Will laptops kill the desktop?

[KDOG]

I've been thinking about this with the Sandy Bridge chipset now available. We are really at the point where you can just about get full desktop power in a lappy now, or pretty close. I think at some points PCs' will just about all laptops for the mainstream users and the tablets will become the mobile computer. Am I off the mark? I just gave my Phenom II based desktop away to someone to play with. I can't see me getting a desktop in the future at all, and I was once a tweaker/overclocker... I don't know I could be totally wrong. What do you see the future of mainstream computers becoming?

 

[sivart]

Well, laptops are harder to upgrade.

I've had my desktop now for nearly 5 years. It is currently running a Quad Core processor, windows 7, and 4GB of RAM with a decent (1GB) video card. It was much cheaper to upgrade these components last year than to try and find a laptop with those specs.

For me, the desktop will be around for a while. I thought about a laptop before I upgraded but it was coming out $1200+ for a decent powered laptop with a true docking station to use at home. While a similarly spec'ed desktop was about $650.

That being said, I am looking for a nice i5 or i7 desktop to replace my parents 8 year old Dell and it seems that the laptops with the same processor are cheaper than the desktops (although no "true" docking stations are available for these cheaper laptops).

 

[Brainonska511]

No.

 

[Emulex]

nope. and be sure to clarify consumer versus business.

 

[Paperlantern]

Never. Laptops are a tool, and desktops are a tool. There will always be a demand for both and the needs in which each fit.

 

[Rubycon]

I'd have to say not a chance.
I have a pretty stoked lappy (Asus G73 i7, 16GB RAM, Intel 160GB SSD, nV GTX 460M 1.5GB) and while it's pretty snappy it's nowhere near the level my workstations run at. The LED backlit display has annoying color 'accuracy' (as well as the lack of an IPS panel hehe).

Sure if I had to be stuck with using it certainly it would not be "the end of the world" but it cannot replace a proper workstation, either.

Now the hp mini is another story.

 

[F1shF4t]

As far as laptops being mainstream, they already are. For a general user there is more advantages with getting a laptop instead of a desktop. With laptops being fairly cheap I think thats exactly whats happening.

For workstation purposes there will be scenarious where a laptop is insufficient. Still there are ways around it, like connection an external monitor. Although performance and upgradability are always an issue. So desktops being killed off - not a chance, however I do think they will be mostly used for professional/workstation and enthusiast/gaming purposes.

Personally, If I have to for example encode multiple videos I will use my desktop. Everything else including occasional gaming I've been only using my laptop lately.

 

[llee]

the answer depends on what you do with your hardware. for web-browsing, productivity, emailing, and watching videos, I would say that laptops have already transcended their desktop counterparts.

 

[KDOG]

Well I can understand the workstation argument, I guess I should've clarified that I was talking about the mainstream home user...

 

[Emulex]

i keep about 4-5 laptops at home. the macbooks get their use. the windows laptops pretty much rot. so i'd say no. desktops are great as a workstation. until someone can figure out how to make the touch pad work for a poop on windows 7 i'd say never for win7 laptops. macbook - that's another story there.

 

[OBLAMA2009]

laptops are noticeably lower performance and not nearly as durable as desktops. if you left a laptop on 24/7 i doubt it would last more than a year. so no, desktops will always have a purpose

 

[gorobei]

I'm reposting this from another thread i wrote it in, just because it seems relevant.

ARM is a low cost high volume product compared to PowerPC, Alpha, and Itanium. Those chips were targetted at niche markets that would never threaten x86. I am assuming given the expectation tablets will become more mainstream and useful in the business world. Office and productivity applications will be ported to ARM. I am thinking of a future where a person's cell phone\tablet is their computer. They have a dock that plugs it into monitors, keyboard, and mouse.

I always thought we'd go the route of having a central powerful hub at home and everything else being some sort of thin client. That way you get all your data to hand where ever you are and the sort of compute power that mobile devices can only dream about. Of course for this to work we need to get our mobile networks in order.

i've spent some time thinking about this, and came up with something similar.

For the consumer market only:
imagine an ipod nano(6th gen, the square clip-on thingy) device with non volatile ram(next gen memristor) say 1Tb, lowpower quad core, and wireless connectivity all the size of a silver dollar. This would store all your media(music, pics, movie), contacts, os preferences and settings, your applications, bookmarks, and mailclient/texts. The thing would function as a mini file serve/pda/cell/gps that sits in your pocket, or on your wrist like a watch, or on a chain around your neck.

It would broadcast the display buffer to an interface of your choice: jawbone type hands-free if all you want is phone; small tablet if you like hand helds, notebook size thin client if you want mobile productivity, etc. The interface would be essentially dumb, no permanent storage, it just receives the display buffer and takes user interface inputs(keypress, finger swipe, stylus tap). The interface would be more or less disposable, such that if it is lost or stolen, all the important stuff (your data) would still be in your pocket.

This personal token pc, would sync and backup to your home hub. The home hub would be a personal server that handled update-downloads, media stream, torrents, mail serve, smart home and appliances, and render/encode/cpu farm. If you only need basic services you pop in a cpu with standard low power core + 4 general purpose heavy duty cores. If you work or game, you get a cpu with default low power + 32 cores (or more as required). Everything in your house would be a thin display that went through your pocket token and relayed to your hub. Your workstation would read the apps on the token and run it on the hub cores. The games stored on your token would play on your 50" display and run on the same hub cores. When you went to your friends house, you could play your games on his hub cores.

The idea is to eliminate all the redundant cpus, storage drives, duplicate aps, os. Everything stays in one device and it can connect to other procs when it needs more computing horsepower. No more downloading the same windows update 3 times if you have a 2 desktops and a laptop. No more buying multiple copies of the OS.

Laptop/notebook and desktop/workstation are form factors for complete systems, but there is a lot of reduncancy in data and parts by having both.
A home server system with all the traditional desktop power networked with display interfaces with mobile form factors could subsume the conventional paradigm.

 

[hans007]

laptops already are about 60% of pc sales.

i personaly like desktops because i can do things like hook up a large monitor etc. but you can even do that with laptops now too.

at work now , we generally only buy laptops... .. as a guy who was much more an enthusiast before, i would say laptops eventually will be like 75% of pc market.

i mean, for most regular people, and business it is the better way to go. i mean i'm a software developer and i have a laptop with a dual dvi dock, and it is much nicer than having a desktop (i used to have one and well i obviously cant take it home with me)

 

[WildW]

I've been thinking about this with the Sandy Bridge chipset now available. We are really at the point where you can just about get full desktop power in a lappy now, or pretty close.

If you don't need the bits that laptops do badly - typically graphics and storage, then yes. Fusion and similar with halfway decent GPUs is going to make things interesting.

I think at some points PCs' will just about all laptops for the mainstream users and the tablets will become the mobile computer. Am I off the mark?

I think the PC as we know it will go back to what it started as - a device for enthusiasts and people with real work to do. It's become far more popular with "normal" people while it's been the only way to shop online and do Facebook, but as soon as a more simple way to do those kind of things becomes cheap, easy and accepted, those "normal" people will leave the PC again.

 

[PingSpike]

I don't think they'll kill the desktop...they really aren't up to the same level of performance, they can't be upgraded (much) and they have shorter lifespans. That said, with the improvements in integrated graphics and considering what most people use their PCs for I expect them to continue to gain market share. The fact that they can't be upgraded and don't last particularly long isn't actually that big of a deal for your average consumer because they don't know how to upgrade or repair a desktop anyway. Most people throw their PC away after loading it up with viruses and crapware so they can start over again. With laptops getting cheaper its increasingly viable to do that with them as well.

 

[beginner99]

Most of my friends only have laptops (without additional screen) so yes it is a general trend. i don't get it, because those cheap 17" Monsters are not really portable, have crappy (and small!) screen and mediocre performance.

So I think it could become a niche market, but I will have one probably for the next decade or always. Laptops are not really configurable. For anything special you pay a ridiculous upgrade fee (ssd, better screen) and for most such option to not exist at all. You have to go all compromise or spend like 3-4X times the amount as for a desktop with better performance.

Durability and upgrading is also limited on laptops. So I don't really get the trend. A cheap desktop for 500$ outperforms any laptop below like 2000$. You could also get a zacate netbook or a cheap i3/core2duo (culv) one for around 400-600$ without spending more money than on a half decent laptop.

 

[corkyg]

I have two of each - and have no desire to use them interchangeably. Extensive typing on a laptop is a PITA. I use mine for travel. At home, I use the desktop.

 

[Texashiker]

Will laptops kill the desktop?

My opinion - yes and no

Yes - For the person who never intends to upgrade their laptop, never plans on upgrading the video card, upgrading the memory past a 1 chip update, never plans on having 3 or 4 internal drives,,,, then go with a laptop.

No - if your something like a video blogger on youtube, have 2 or 3 internal SSD or SATA drives. Or if your a gamer and you update the video card every few months.

My wife could probably phase out her desktop and go with just a laptop. I'll build her a system, she will use it for 2 years, and when it comes time to upgrade, its time for a whole new system.

 

[Paperlantern]

My opinion - yes and no

Yes - For the person who never intends to upgrade their laptop, never plans on upgrading the video card, upgrading the memory past a 1 chip update, never plans on having 3 or 4 internal drives,,,, then go with a laptop.

No - if your something like a video blogger on youtube, have 2 or 3 internal SSD or SATA drives. Or if your a gamer and you update the video card every few months.

My wife could probably phase out her desktop and go with just a laptop. I'll build her a system, she will use it for 2 years, and when it comes time to upgrade, its time for a whole new system.

My wife has used nothing but a laptop (and the same laptop mind you, she is far past due for an upgrade, but we just havent found a good enough deal, we are always strapped) for the last 4+ years. However I still use a workstation a good deal.

Again, a computer is a tool, it's all about matching the tool with the user. There will always be users that need a workstation.

 

[Numenorean]

Yeah, you are totally wrong.

They won't replace desktops.

 

[wirednuts]

i dont have a desktop really... i do but it just runs as my server.

any business i can do on my laptop, and any entertainment i can do on my htpc. so if youre asking if the desktop hardware will die, no way... but desktops in general, as a computer that takes up a whole section of a room, yes i do think those are going by the wayside. "that is so 80's"

makes sense too. pc means personal computer. everyone having their own laptop is that dream that we all had decades ago.

 

[Emulex]

my x58 handles both xeon's quite fine. dual or triple channel ecc (xeon) or with i7 you could do non-ecc. 6 sata spots (1 for dvd-burner). a couple of video cards or 4 if i need 8 monitors. Passive cooling to never overheat. I think no laptop will replace this.

 

[wirednuts]

i want to add. if win8 rumors are true, it will be another sign of desktop death. if the whole os is virtualized in the cloud, and you dont need fast components to run your software, then you eliminate performance differences compared do desktops. if a laptop does exactly the same thing as a desktop, is even cheaper simply because less mass, and is portable... why would you want a desktop?

upgrading would be the only difference, but thats the one thing about building desktops thats always pissed me off. it seems like you can continuously upgrade them, but if you shoot for that 2x step up at least each time, you are already buying a new cpu, new motherboard and likely new ram. for the low cost of all the other stuff, its actually easier to just leave the whole stupid thing in tact and sell it to subsidize the cost of a complete new build. and shipping it is a bitch. so you start buying mATX cases and gear, then you realize you can do the same with mITX. after years of that a brick falls from the sky and hits your head, making you think "why dont i just buy laptops?".

 

[Emulex]

i must be old but we called the cloud timesharing back in the day. it is the same thing. just with a shiny new name.

you can do 0% of your work when the cloud is broken. so if you make $10K a day that goes to $0/day until things are fixed. or you can handle your business the old fashion way and just make $10K/day regardless of the cloud.


dunno bout you but one seems like a winner.

 

[beginner99]

i want to add. if win8 rumors are true, it will be another sign of desktop death. if the whole os is virtualized in the cloud, ...

I won't buy it and since MS doesn't have a good reputation and is also not trustworthy, such an OS would be epic fail.

Plus it would make moving it to ARM architecture useless if it runs in the cloud anyway. So that won't happen.