How much longer will towers, or even desktop computers, be sold?

[Stinky The Clown]

It seems that laptops are the thing. They're far more powerful than towers of just a few years ago. The only interface issue is a too-small screen; a regular monitor fixes that. So can a keyboard.

Any thoughts? Not that this matters, but I just wanted to see what others think.

[Berserker]

1. Desktops

rock. I have 3 monitors on mine two 20 inch and one 22 inch in the center. I don't want to use a laptop for what I do. Not enough large screens. I also think the keyboard on laptops suck. Sure you can hook up monitors to your laptop but why would I want a small screen and a large screen? Fuck sitting at starbucks with a laptop give me multiple monitors and lots of screen. And yes I also have a laptop for traveling. I do hope they never go away.

[BlueJazz]

2. Gamers, Tinkerers and Techs will probably use Towers for quite a while longer.

Plus...Laptops need to last a LOT longer than they do.

I fix 5 to 10 year old computers on a regular basis (and of course, newer ones)

Most Laptops I fix are are 1-3 years old.

...and yes, there's always the "I've had my Laptop for 10 years" thing but it's the exception...not the Rule.

[RoyGBiv]

3. They'll be around for awhile ...

Your standard laptop is not more powerful than *my* desktop of just a few years ago. Yes, there are some specialty, high-end laptops that will run rings around it, but not the Wal-Mart special, which is what most people end up getting. Dollar for dollar, you can get a lot more power and versatility with a desktop. It's also far more upgradeable.

The interface problems are deeper than you suggest. People like my mother with limited dexterity have a really hard time using touch-pads. As you say, the monitors are too small. The keyboards universally suck for people that type for a living and are also problematic for people with dexterity problems and are pretty much guaranteed to lead to carpel tunnel through prolonged use. I know many people who have adjusted to using laptop keyboards, but I don't know anyone who genuinely prefers them.

You can connect peripherals that take care of all that, removing all the good reasons for using a laptop, and then what do you have? You've got an overpriced, mini-desktop.

A laptop for me is a secondary computer, and it will remain that way. I may not be typical, but there are a lot of people out there who have the same opinion, and there are enough of us that we keep companies like Tigerdirect and NewEgg highly profitable.

I'm actually putting together a new desktop as I type that would blow any but the most expensive laptops out of the water, and it's costing me about $600 in parts. Just took a break 'cause I realized a lost my damn hard drive tray key to my current system and want to use one of those drives in the new one. Not sure how I'm going to solve that save buying a new tray just for the stupid key.

[Stinky The Clown]

4. Actually, I am in the same camp you are. I hope towers never go away.

I do some CAD work as part of making my living. I need lots of screen real estate and a fast computer. I am aware of no laptop that will drive two 24" DVI monitors. Then there's storage capacity and backup/redundancy.

As it happens, I am a recently converted Mac person and love my little unibody MacBook for playing (I am in bed, using it to post this right now), but have a MacPro as my work machine. 8 cores, 16 Gb RAM, 3x1T drives and one 350Gb drive, etc., etc. Not cheap, but no laptop I know of can top that at any price. It is also the fastest WinBox I have ever had, as it is set up to dual boot.

We're a mixed shop, with Macs and Win machines, laptops, desktops, minitowers, towers, iMacs ...... all playing in friendly harmony. Ha! :)

[hobbit709]

6. Roy, What type drive tray do you have

I got a pile of keys for them. You're welcome to any that work.

[RoyGBiv]

7. Kingwin Mobile Rack

It's just a generic barrel key.



But it's a PITA to try to open the thing without it.

My problem is I recently moved, and I can't find the box that had all my spare keys, screws, etc. in it, and I've looked everywhere. It's probably the one thing I left sitting in a drawer in the old apartment.

You would be an absolute life-saver if you have one of these things. I can't find anyone around here (OKC) who does except a supply store that will only let me have it if I buy a tray.

[hobbit709]

8. No problemo. PM me with your address and I'll send you a set.

[pokerfan]

9. My current system has two ' swappable HDD trays

in addition to the two internal. I never knew how handy removable hard drives could be. I think my next case might resemble something like this:

[Warpy]

11. If you don't mind spending money on a docker and having an octopus

on whatever you've put the puter on, you can use a different screen and keyboard with a laptop and avoid all those problems. However, if I'm going to be on the laptop for a long time, I've found that resting the back on a couple of pill bottles just in front of the back "feet" solves the problem of keyboard angle just fine, no carpal tunnel yet.

I still have an XP desktop and will try to limp it through until everything works on Win7, should take only another 5 years or so.

[pokerfan]

5. Laptops will always be more expensive than desktops

More expensive chipsets, systemboards and other components, heat sinks & pipes to handle the thermal issues, batteries and their charging circuits, molded magnesium or thermoplastic cases, etc. Then, everything has to be made more rugged.

Repair is also more straightforward. My last desktop went through several monitors and keyboards over its nine years. I upgraded the hard drives several times, replaced a dead sound card, etc. With a laptop, any of those failures would have been a minor crisis

Laptops have their place but they aren't going to completely displace the desktop anytime soon.

[Warpy]

10. I have a laptop that blows any desktop I've ever had to hell and back

but find that the problem really is the screen plus the Win7 format that doesn't display everything correctly. You can't play with resolution like you could with Win XP and lower, either, wish they'd kept that for my rotten eyesight.

However, desktops are great because you can do an uncluttered dual drive and work on them a lot more easily than you can a laptop where everything is crammed in together. You also have more USB ports and don't end up with an octopus on the desktop, everything running into a docker including that extra external DVD, HD, card reader, and everything else that you can cram into a desktop.

I think there will always be a place for both.

[Statistical]

12. Price means they will never go away.

You can get a pretty powerful desktop for $1000 - $1500.
To get the same machine in a laptop is easily double that.

[CK_John]

13. A good laptop should cost under 400. n/t

[Statistical]

14. $400 laptop doesn't even come close to the power of top of the line desktop.

Whatever amount you spend on a latop $400, $700, $1000, $1500, $2000, $3000 you can get the same level of performance on a desktop/workstation.

For those of us who have to do more than surf the web it gets prohibitive expensive to build a laptop to high level specs.

Running Quad core with 8GB of RAM, 256GB SSD as boot drive, and pair of 1TB for storage. Video card is high end and connected to 27" 1900x1200 monitor.

While you "could" build a similar system in a laptop the pricetag is going to be a lot more than what a desktop costs.

[CK_John]

15. What you're describing would be for 1 out off 100k or more users.

This is what I consider a good buy for the average user.

<http://www.walmart.com/ip/Toshiba-Silver-15.6-Satellite-L455D-S5976-Laptop-PC-with-Windows-7-Home-Premium-Carrying-Case/13341716>

[RoyGBiv]

16. IOW, the Wal-Mart special ...

That's the kind of machine I described in my initial response.

The desktop I built 5 years ago would blow the doors off that thing.

5400 rpm hard drive? I didn't even realize those were still made.

Yes, those are fine for most people. They're also the kinds of machines that result in tech support calls the minute someone tries to do anything more intensive than surf the web ... and depending on what they're doing on the web, maybe even then.

I agree with what Statistical is saying. For $400 I could build a desktop with double those specs in most areas. In fact one of the options I gave someone I'll be building one for in the near future comes in at about $425, has a dual core X2 processor (not the crippled Sempron), 4 gigs memory, and a 500GB hard drive (7200 rpm). Plus it will have a discrete video card with a much better GPU in it.

As has been said, there's a market for both. But, bang for your buck, you can generally get more with a desktop, and there's also the fact that upgrades are much easier. You don't exactly upgrade a laptop. You just buy a new one.

[csziggy]

17. Laptops are no upgradable

While most people never upgrade their computers, some of do and you just cannot do that with a laptop. For instance, I just ordered components for a new computer from my local computer shop. Right now, I am not doing anything fancy so I am going pretty bare bones and using the onboard video and sound chips. But if I get back into video or audio editing, I can put in fancier video and audio cards to improve my capabilities. I am maxing out the amount of memory Windows 7 can access, but if Microsoft fixes that glitch, the board will take a lot more memory and I can add that in.

On the computer I am currently using, a couple of years ago, the motherboard burned out - if it had been a laptop, it would have been trash. But I carried it into the local shop and he popped in a new mobo, CPU and memory and we re-used the rest of the components. So I had a repair/upgrade for a minimal price that had lasted me extra years past what could have been a catastrophic failure of the entire system.