period. This did mean an upgrade would be needed and the only one I expected was the GPU. Things like Hard Drives and burners are all normal replacement parts as I expect them to fail at some point in time seeing as they include moving parts.
Another reason I'll stick with a desktop revolves around monitors. As I get older and my vision gets worse, I find myself needing larger displays at standard resoultions just to be able to see things. My next one is going to be a 19 inch running 1280x1024. The size increase means I'll get about a 15-20 percent increase in font size and since I'll need to replace the blasted display anyhow (stuck pixels) it's not a big expense.
Desktops are for CPU (Score:3, Interesting)
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.
Re:Does it have a monitor and full-size keyboard? (Score:4, Interesting)
That way you can just think (stuff between < > are your own personal thought macros/patterns that you've trained your auxbrain to recognize):
<start><recall><object's pattern><do it><recall><another object's pattern><do it><end> followed by normal thought stream that's ignored by the computer.
Of course if you only want to recall one object quickly you'd use:
<start><recall><object's pattern><do it and end>
The object could be a picture, audio, video, file, etc or even the computer's representation of a stream/group of thought patterns (based on what it reads from the sensor).
As a result we might still have desktop computers since they would still be way more powerful, but notebooks, laptops and PDAs could vanish
Of course the **AA would want DRM built in, so certain things might have limited recall
Re:ECC RAM (Score:5, Interesting)
I noticed I got single bit errors during big copies (about 1 bit error / 100 GB copied). I could not find the cause, and I could only conclude the data being transferred was damaged in memory before being stored again to an error correcting medium (harddisk). The busses used for the transfers also use CRC/ECC so I don't think they could cause it.
The problem was reproduceable (and different every time). Memory checks resulted in nothing.
Since then I always verify the big copies. After upgrading to ECC RAM, I haven't seen anymore verify errors.
Whether I had bad RAM, or some other problem, I don't know. I do know that the price difference between a regular system and one that can support ECC RAM is very small.
Re:I still prefer desktops. (Score:0, Interesting)
This, friends, is why we shouldn't get our software developed in a third-world country like India. They can't even consistently power the computers they're using to fuck up our software.
Re:I still prefer desktops. (Score:3, Interesting)
***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.
Re:I own a desktop (Score:3, Interesting)
2TB of mobile storage? get a USB3 external drive! For many of us that's overkill, even for a 'desktop'.
Re:That's their main problems (Score:2, Interesting)
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.
People are not engineers: they buy air conditioners, refrigerators and cars. Very few people can design, build and service them. That's coming with computers as well: we're going to have a lot of single purpose or reduced capabilities appliances and less general purpose computers. That should be ok for both users and developers. The only problem could be if companies won't let developers fiddle with their devices but if even Apple's letting developers program its devices (with some form censorship) that means that we're going to be able to do it even in future. Too bad we're going to have to buy dozens of different and incompatible pieces of hardware. It will be like developing games for a dozen consoles at the beginning of the 80's.
Re:I still prefer desktops. (Score:2, Interesting)
I don't see any reason to connect a stationary system to a wireless network...
Re:No notebook in my near future. (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:bleak? (Score:3, Interesting)
My preferred monitor + keyboard arrangement doesn't work with a laptop. Beyond that,
my desktop machine has way more stuff in it than you can cram into a laptop. I've
already done that laptop as desktop machine that hardly ever moves. I'm over that
bit of hype.
If I am going to take a machine on the move, I want it to be more expendable.
I specifically don't want my main machine at the coffee house or the TSA checkpoint.
A desktop replacement laptop makes little sense in cramped spaces like airplanes.
Re:Does it have a monitor and full-size keyboard? (Score:3, Interesting)
You do realize laptops can have all of those things, right?
Lets see
"8GB of memory"
You can get that now (you can't get any more though) but it's only appeared as an option fairly recently and it's expensive. Meanwhile in a desktop form factor you get support for 16GB on fairly low end stuff (as long as it's recent) and 24GB on the high end desktop stuff.
"two 22" monitors"
With most laptops you can have the internal monitor and one external monitor. If you want a matched pair of monitors this poses a problem as laptop monitors tend to cram the pixels in far tighter than desktop ones.
There are devices like the matrox dualhead2go and there are USB monitor adaptors but everything i've seen says they are shit compared to doing things the conventional way with a dual head graphics card.
"It's also got 4TB of disk space"
You won't get that inside a laptop unless it's some massive monster and i'm not sure you would even then (even in the thicker size of laptop drive they only go up to 1TB afaict). You could hang it off usb I guess but that's slow and messy. There is esata but I have my doubts as to whether most laptops would get along with an eSATA port multiplier (afaict only the higher end controllers tend to support them) and most laptops only have one port.
Plus my experience has been that most laptops do not have adequate cooling to run at a reasonable noise level under heavy loads. They also often don't like running with the lid closed because the keyboard acts as a vent.
To me monster laptops just don't seem worth it unless you really need a lot of power on the go. Otherwise you are much better off with a lower spec more portable laptop and a fast expandable desktop to do the heavy lifting.
Re:I still prefer desktops. (Score:3, Interesting)
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).