I see the end of the Desktop Computer

[coffeeman]

I'll have to disagree, the desktop isn't going anywhere.

Just got my first laptop and it doesn't do anything for me. I live in a dial up only area and my windows 98 desktop is what I use for net. In fact, my laptop is slower to get on the net than old machine. Sometime I can't get on net with laptop.

Coffeeman

 

[Timber]

We tell those kids to "Stop whining about using an old desktop PC, get off of your my space page and turn out some work."

LOL I don't have any younsters here these days just us old hippys.

 

[dmccarty]

Desktops ain't going anywhere. I just bought a new PC. Its a desktop. A laptop does not have the bang/$ as a desktop. It will be a long time if ever a laptop can match the bang/$ as a desktop.

Furthermore, desktops/HTPC(Home Theater PCs)/Media Centers will be moving out of the office into the living room. Our new system is recording TVs shows and I then burn them to DVD. I used to have loads of stereo components. Well I still do but they are boxed up sitting in the closet. A PC can record video, show video, burn DVDs, play DVDs etc. We only have a stereo and a DVD player hooked up to the TV at this point. Recording video takes disk space and that is not going to happen on a laptop. And to record the system has to be on.

Given that music is going digital and away from physical media the desktop in the living room makes far more sense than a stereo.

Later,
Dan

 

[Gravdigr]

Desktops ain't going anywhere. I just bought a new PC. Its a desktop. A laptop does not have the bang/$ as a desktop. It will be a long time if ever a laptop can match the bang/$ as a desktop.

Furthermore, desktops/HTPC(Home Theater PCs)/Media Centers will be moving out of the office into the living room. Our new system is recording TVs shows and I then burn them to DVD. I used to have loads of stereo components. Well I still do but they are boxed up sitting in the closet. A PC can record video, show video, burn DVDs, play DVDs etc. We only have a stereo and a DVD player hooked up to the TV at this point. Recording video takes disk space and that is not going to happen on a laptop. And to record the system has to be on.

Given that music is going digital and away from physical media the desktop in the living room makes far more sense than a stereo.

Later,
Dan

I do have to chime in here too. There are laptops out there that can do everything multimedia that your pc can do. Actually the generation right after my HP dv9000 has an hdmi port and can do timeshifting and live recording. And a firewire or usb 2.0 external hard drive can be used for long term storage. The plus to this is you can save your multimedia collection on removable hard drives and take the whole laptop from room to room or even to a friends house to watch every season of south park hehe.

 

[Egon]

Will we ever get to the stage where the desktop goes away and is replaced by monthly rental to access a huge computer complex where you would be assigned dedicated space.

 

[MossRoad]

I do have to chime in here too. There are laptops out there that can do everything multimedia that your pc can do. Actually the generation right after my HP dv9000 has an hdmi port and can do timeshifting and live recording. And a firewire or usb 2.0 external hard drive can be used for long term storage. The plus to this is you can save your multimedia collection on removable hard drives and take the whole laptop from room to room or even to a friends house to watch every season of south park hehe.

Hey, most audio/video philes would use a rackmount PC and just pump it back into their head end system to watch anywhere in their home without having to haul a laptop around. They could also use a sling box and watch their own video from thier home on any other PC in the world without having to take it to their friend's house.

Instead of time shifting, they are place shifting.

Slingbox - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

 

[Knotbored]

20 years from now we will have systems available that will make our children and grandkids snicker at how inadequate both the desktop and laptop were.
Can you imagine describing our PC systems to pre-computer folks? In the 50's the conversation would be something like:
"Well you hook this typewriter thingie to your TV thingie and telephone and ask it questions and it gives you answers and you mail stuff and --and -- and
NO I AIN'T BEEN DRINKING! DANGIT"

 

[dmccarty]

I do have to chime in here too. There are laptops out there that can do everything multimedia that your pc can do. Actually the generation right after my HP dv9000 has an hdmi port and can do timeshifting and live recording. And a firewire or usb 2.0 external hard drive can be used for long term storage. The plus to this is you can save your multimedia collection on removable hard drives and take the whole laptop from room to room or even to a friends house to watch every season of south park hehe.

Yes, but does the laptop cost more than the desktop for the same functionality?

Later,
Dan

 

[LMTC]

I am currently in "Buy" mode to set up a local rural church with their first PCs. I have found the following:

• [FONT=&quot]AMD Athlon Dual Core 4200+ 2.2Ghz
  (2.0GHz, 512k L2 cache per core) [/FONT]
• [FONT=&quot]1GB DDR2-667 SDRAM
  (2 x 512MB DIMMs - upgradable to 8GB) [/FONT]
• [FONT=&quot]160GB 7200 RPM Serial ATA II hard drive [/FONT]
• [FONT=&quot]16x dual layer DVDｱRW with LightScribe [/FONT]6.95 x 16.85 x 14.85 in[FONT=&quot]
  (Create your own DVDs at speeds of up to 16x and CDs at speeds of up to 48x, reads CDs at 48x and DVDs at 16x) [/FONT]
• [FONT=&quot]Integrated ATI Radeon X300 Graphics
  (shares from 32MB up to 256MB of system memory) [/FONT]
• [FONT=&quot]Integrated High Definition audio with internal speaker [/FONT]
• [FONT=&quot]Integrated Broadcom 5755 10/100/1000 ethernet adapter [/FONT]
• [FONT=&quot]Integrated TPM 1.2 security module [/FONT]
• [FONT=&quot]Keyboard [/FONT]
• [FONT=&quot]Mouse [/FONT]
• [FONT=&quot]Microsoft Windows XP Home [/FONT]

for $365 each, delivered and 12 month warranty. Yes, it is not high end. Primary function will be use of MS Office or OpenOffice programs. I will pair these with a $150 17" LCD, and I don't think there is a laptop with even these basic specs that can come close to the price.

I remember paying nearly $2,000.00 for my first 486 machine at CompUSA.

 

[N80]

I agree that there are laptops out there that pretty much do anything a desktop can, in particular the high end Macs.

The two limitations I see are ergonomics and screen size. I have several desktops and a laptop. I love my laptop for web surfing and casual computing. I do not like spending a lot of time with it when I have a lot of typing or serious work to do. As far as screen size, if you do much in the way of serious photo or video editing there just isn't enough screen real estate and I'd also contend that only the highest end laptops have screens good enough for serious color correction and photo editing.

But, you can always plug a keyboard and a big fancy monitor into a laptop and have the functional equivalent of a desktop and I suppose in that regard even an expensive laptop is less than a laptop and a desktop.

So if I could only buy one computer to fit all my needs, it would probably be a high end laptop plus a keyboard and a large, high quality monitor. If you have storage issue you can plug the laptop into whatever you want.