Is the Desktop going the way of the Dodo?

Many have spoken of how the world of computers keeps changing, what is not spoken about as much is how the computer itself is changing. The life of the computer seems to be following the life of the T.V. First there was only one per block. Everyone would crowd around and watch someone save something to a 3 1/2 floppy drive, or if you have a really good memory, you might remember the old 5 1/4 floppies. Then they became more affordable. More people bought them and started surfing the net. They paid by the hour at blazing speeds of 14.4k or even 56k if they were lucky.

Now you can pick up a high end system for under a thousand dollars, the internet is available almost everywhere and the computers we carry in our pockets are more powerful than the ones we used to have on our desk.  But with this new found power, the way we interact with it has changed as well. Now we have a computer at home (usually more than one), one at the office and one at the cottage. This however, is starting to present a problem. How do you get your music from home to the cottage? How do you get your files from the office to the home? There are solutions for that with remote access and portable hard drives but they are clunky and can be forgotten. Enter the laptop.

Once an “Executive status symbol” they have quickly entered the main stream. 2007 saw laptop sales soar by 21 percent to 31.6 million units almost matching desktop sales of 35 million units. While all of the 2008 numbers are not in yet, industry insiders expect laptop sales to surpass desktop sales for the first time by occupying 71 percent of computer sales.

Some of the historical drawbacks to Laptop over Desktops have been:

Lack of power:
This is changing rapidly with the introduction of the “Desktop Replacement” category. These are high powered laptops able to perform just about anything a desktop can. They often come with 17”, 18 ½ or even sometimes 20” screens. Recent advancements in mobile video cards and CPU’s have given this category huge advantage in the past five years. Tasks once reserved for Desktops such as Video editing and Photoshop can now be handed with relative ease on these laptops.

Storage space:
Storage space has always been an issue but now that new laptops such as the Asus M70Vm-C1 can handle two hard drives and up to 1TB of storage, this is no longer a problem.

Ability to upgrade:
On the average laptop, there are two things you can upgrade, the RAM and the Hard Drive. On a desktop computer you can upgrade just about any part should it fail or need more power. Now, with the average consumer upgrading every 3 to 5 years, this has become less of an issue.

Price:
Traditionally, getting a laptop that had comparable specs to a Desktop meant spending an extra 600 to 1000 dollars. That margin has been shrunk to 100 to 200 dollars in most cases, and in some cases the laptop is actually cheaper.

There are many advantages to laptops. They take up less space, can be used anywhere and require much less energy to run. Having just gone to a 100% laptop system myself, I must say its much nicer writing an email on the back patio on a warm summer day then stuck in my office. The convenience of having all of my files everywhere I go is like a breath of fresh air.

So, are desktop computers on their way out? I think there will always be a place for them in super high end systems, but with new, more powerful laptops coming out with touch screens and intuitive interfaces, I think we will start seeing a lot less towers on store shelves in the years to come.

What do you think? Feel free to leave your thoughts on this topic or this article in the comments section below.